Maggie May (folk song)
Videos
Page
"Maggie May" is a traditional Liverpool folk song about a prostitute who robbed a "homeward bounder": a sailor coming home from a round trip.
The Liverpool Sailors' Home in Canning Place, c. 1860. The sailor is "paid off at the Home" and meets Maggie "cruising up and down" the square. In one version of the lyrics she is wearing a "crin-o-line", the bell-shaped dress worn by the woman in the foreground.
Lime Street in the 1890s, with St. George's Hall on the left and the Great North Western Hotel on the right
Canning Place in 1843
Maggie May (musical)
Videos
Page
Maggie May is a musical with a book by Alun Owen and music and lyrics by Lionel Bart. Based on "Maggie May", a traditional ballad about a Liverpool prostitute, it deals with trade union ethics and disputes among Irish-Catholic dockers in Liverpool, centring on the life of streetwalker Margaret Mary Duffy and her sweetheart, a freewheeling sailor.
Original theatre programme and poster