I did find a couple of North American recordings of the song. One is from Canadian Oscar Brand's Pie in the Sky, which lists all songs as "traditional." The notes say:

The clime which produced the song of "The Downtrodden Landlord" can best be described by recalling the story of the story of the British pastor who warned his flock against whiskey... 'For it makes you come home drunk...It makes you shoot at your landlord...It makes you miss him.' Although the song comes from England, it is happily at home here since our landlords, too, come complete with bullseyes.

Sandy Paton pointed out to me that there's also a Fred Hellerman recording of the song on a Bear Family Records collection called Songs for Political Action. The singer was identified as "Bob Hill," but it was Hellerman. The notes say the song was a satirical British music hall tune penned by Arnold Clayton and B. Woolf. Nightclub singer Phil Irving introduced it to New York audiences at an October 1946 hootenanny.

Brand doesn't sing the "able to work for a living" verse; and Hellerman doesn't sing the thunder clouds verse.

-Joe Offer-