Also known as Joe Jones, Sharper’s Joe Jones.

Joseph Saunders, 1878 (?) – ?

Stephen Sedley recorded a number of songs from the Gypsy singers Joe and Lena Cooper, camped near Edenbridge, and it was they who suggested he should visit Joe Saunders; indeed, their son Bert accompanied Sedley on his first visit, to show him the way.

The Coopers were insistent that I should record their kinsman Joe Saunders [Sedley records in a footnote “I think he had one or two spare names; one was Ridley”]. Joe’s caravan, which he shared with his grown-up daughter Liza, was stationed on farmland on Biggin Hill with the agreement of a friendly farmer. I visited him there at least twice in 1965-7.

 Joe was a veteran poacher (I suspect he paid rent in the form of an occasional hare or pheasant). He was also a bird-breeder. He told me that as a boy he would teach a canary to sing a linnet’s note, then use it as live bait to trap a linnet. The offspring were sterile and hence known as mule-birds, but they were superb singers. ‘You could get five pound for one at the big houses.’ It’s at least possible that he also bred fighting cocks.

Liza had a superb voice, but she preferred to sing Jim Reeves classics that she’d learnt from the radio. Joe wouldn’t sing a note without a quart of cider, but once this was provided he was unstoppable. His songs, as the tapes illustrate, were in large part the classic English rural repertoire, enhanced by Irish rebel songs (‘Kevin Barry’) and subversive army songs (‘McCafferty’). Their fit with the traditional repertoire can perhaps be best seen from the use made of them in two anthologies, The Seeds of Love (1967) and Who Killed Cock Robin? (2021, with Martin Carthy).¹

Sedley – who found himself defending Gypsies in court on more than one occasion – notes that Joe Saunders “had the unusual good fortune of a year-round standing for his caravan on a friendly farmer’s land on Biggin Hill, so he was safe from harassment”.²

Piecing together any kind of biographical picture of Joe Saunders has proved very difficult. Stephen Sedley believes that Joe had been in the army as a young man, and that he might have been aged around eighty at the time that he met him.³ Based on this information, one possible match is found in a Militia Attestation dated 31^st December 1900, where a 22-year-old Joseph Saunders from Croydon in Surrey was signing up to serve in the 3^rd Battalion, East Surrey Regiment. His residence was given as 82 Wilford Road, Croydon, his trade or calling was shown as Costermonger, and his most recent master was a Mr McDonell of Croydon. Looking at the Census records for 82 Wilford Road in 1901 – just a few months later – we find that the Head of the Household is William Saunders, aged 41, whose occupation is Hawker.  Living with him are his wife Mary Ann, and eight children, the two eldest of whom are also shown as Hawkers. Ten years earlier, in 1891, William and Mary Saunders were living at 17 Union Street, Croydon. At the same address were four sons, aged from five to ten, but Joseph was not among them, nor has any record of his birth or baptism been located as yet. There is absolutely no guarantee that this is the same person as the Joe Saunders whom Stephen Sedley met in the 1960s, but no more likely match has so far been found.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that the singer who Mike Yates recorded in the 1970s as Joe Jones (aka “Sharper’s Joe”) appears in fact to be Joe Saunders, under a different name. It is not simply that those songs recorded from Saunders / Jones by both Sedley and Yates share the same tunes and words, but comparison of the recordings suggests that it’s the same singer – albeit, almost a decade on, sounding rather older.

Yates appears to have recognised this: there are recordings in his collection where the performer is labelled as “Joe Jones “Sharper’s Joe” 1966.03.26 Biggin Hill, Kent”.⁴ Listening to these recordings, it is clear that they are identical to those made of Joe Saunders by Stephen Sedley; not only that, but the date and location tally exactly with those of Sedley’s recordings.

In the same way as Joe and Lena Cooper had pointed Stephen Sedley towards their kinsman Joe Jones, Mike Yates was directed to Sharper’s Joe by a Gypsy called Joe Cooper (whom I have assumed, perhaps incorrectly, to be the same Joe Cooper as Sedley had recorded).

