Leaving of Liverpool was, I believe, first collected in New York...Even in the 18th and 19th centuries, folk music was being swapped and exchanged throughout the maritime world - that means COMING IN as well as going out.

But in WAV's Pretendy England, none of that ever happened. Everyone stayed in their little homogenous English box, and liked it.

You want to visit the Museum of Slavery in Liverpool, WAV, and see just how culturally diverse that city was long before the Beatles ever got there. It puts paid to all of your notions of a homogenous England pre-1950.