<P> It was sung by Shirley Temple in the 1939 film A Little Princess . </P> <P> The song is full of working class cockney rhyming slang and idiomatic phrasing . </P> <P> The song tells the story of a family who live in an alley, a passageway off the street usually lined with crowded tenements, near the Old Kent Road, one of the poorest districts in London . They are visited by a toff, a well dressed man, who must have been a gentleman because he took his topper (tophat) off in the presence of the narrator's missus (wife). The man's speech however betrays that he is lower class himself when he informs the lady that her uncle Tom has' popped off', slang for died . He must have looked odd in his appearance too because he is described as a' geezer' which is an eccentric old man . He says this is not a' sell' i.e. it's the truth not a story but she has been left a little donkey' shay' (a chaise, a small light horse - drawn carriage). </P> <P> The refrain describes the reaction of the neighbours to the news of the couple's good fortune . "Wot cher!" was a Cockney greeting--a contraction of "What cheer" used as a greeting since the Middle Ages . To "knock em" is an idiomatic phrase, to knock them on the head i.e. to stun them . </P>

Knocked em in the old kent road song lyrics