The first gypsy that I met was Joe Cooper, an old man who had parked his trailer in a country lane near to where I live. I saw him one afternoon sitting bolt upright on a wooden chair which had been conveniently placed by the side of an open wood fire. Joe was cleaning a fiddle and I could hear him humming a tune to himself as he went about his work. The fiddle provided a mutual topic of conversation and, before long, we were talking like long lost friends. On the subject of songs I found Joe to be somewhat reticent. He sang me three or four, but confessed that his heart really wasn’t in the singing, explaining that he had just lost his wife and that songs had meant a great deal to her. Anyway, he said, why didn’t I go and see ” Sharper’s Joe ” who was only camped a few miles away. He would certainly oblige.

And oblige he did. I met Joe Jones within the week and discovered that his father’s name was Sharper — hence his own nickname ” Sharper’s Joe” — and that, although aged about ninety, he was only too willing to sing. In fact, once started it was almost impossible to get him to stop! On one memorable October morning I switched on a tape recorder and recorded the following songs: Van Dieman’s Land. The Box Upon Her Head. The Farmer of Chester. King William and the Keeper. Shooting Goshen’s Cock Ups. I Wish, I Wish. The Banks of Sweet Primroses. Hares in the Old Plantation. Brian O’Lynn. The Banks of Claudy. In Thorneymoor Park. Brennan on the Moor. John Barleycorn. It soon became apparent that Joe was not only a singer but an expert story teller, a non-stop riddle teller and a champion toast master as well. His favourite toast runs like this:

Lending and spending and giving away
Are the three easiest things you can do in a day.
But working and labouring and earning your own
Are the three hardest things that man’s ever known.
Here’s to the man that’s industrious.
Here’s to the man that works hard for his brass
And never denies his own country.⁵

Writing in the 1975 Folk Music Journal, which included transcriptions of three of Joe’s songs, Mike Yates wrote

Although now in his nineties, Mr Jones has a good memory. In his youth he was a poaching companion of the late George “Pop” Maynard of Copthorne⁶

George Maynard was a well-known singer from Sussex, recorded in the 1950s and early 60s by Peter Kennedy and Ken Stubbs⁷. There are at least two songs – ‘Shooting Goshen’s Cock-Ups’ and ‘William Taylor’ (‘You Subjects of England’), both poaching songs – which were found in the repertoire of both Pop Maynard and Joe Jones.

Yates’ recordings of Sharper’s Joe were made between 1973 and May 1975. It’s worth noting that, if he really was born in 1878, he must have been aged around 97 when the last of these recordings were made, and was still in remarkably fine voice.

Included in the 1975 FMJ article was a full list of the songs that Yates had now recorded from Joe. Several of these recordings subsequently appeared on the Musical Traditions CD, Here’s Luck to a Man… released in 2003. In the CD booklet Yates wrote

Joe Jones, or ‘Sharper’s Joe’ – after his father, Sharper Jones – (or even ‘Joe Cooper’ as I heard him addressed on one occasion) and his wife Lena were living in an old caravan on a site at St Mary Cray, Kent.  Whenever I called, Joe would be squatting over an outdoor fire, no matter whatever the weather, and all of my recordings were made outdoors.  On one occasion, when we were constantly being interrupted by children, we retreated to the edge of a nearby wood.  As I set up my mike stand I felt something tapping my shoe.  Simultaneously Joe began to frantically point and shout and it was only when I looked down that I noticed that I had stepped backwards onto a rather sleepy adder.  Luckily the fangs failed to cut through the shoe and no damage was done.⁸

This paints a vivid picture. But it creates yet more confusion for anyone trying to unpick the details of these Gypsy singers. While Mike Yates talks about Joe living with his wife, Lena, Stephen Sedley makes no mention of Joe’s wife, saying only that he lived with his daughter Liza. Meanwhile the recordings on Here’s Luck to a Man… ascribed to ‘Lena Jones’ are definitely those made by Sedley in the 1960s of Lena Cooper, while the version of ‘Ripest Apples’ on the CD is not, as the track listing would have you believe, sung by Joe Jones, but by Lena’s husband Joe Cooper (again, recorded by Sedley in 1966).

