Lucy Locket

[2] Historically, the term "pocket" referred to a pouch worn around the waist by women in the 17th to 19th centuries.

Skirts or dresses of the time had an opening at the waistline to allow access to the pocket which hung around the woman's waist by a ribbon or tape.

The rhyme was first recorded by James Orchard Halliwell in 1842, but there is evidence that it was popular in Britain and America at least in the early nineteenth century.

Halliwell suggested that they were "two celebrated courtesans of the time of Charles II", but no supportive evidence has been found.

[3] Kitty Fisher may have been Catherine Marie Fischer (d. 1767) a British courtesan who was the subject of three unfinished portraits by Joshua Reynolds and a number of songs, including an air recorded in Thompson's Country Dances (1760).