Q: Have a look at Cray's comments on the song. Very interesting. It's one of the bawdy songs that began as a parlor (ie clean) song & can be dated to 1880 or so. There are many versions and variations. Milburn gives a chapter to "The Lehigh Valley Sequence" with six, mostly parlor versions. Yes, his book is expurgated but not too badly so. In this case he gives blanks for the taboo words instead of bowdlerizing.

For Legman's 2nd verse above, Milburn (in 1930 - a long time ago for this kind of material) gives:

We had a girl named Nelly,
And she was some high flyer;
She had Bright's disease
And you couldn't satisfy 'er.

Unwilling to accept the obvious, I now wonder what this Bright's disease actually is. (I don't demand that bawdy hobo songs be medically accurate but I wondered.) It was surprisingly difficult to find but finally I got:

Bright Disease - Chronic Nephritis
R Bright (1789-1858) An English physician who established in three classic papers the link between dropsy and coaguable urine with renal disease. Coaguable urine becomes cloudy on heating as it contains protein. Bright tested this for this problem by heating urine on a spoon held in a candle flame

It is a myth that Bright died from Bright disease - he died from aortic valve disease

It is now known that coaguable urine results from protein in the urine. On heating the protein cooks rather like egg white. Protein in the urine indicates nephritis

Historically, Bright's disease is often a catch-all for kidney diseases, but strictly speaking is glomerulonephritis, which may be a complication of streptococcal sore throat.

[Of course you all know that glomerulonephritis is a form of nephritis characterized by inflammation of the renal glomeruli.]

Hmmm.