Wotcher, wotcha and what cheer

By J. C.

Readers with long memories will recall a correspondence over the derivation of the cockney greeting “wotcher” or “wotcha”. (NB and Letters, December 2009–February 2010). Most plumped for wotcher as a contraction of “What cheer?”, but the writer Michael Rosen was of the opinion that “the sense of it was ‘What are you doing?’, with ‘what are you’ contracting to ‘wotcher’”.

The poet Kit Wright now gets in touch, apologizing for lateness but happy to present what he regards as a clinching argument. It comes in the form of a music hall song, “What Cheer ’Ria”, written by Will Herbert and Bessie Bellwood in 1885. The story concerns Ria (Maria), “a girl what’s a-doing wery well in the weagetable line, / And as I’d saved a bob or two I thought I’d cut a shine”. Ria buys “some toggery, these ere wery clothes you see” and visits the local music hall – not to sit in the gallery, where her friends are, “but on the bottom floor”, with the toffs. As luck would have it, her pals up in the gods see through her finery and begin to cry:

"What cheer Ria! Ria’s on the job,
What cheer Ria! did you speculate a bob?
Oh Ria she’s a toff and she looks immensikoff,
And they all shouted 'What cheer Ria!'"

As sung, the line comes out as “Wotcher, Ria!”, and Mr Wright is surely correct in believing that the thorny derivation is thus smoothed. When next passing Mr Rosen in the street, he expects to be greeted, “What cheer, Kit”.

Ria’s song is, of course, a moral tale, and a rather dismal one, about the perils of getting above yourself. At the end, having had her dress torn by a toff, she confesses she knows her place: “I felt so wild, to think how I’d been taken down, / Next time I’ll go in the gallery with my pals, you bet a crown”. This picture of either Ria or Bessie Bellwood adorns the front page of the original score, reproduced in Sixty Years of Music Hall by John M. Garret (1976). Now we need to know if “immensikoff” was common usage, circa 1885, and if there are other instances in literature or song.

Comments

[David Martin]

Yes indeed other instances, in both literature and song according to the OED:

1870 D. J. Kirwan Palace & Hovel xxxiv. 504 The chorus..of a popular street and music-hall song, which every one is now humming in London..as follows: ‘..I fancy I'm a Toff; From top to toe I really think I looks—Immensekoff.’

1889 Pall Mall Gaz. 25 Sept. 6/1 Heavy swells clad in Immensikoffs, which is the slang term, I believe, for those very fine and large fur robes affected by men about town.

1896 J. S. Farmer & W. E. Henley Slang IV. 3/1 Immensikoff, a fur-lined overcoat. From the burden of a song, ‘The Shoreditch Toff’, sung (c1868) by the late Arthur Lloyd, who described himself as Immensikoff, and wore an upper garment heavily trimmed with fur.

1911 A. Bennett Hilda Lessways i. vii. 70 His white muffler and large overcoat (which Dayson called an ‘immensikoff’).

[Truthlord]

The derivation of wotcha seems certainly difficult yet the idea that it comes from what cheer seems very implausible and the idea that this can be confirmed by the song quoted even more so.
What Cheer seems to me to be a completely meaningless phrase (even though I myself use the word Cheers! meaning goodbye quite frequently
Surely a better musical clue is found in the song Walking down the Old Kent
Road with its chorus Watcher (or what yer).all the ladies cry, Oo yer goin ta meet dear,ave yer bought the street dear...
The first Watcher is obviously a question tying in with ..Oo yer goin ta meet dear?
This clearly implies that Watcher is a question ..simply a shortened version of ..What yer doin mate?