Songs

“He had a large repertoire. He wouldn’t sing a note until he had a quart of cider, but once started he couldn’t be stopped”.⁹

Joe Saunders, recorded by Stephen Sedley:

• As I was bound apprentice (Roud 299)
• The Barley Straw (Roud 19112)
• Bold Reynolds (Roud 190 / 358)
• Botany Bay (Roud 261 / 519)
• Captain Grant (Roud 1286)
• The Cuckoo (Roud 413)
• The Cuckoo’s Nest (Roud 1506)
• Down by some riverside (Roud 564)
• The Farmer of Chester (Roud 2638)
• The Game of Cards (Roud 232)
• Gather round (Roud 23635)
• Hares in the old plantation (Roud 363)
• Hartlake Bridge (Roud 1729)
• I Wish I Wish (Roud 495)
• King and the Keeper, The (Roud 853)
• Love it is pleasing (Roud 1049)
• My single sailor (Roud 264)
• Oyster Girl (Roud 875)
• The Pear Tree (Roud 1713)
• Ripest Apples (Roud 146 / 542)
• Squire Poppa’s Park (Botany Bay) (Roud 519)
• Ten Penny Walnuts (Roud 2520)
• Transportation Song (Roud 519)
• When this wicked war is over (Roud 3446)
• Yonder Comes The Devil (Roud 16319)

Joe Jones, recorded by Mike Yates:

• The Banks of Claudy (Roud 266)
• The Banks of Sweet Primroses (Roud 586)
• The Barley Straw (Roud 19112)
• A Blacksmith Courted Me (Roud 816)
• Bold Reynolds (Roud 190 / 358)
• Botany Bay (Roud 261)
• Box upon her head (Roud 289)
• The Brake of Brambles (Roud 47479)
• Brennan on the Moor (Roud 476)
• Brian O’Lynn (Roud 294)
• Captain Grant (Roud 1286)
• The Cuckoo (Roud 413)
• Cuckoo’s Nest (Roud 1506)
• The Farmer of Chester (Roud 2638)
• The Game of Cards (Roud 232)
• Hares In the old Plantation (Roud 363)
• Hartlake Bridge (Roud 1729)
• I called for a pot of ale (Roud 47478)
• I Wish I Wish (Roud 495)
• John Barleycorn (Roud 164)
• The King and the Keeper (Roud 853)
• Little dun mare (Roud 176)
• Love is pleasing (Roud 1049)
• On board a Man o’ War (Roud 662)
• The Pear Tree (Roud 1713)
• Seventeen come Sunday (Roud 277)
• Susie Simmonds (Squire Poppa’s Park, Transportation Song, Van Dieman’s Land) (Roud 519)
• Thornymoor Park (Roud 222)
• Yonder Comes The Devil (Roud 16319)
• You rambled up the street, I rambled down (Roud 25885?)
• Toast: The Little Bees
• Toast: Lending and spending and giving away

Discography

Mike Yates’ recordings of Joe Jones are included on the following releases:

Here’s Luck to a Man: An Anthology of Gypsy Songs & Music from South-East England, Musical Traditions MTCD320 (CD-R, 2003).

Songs of the Open Road: Gypsies, Travellers & Country Singers, Topic Records 12T253 (LP, 1975), TSDL253 (digital download, 2009).
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2010/12/various-artists-songs-of-the-open-road-tsdl253/

Travellers: Songs, Stories and Tunes from English Gypsies, Topic Records 12TS395 (LP, 1985), TSDL395 (digital download, 2015).
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2015/05/travellers-songs-stories-and-tunes-from-english-gypsies-tsdl395/

---

1. Stephen Sedley, Joe and Lena Cooper, Joe and Liza Saunders: A note to accompany tape recordings
   of Travellers’ songs made in 1966 at Edenbridge, personal communication, August 2023. ↩︎
2. Stephen Sedley, email correspondence, 12 March 2025 ↩︎
3. Stephen Sedley, email correspondence, 11 and 12 March 2025 ↩︎
4. Mike Yates collection C 796/12-16, listed in the VWML catalogue, https://catalogue.efdss.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=72230 ↩︎
5. Mike Yates, Some Gypsy Singers in South East England, English Dance & Song, Spring 1975, p14 ↩︎
6. Mike Yates, English Gypsy Songs, Folk Music Journal, Vol 3 No 1 (1975), p79 ↩︎
7. For information on George Maynard, and to hear recordings of some of his songs, see the Sussex Traditions website, https://sussextraditions.org/singer/pop-maynard/ ↩︎
8. Mike Yates, notes to Here’s Luck to a Man…, Musical Traditions MTCD320, 2003, https://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/luck#sing ↩︎
9. Stephen Sedley, email correspondence, 11 March  2025 ↩︎

