It's quite possible that both Lighter and Jim are right: lots of people sang, but only a few had the repertoire of a Walter Pardon.

Cecil Sharp in the Appalachians, and Carrie Grover, in Nova Scotia, both reported that singing was ubiquitous in remote agrarian communities the early 20th century. No reason to suppose it wasn't in Britain as well, a hundred years earlier. And as Lighter points out, Sharp found a large number of songs while covering an extremely small area of England, even at a time when singing was in decline.