This note was originally an aside on Benjamin Soley’s page (1120, 17th Lancers). Soley was reportedly known as “Any Old Iron”, from his habit of singing the song at the Annual Dinners of the Balaclava Commemoration Society; the background research on the song itself has been moved here to keep his own biography focused on his life and service.
[PB, April 2014: Can we find a source for this claim? It doesn't seem likely since the song is not, so far as I know, Victorian - it is usually credited to Charles Collins et al, and dated 1911. Is it possible that it circulated beforehand, and only been copyrighted or committed to print then? There is a recording of the music hall star Harry Champion singing “Any Old Iron” here, and the lyrics can be read here (accessed 23 April 2014). But the date of the recording is 1935. Champion, whose voice was clearly already past its best, was by this time c.72. Had he originally sung it many years previously?
Incidentally, it has been argued that the song “contains coded gay content”.
Any old iron?
Any old iron?
Any, any, any old iron?
You look sweet, talk about a treat,
You look dapper from your napper to your feet.
Dressed in style, brand new tile,
With your father's old green tie on.
But I wouldn't give you tuppence for your old watch chain,
Old iron, old iron.
Rather appropriately for a cavalryman, the word “iron” is said to be an abbreviation of the rhyming slang phrase “iron hoof”, for “poof”. See e.g. theguardian.com.
Well, possibly. Whether Soley and fellow combatants knew this (if it is indeed true) we do not know. But I also wonder whether the lyrics might have been resonant in quite another way: the “old iron” being medals?
There are other references in the lyrics that might also have resonated, including the Lord Mayor, old Colonels. But who knows?]
Two of the open questions above can now be answered from published sources. The song was written for Harry Champion in 1911 by Charles Collins and Fred Terry (words) and E. A. Sheppard (music); no source found gives any evidence it circulated before then, which argues against it having existed earlier and only been written down or copyrighted in 1911 — though that's not conclusive either way.
The recording date is the more interesting correction. 1911 was Champion's stage introduction of the song, not a recording. His well-known gramophone recording came much later — 29 October 1935, on EMI, with the London Palladium Orchestra — a 24-year gap the Ballad Index notes explicitly. Champion was born 17 April 1865, so at that 1935 recording he was 70, not 72 as guessed above — close, and still consistent with the observation that his voice was well past its best by then.
The Guardian piece profiles researcher Howard Bradshaw, who built a stage revue ("Somebody Bin Usin' That Thing") around claims of coded gay content in old music-hall songs.
His case for "Any Old Iron" rests on three points: "iron" is rhyming slang — shortened from "iron hoof" — for "poof"; sexologist Henry Havelock Ellis noted in 1915 that gay men had adopted the green necktie as an informal marker, which Bradshaw connects to the lyric about the "father's old green tie"; and wristwatches, not watch chains, were the fashionable choice among stylish gay men in the 1890s, so the line about not giving "tuppence for your old watch chain" reads as the singer noting the tie doesn't match the (wrong) accessory.
Bradshaw says the coding would have been necessary because, in the wake of the Wilde trials, open references to homosexuality were dangerous. He credits composer Nicolas Bloomfield with the original tip, and says the British Music Hall Society's secretary dismissed the theory as "complete rubbish" before Bradshaw found supporting detail in an (unnamed) anthology of gay historical writing.
Sources: Any Old Iron (song) — Wikipedia; Harry Champion — Wikipedia; Songfacts; Ballad Index; Folk Song and Music Hall.