Here are the notes from Penguin:
Ratcliffe Highway (FSJ II 172)
In the first half of the nineteenth century, Ratcliffe Highway, Stepney, was the toughest thoroughfare in the East End of London. It was a place of sailors' lodging-houses, sailors' pubs, sailors' ladies. Henry Mayhew has given us vivid descriptions of the Highway, with tall brazen-faced women dressed in gaudy colours, sly pimps and crimps, roaring sailors out for a good time, bearded foreign musicians from the fifteen dance halls of the locality, and the intrepid policemen of H Division walking through the throng in twos. The Ratcliffe Highway song may have been made for performances in ships foc'sles, or it may have been made to impress the patrons of the Eastern Music Hall, the British Queen, the Prussian Eagle, or another local public house licensed for music. In any case, it now has some of the ring of tradition and much of the ring of truth. Mrs. Howard's text is supplemented from an unpublished version collected in Sussex in 1954 and kindly communicated by R. Copper, and from a broadside by Catnach.
And from the Traditional Ballad Index:Ratcliffe Highway
DESCRIPTION: The sailor wanders down Ratcliffe Highway (and stops at an ale-house. What happens thereafter varies, e.g. he meets a girl, he fights with the landlady, etc.). After his business is done, he welcomes the chance to return to sea, even on a lousy old tub
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1905
KEYWORDS: sailor courting whore fight
FOUND IN: US(MA) Britain
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Doerflinger, pp. 114-116, "As I Was A-Walking Down Ratcliffe Highway" (2 text, 2 tune)
Vaughan Williams/Lloyd, p. 85, "Ratcliffe Highway" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, RATCLIF* RATCLIF2*
Roud #598
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Blow the Man Down" (floating lyrics; the songs often cross-fertilize)
cf. "The Deserter"
Notes: Ratcliffe Highway is a road in London near Limehouse Reach. It ran near the docks of the British East India Company. Its was hardly the best part of town -- the "Ratcliffe Highway Murders" are mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes story A Study in Scarlet, and formed a backdrop for Thomas De Quincey's Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.
The area's reputation eventually became so bad that the road was renamed St. George's Street. - RBW
One version of "The Deserter" has the man recruited on Ratcliffe Highway, and that version is also known by the name of "Ratcliffe Highway." - PJS
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