"In the 19th century, kids of both genders wore stockings, and about the middle of the century they started hanging them by the chimney on Christmas eve. As late as 1944, a young Swedish girl named Pippi could wear long stockings without anyone assuming they were made of sheer nylon".
Back in the 18th Century, the term "bluestocking" was a denigratory description of women of intellect (the days when men didn't know women had any… ). So women definitely wore the all the way back then.

I'm not sure how authentic Joe's transcription is: the first half of verse 2 has, in the version I first heard (c.1972 by Shep Woolley, ex-submariner/sailor, originally from Tamworth, north of Birmingham, England), the lyric "who stoop and grab at anything, to keep from going home". Not sure which is the earlier, thus if this is a bit of folk-processing. I seem to recall he sings "the rattle of the chains", which I'd always assumed to be the chains pulled across by platform staff (yes, there WERE some back then!!) to stop late arrivals rushing a train stopped at the platform, to minimize accidents. You might interpret this as Casey being just about to miss a train he'd wish to catch, a metaphorical echo of his put-upon existence. There always used to be a lot of clanking sounds like that (escalators, as someone has mooted on here already) on the Tube when I travelled on it in the 70s.

Back then, the turnstiles wouldn't have given change: that interpretation is from a post-Millennium perspective of self-service ticket machines, Oyster cards, etc.