CHORUS

If you’re heading down to Camden Town,

Be sure to raise a toast

To the patron saint of the waifs and strays,

To Jinny Bingham’s ghost.

VERSE 1

Once she was a fresh faced lass, from Kentish Town she came.

Her people, they were pedlars, Jinny Bingham was her name.

With her husband Gypsy George a Camden coach house they did keep,

Till they hung him by his neck from Tyburn Tree for stealing sheep.

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VERSE 2

It broke her heart to lose her love when she was just a child,

So a man called Derby took the hand of Jinny meek and mild.

He was a drinker, not a thinker, daily brought his wife to tears,

Until one Camden winter morning, Derby simply disappeared.  

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VERSE 3

She earned her reputation on those bitter Camden streets. 

If you’d tarry with the Bingham girl, you'd hold your manhood cheap. 

But even so the miser Pitcher was the third man on her lips, 

Till one night they checked her oven, found him burned up to a crisp.  

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VERSE 4

They tried her for his murder, thought they’d finally cooked her goose, 

But even when the next man died, Jinny somehow slipped the noose. 

He was a fugitive from justice, for love she took him in, 

But he beat her once to often and the poison did him in.  

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VERSE 5

The locals didn't like her, false words followed her around. 

They called her wicked woman, sorceress of some reknown. 

They swore that on the gravestones of her husbands she'd grown rich, 

The ribald and the righteous, they knew she was a witch.  

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VERSE 6

But the reason she was hated was a simple one indeed: 

She had kindness for the careless, she took in those in need, 

The guilty and the gamblers, the harlots and the whores 

All knew that Jinny offered sanctuary at her doors  

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VERSE 7

On the day she died, they swore they saw the devil by her side. 

A mob broke down her door and from her chair her body pried. 

The tavern is still standing, it's now called the Underworld, 

And it still offers sanctuary for all broken boys and girls.

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