Stephen Sedley, then a young barrister, recorded Joe and Lena Cooper at Edenbridge in March and April 1966, having successfully defended their son Abraham in a court case.

The privilege this earned me was a welcome in any caravan in the Edenbridge area. Abe introduced me to his parents, Joe and Lena Cooper, who readily talked and sang for me as I ran the Uher.

Lena, a Romany from the Lee clan, had danced and sung with her brother on the Dartford stage as a child. Joe, from an urban background, had volunteered in 1914, had been gassed twice but had survived, only to find that Lloyd George’s ‘homes for heroes’ didn’t exist. He went on the road. From him I recorded a version of the trench song ‘When this lousy war is over’ which I used in a centennial presentation of WWI songs¹ because Joe’s version began: “When this wicked war is over …”. He described mustard gas rolling knee-high as resembling morning mist in the hopfields.²

This record in the 1939 Register must surely be the family in question, their location being “Caravan in field Off Butts Lane, Sutton, Epsom and Ewell M.B., Surrey”.

First name	Last name	Birth date	Occupation	Marital status
Joe (Joseph)	Cooper	24 May 1896	Travelling Farm Worker	Married
Lena	Cooper	NK 1899	Hawker Unpaid Domestic Duties	Married
Abraham	Cooper	? Aug 1921	Travelling Farm Worker	Single

Lena’s birth year as written on the Register return is unclear. It could be 1879, but is more likely to be 1899 – and even this may not actually be accurate.

Earlier census and BMD records for Joe and Lena are patchy, and decidedly speculative.

Joseph Cooper, 1896–?

As shown above, the 1939 Register states that Joe was born on 24^th May 1896. Possibly he was the same Joseph Cooper whose birth was registered in the Bromley District, in the second quarter of 1897, his mother’s maiden name given as Dekins.

Again this is speculative, but he could be the Joe / Joseph Cooper in the following census returns; we should probably not take too much notice of the variations in year and place of birth.

1901 – Caravan Yard Browns Yard, Magdala Road, Croydon, Surrey

First name	Last name	Relationship to head	Age	Approx. Birth year	Occupation	Birth place
Joe	Cooper	Head	28	1873	Licensed dealer	Cudham, Kent
Eliza	Collins	House keeper	26	1875	–	Leatherhead, Surrey
George	Cooper	Son	6	1895	–	Croydon, Surrey
Joe	Cooper	Son	5	1896	–	Bromley, Kent
Elvie	Cooper	Daughter	2	1899	–	Warlingham, Surrey
Eliza	Cooper	Daughter	0	1901	–	Hampshire

1911 – 9 Portland Cottages, Warlingham, Surrey

First name	Last name	Relationship to head	Age	Approx. Birth year	Occupation	Birth place
Joseph	Cooper	Head	38	1873	Dealer	Cudham, Kent
Mary Ann	Cooper	Wife	36	1875	Hawker	Cobham, Kent
George	Cooper	Son	14	1897	–	Croydon, Surrey
Joseph	Cooper	Son	15	1896	Worker	[?] Kent
Elvina	Cooper	Daughter	13	1898	–	Warlingham, Surrey
Eliza	Cooper	Daughter	10	1901	School	Liphook, Hampshire
Bessey	Cooper	Daughter	8	1903	–	Mitcham, Surrey
Alice	Cooper	Daughter	6	1905	–	Warlingham, Surrey
John	Cooper	Son	4	1907	–	Warlingham, Surrey
Thomas	Cooper	Son	2	1909	–	Warlingham, Surrey
Lavinia	Cooper	Daughter	0	1911	–	Warlingham, Surrey

