John Neat (1876–1949)

John Neat is credited, along with C.W. Murphy and Dan Lipton, with writing Florrie Forde’s immortal She’s A Lassie From Lancashire (1907), which Fred Godfrey claimed he wrote. Godfrey and Neat collaborated on a number of other songs in 1907 — perhaps Lassie got lost in the shuffle or, since they seem to have seldom worked together after that year, perhaps the partnership became strained over lost credits: one can only speculate from this vantagepoint. The other 1907 songs are: Come For A Sail In My Yacht; Good Night, Mr. Kangaroo; A Hundred Years To Come; The Regimental Pet; Somebody’s Found A Girl (Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!) ; and ’Twas An Old, Old Song.

Other known Godfrery and Neat collaborations are Why Can’t The Girls Be Soldiers? (1911); and Red Wing (date uncertain but pre-1914). Neat continued to write songs until the 1940s.