Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne noted on his album Outway Songster:

Another song associated with Tony Rose, I first heard this sung by Tony on the LP Steam Ballads (which also features Harry Broadman, Kempion and Jon Raven). The album notes credit Karl Dallas’ One Hundred Songs of Toil as the source for this song. According to One Hundred Songs of Toil, the song had its origins in a set of anonymous verses written around the early twentieth century and published in the Railway Gazette. I believe it was Karl Dallas who set these verse to the widespread tune "Tramps and Hawkers". I’ve always thought that this has one of the finest last verses of any song and it always seems to put a grin on the faces of my audiences, so I’ve chosen to close the album with it.