1921 – Quinnas Cottage, Warlingham, Surrey

First name	Last name	Relationship to head	Age	Approx. Birth year	Occupation	Employer	Birth place
Joe	Cooper	Head	51	1869	Horse Slaughterer	Employer	Kent
Eliza	Cooper	Wife	47	1873	Home Duties	–	Surrey
Joe	Cooper	Son	23	1897	Horse Slaughter	Mr J Cooper Warlingham	Croydon, Surrey
Eliza	Cooper	Daughter	20	1900	Domestic Servant	Private	Liphook, Hampshire
Alice	Cooper	Daughter	16	1904	Domestic Servant	Private	Surrey
Johnny	Cooper	Son	14	1907	Errand Boy	Mr Cooper Warlingham	Sanderstead, Surrey
Thomas	Cooper	Son	12	1908	–	–	Sanderstead, Surrey
Lavinia	Cooper	Daughter	9	1911	–	–	Sanderstead, Surrey
Louie	Cooper	Daughter	8	1913	–	–	Warlingham, Surrey
Alfred	Cooper	Son	3	1918	–	–	Warlingham, Surrey
Ada May	Cooper	Daughter	–	1920		–	Warlingham, Surrey

When recorded in 1966 by Stephen Sedley, Joe said that he had run away from home in Walton-on-Thames to join the army when he was 17, claiming to be 23. Based on a birth date of May 1896, that would place his enlistment as 1913-14, before the outbreak of the Great War.

I was not big enough to go into a public house to get a pint of beer with my mum and dad […] That was before the 1914 war. I see some soldiers come by, in these coats and things of London, I thought to myself I’d be happy if I was in that. And I did like the army. I promise you I did like it. I run away from home. From Walton-on-Thames, out against Kingston, and I went over to Weybridge in Surrey and I joined the Army there. Told them I was 23 years of age, but I was nowhere near it. I was only 17, and I told him I was 23 years of age. Asked me my mother’s name. Asked me my father’s name, I told him I did not remember, I did not know ‘em. I was fetched up with some people, I said I run and I left ‘em, because I was working too hard, but it was all the lies in the world to get in the army. And I done that.

Joe’s parents tried to get him out of the army, he said, but to no avail. He was sent to Kingston-on-Thames to have a health test, and thence to Woolwich Arsenal for his army training. There are army service records for a Joseph Cooper which in many respects tally with his reminiscences, but which also throw up inconsistencies. Records – sadly undated – show that his medical examination took place at Kingston, that his trade or occupation was “Dealer”, his birthplace was Mitcham in Surrey, and his stated age was 23. He was 5 feet 5½ inches tall, weighed 122 pounds, and his physical development was good.

Joe recalled that he had three weeks’ training at Woolwich, and then “I was over in France in three weeks”. This suggests that when he enlisted it was not so very long before the outbreak of hostilities – the first contingent of the British Expeditionary Force being sent to France on 15^th August 1914. However it must have been before his eighteenth birthday on 24^th May 1914; once eighteen he would not have had to lie about his age to be allowed to enlist.

When asked how long he’d been in the trenches, Joe replied “1914 to the end of the war. Yes, right the way through it”. The army records do not cast any light on his early years of service. In fact Joseph Cooper’s army service was recorded as having officially begun on 17^th May 1916, and his Enrolment Paper, although undated, references the Military Service Act, 1916 (this was the legislation, introduced in January 1916, which brought in conscription from 2^nd March that year). The Enrolment Paper gives Joe’s age as nineteen (which appears to be his true age on this occasion), and his address as Wickes Encampment, Shepperton; again, his occupation is given as “Dealer”. The paper is signed with an X (“his mark”) suggesting that Joe was illiterate – and Stephen Sedley confirms this. His next of kin is stated as his father, William Cooper, also residing at Wickes Encampment. If this is correct, and his father’s name was William rather than Joseph, then clearly it’s a different Joe Cooper to the one shown in the census records reproduced above. But one wonders if Joe was deliberately providing misleading information to the army; it has not been possible to trace a plausible William Cooper in census records, living with his son Joseph, and with an entry in the ‘Occupation’ field which suggests that the person is a gypsy.

Joe told Stephen Sedley that he served as an infantryman, and that he had been at the Somme, and at “the first battle of Cambia” (presumably Cambrai). The first significant use of tanks in battle was at Cambrai, and Joe talked about this, recalling that initially the tanks had been assigned to the Machine Gun Corps, before the formation of the Tank Corps (which later became the Royal Tank Regiment).

Army records show Joseph Cooper being called up and assigned to the Royal Fusiliers on 17^th May 1916, transferring to the British Expeditionary Force on 30^th August, and embarking for France on 1^st September 1916. Initially he joined the 39^th Infantry Base Depot (IBDs were holding camps located within easy reach of a Channel port, which received men on arrival from England and kept them in training while they awaited posting to a unit at the front), was then being enrolled in the 27th (Reserve) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, before transferring to the 11^th Battalion, Royal West Kent Regiment on 14^th September 1916. He was transferred again on 25^th December 1916 to the Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps, and subsequently to the Tank Corps (formed in July 1917). He was demobilised on 14^th December 1919.

He may have liked the soldier’s life, but that did not stop him being put on a charge on several occasions – for overstaying a period of leave, for being absent from parade, for “loitering during working hours” and “using threatening language to R.P. [Regimental Police] in execution of their duty”.

Joe Cooper’s reminiscences of life in the trenches were vivid, and entirely unsentimental. He talked of the difficulty of sleeping in a dugout, and of having to be constantly vigilant for snipers:

Now if you see them trees are moving about as green in the summertime, like, moving about… if you could see that tree move you’d know there was a sniper in there. Well you’d report that then. To the machine gun man. Well, the machine gun comes up number one, and he puts a Stokes [?] mortar in there… Well he blows him out of the tree altogether… If we didn’t shoot him, he’d shoot us.

He told of how gas would roll across the fields:

Now just say you been down the hop country, you seen a foggy morning haven’t you? You’ll see the fog off the ground somewhere about a foot to a foot and a half, that’s like the gas used to come up off the trenches, out on the battlefield.

How the British soldiers were initially unprotected against German gas attacks:

When they start using the gas in there, you had no gas helmets, nothing like that. We had to get our own water, our own water, you know, put it into a medicine bottle, soak it into the bottle. And when we seed the gas a-coming up, the gas alarm come through the trenches, ringing a bit of a bell… We had to put that water all in our own mouth. Only our own water mind. Over your nose and over the top…

And that, when they were provided with gas masks, at first these proved unsatisfactory.

When troops were ordered to go over the top

That was from two in the morning, from half past one or two o’clock. The officer used to come round with the orderly officer, with the rum issue, and he used to give him a tot of rum into a glass and we’d drink it. Well that used to put the nerve into you. If you understand what I mean now. Well, when they said boys “Stand to, ready to go”, you couldn’t hear a shell fire, you couldn’t hear a rifle fire or nothing. Not till the big guns started to the back of us, our own guns.

Then

if someone was hit on the battlefield, if he was my own brother I wouldn’t dare touch him. Wouldn’t dare to touch him if his arm was blowed off or his head was blowed off. Wouldn’t dare to touch him… Just take care of yourself. If you did you was entitled to a court martial, if you got catched at it. If they catch you doing it – ’cause we did do it, because we was doing it for the sake of your partner, if you could.

To recover the wounded from No Man’s Land they would use stretchers on wheels, attached to a rope, at night, so as not to be seen. Then they would attend to the wounded as best they could, and take them down the supply trench back to the second line of defence.

Joe spoke dispassionately about the enemy, recognising that “Some was pretty good, some was bad, ’cause we had to do it the same as they did… They tried to blow us up and we tried to blow them up”. But he was far from oblivious to the desperate conditions in which men found themselves:

I should think it was about from three to four weeks when we did get in the real, proper slaughter. We had no dugouts. We had no trenches. We had dug up just a little trench, and told to dig out as well we could from shell hole to shell hole to shell hole, and dig ourself in. But after we’d done that, it was real proper murder, they served us so that you could almost see the blessed angels come down from the sky to stop the war. With my own two loving eyes. And that’s the God’s honest truth, as ever was in heaven.

And when, finally, the armistice came, the men were all infested with lice:

What they call these lice, real proper lice. You’ve heard talk of lice, haven’t you? Well in the front line trenches we got smothered with them things. Even come out the lace holes of our boots, or our shirts. Clothes we had on, they was not fit to wear. We had to take ‘em off and destroy ‘em outside… We did burn them up and put all new clothes on.

Then after the war, as Stephen Sedley recounts, he came home to find that, contrary to Lloyd George’s assurances, there were no “homes fit for heroes”, and he took to (went back to?) a life on the road.

As yet, no record of Joe Cooper’s death has been located.

Lena Cooper, née Lee, 1899(?)/1904(?)–1968?

While the 1939 Register appears to show Lena’s birth year as 1899, other records suggest that she was born in 1904. The birth of a Lena Lee was registered in the Maidstone District in the second quarter of 1904, and this tallies with census records – for instance with the Lee family recorded in the 1911 census at Iron Mill Lane, Crayford:

1911 – Iron Mill Lane, Crayford, Kent

First name	Last name	Relationship to head	Age	Approx. Birth year	Occupation	Birth place
Leonard	Lee	Husband	50	1861	Clothes peg maker, Hawker	Swancombe, Kent
Ellen	Lee	Wife	46	1865	Clothes peg seller, Hawker	Heathfield, Sussex
Louisa	Lee	Daughter	25	1886	Clothes peg seller, Hawker	Hollenton, Sussex
Sarah	Lee	Daughter	23	1888	Clothes peg seller, Hawker, Hawker	Hollenton, Sussex
Walter	Lee	Son	14	1897	Clothes peg maker	Kent, Chatham
Celia	Lee	Daughter	10	1901	School	Kent, Folkestone
Lena	Lee	Daughter	7	1904	School	Kent, Marden
Tilly	Lee	Daughter	4	1907	–	Kent, Swanley

And at Belvedere ten years later:

1921 – Occupation Road, Belvedere, Erith, Kent

First name	Last name	Relationship to head	Approx. Birth year	Age	Occupation	Employer	Birth place
Leonard	Lee	Head	1863	58	Street Hawker	Own Account	Not known
Ellen	Lee	Wife	1866	55	Street Hawker	Own Account	Not known
Lena	Lee	Daughter	1903	18	Street Hawker	Own Account	Epping, Essex
Tilly	Lee	Daughter	1906	15	Home Duties		Epping, Essex

(Clearly this is the same family, although there are inconsistencies between 1911 and 1921 with the girls’ ages and place of birth).

If this is the right Lena Lee, then she only had one brother, Walter, so it must have been with him that she danced and sung on the Dartford stage as a child – although when recounting how she and her brother used to dance, she seems to refer to him as Billy.

As well as singing songs, Lena diddled several dance tunes. She recalled that she would perform on the Dartford stage at 11 or 12 o’clock at night. She had a brother who used to play the tambourine and the mouth organ while she danced – “shuffle on, cakewalk, and step dance – any step tune you could play, he’d do it”. When she was twelve years of age they had been performing in the street when they came to the notice of a gentleman who, having followed them for a while, bought them both a cup of tea, gave them a golden sovereign, and subsequently on a Sunday visited their home to speak to their mother, arranging for a car to come and pick them up at 6 o’clock that day – presumably so that they could perform at a local theatre.

Lena said that her paternal grandfather “was a bit of a Spain man” and “my father, you would take him to be, if he was alive… he would look if he was a Spain man. There was a bit of a mix-up in the blood, you see, but he is a bit of a Spain man, my father is”. When asked, did she mean that he was from Spain, Lena answered “Yes, from Rome”.

It is not known when Lena and Joe met and married. In the 1939 Register, their son Abraham’s date of birth was given as August 1921. If that date is correct, then it casts doubt on the relevance of the other census records quoted here, since both Joe Cooper and Lena Lee appear to have been single, and living with their parents at the time of the 1921 census, taken just two months earlier.

The death of a Lena Cooper – probably the same person – was recorded in the Tonbridge district, in the second quarter of 1968.

Mike Yates and Joe Cooper

Writing in English Dance and Song in 1975, Mike Yates recorded that

The first gypsy that I met was Joe Cooper, an old man who had parked his trailer in a country lane near to where I live. I saw him one afternoon sitting bolt upright on a wooden chair which had been conveniently placed by the side of an open wood fire. Joe was cleaning a fiddle and I could hear him humming a tune to himself as he went about his work. The fiddle provided a mutual topic of conversation and, before long, we were talking like long lost friends. On the subject of songs I found Joe to be somewhat reticent. He sang me three or four, but confessed that his heart really wasn’t in the singing, explaining that he had just lost his wife and that songs had meant a great deal to her. Anyway, he said, why didn’t I go and see “Sharper’s Joe” who was only camped a few miles away.³

Mike Yates does not specifically say that he recorded the few songs which Joe Cooper sang for him, and there do not appear to be any recordings of him among the Yates recordings deposited with the British Library and Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. However the same article in English Dance and Song included a transcription of ‘Ripest Apples’, collected from Joe Cooper in January 1970. This is similar, but not identical, to the version of the song which Stephen Sedley had recorded. Cooper is a common Gypsy surname, so we can’t be sure if the Joe Cooper that Mike Yates met is the same man as Stephen Sedley recorded in 1966. On the other hand, the fact that this singer had recently lost his wife would tally with Lena having died eighteen months or so previously.

The Musical Traditions CD Here’s Luck to a Man… An Anthology of Gypsy Songs & Music from South-East England (MTCD320, 2003), featuring recordings made by Mike Yates, includes one song and a toast credited to “Lena Jones”, but careful listening suggests that these are in fact Stepehen Sedley’s recordings of Lena Cooper.

Songs

Recorded by Stephen Sedley, 26^th March and 19^th April 1966:

Joe Cooper

• Gather Round (Roud 23635)
• Love it is pleasing (Roud 1049)
• My single sailor (Roud 264)
• Ripest Apples (Roud 542)
• When this wicked war is over (Roud 3446)

Collected by Mike Yates, January 1970:

• Ripest Apples (Roud 542)

Lena Cooper

Recorded by Stephen Sedley, 26^th March and 19^th April 1966:

• Barbara Allen  (Roud 54)
• Died for love (Roud 60)
• Don’t think by my clothes (Roud 7337)
• Down by the riverside (Roud 564)
• Forgive and forget (Roud 21545)
• Gypsy girl (Roud 7337)
• How much is that doggie in the window? (Roud 23633)
• I owe my landlord three weeks’ rent (Roud 1455)
• If I was a blackbird (Roud 387)
• I’m mother’s baby boy (Roud 23639)
• I’m the bloke you don’t meet every day (Roud 975)
• In the shade of the old apple tree (Roud 10242)
• Just an old fashioned lady (Roud 23644)
• Just like the ivy  (Roud 16228)
• Knees up Mother Brown (Roud 23634)
• Love it is pleasing (Roud 1049)
• Meet me by moonlight (Roud 767)
• The old brass ring (Roud 23643)
• Only a beautiful picture in a lovely golden frame (Roud 13625)
• Only a leaf (Roud 23645)
• Pleasant Dreams (Roud 23637)
• A pub with no beer (Roud 23631)
• There was an old farmer in Chester (Roud 2638)
• There was an old tailor in London (Roud 311)
• Waiting for the Robert E Lee (Roud 23632)
• When this wicked war is over (Roud 3446)
• Wild colonial boy (Roud 677)
• Young sailor cut down in his prime (Roud 2)
• Toast: Here’s good luck to a man (Roud 23648)

---

1. The bells of hell, initially compiled as the keynote lecture for the Oxford history faculty centenary conference 2014, and last performed at Cecil Sharp House on 11 November 2018 (recording archived in the Vaughan Williams Memorial  Library). ↩︎
2.  Stephen Sedley, Joe and Lena Cooper, Joe and Liza Saunders: A note to accompany tape recordings of Travellers’ songs made in 1966 at Edenbridge, personal communication, August 2023. ↩︎
3. Mike Yates, Some Gypsy Singers in South East England, English Dance & Song 37:1 (1975) pp.14-15 ↩︎