Hmm… That didn’t seem right to me, so I looked it up
The “knock, knock, ginger” is linked to a 1967 Childhood in Poetry book by John Mackay Shaw. Behold these glorious verses:
Ginger, Ginger broke a winder,
Hit the winda—crack!
The baker came out to give ‘im a clout,
And landed on his back.
However, we’ve also seen the game called knock down ginger.
This may actually be more accurate, as “knock down” is a term dating to the late 18th century. It refers to knocking on a door by pulling the door knock striker.
Plus, ginger was a common term then as it meant to “ginger up” (move smartly). So, knock the door, leg it in timely fashion.
If you rearrange some of the letters in ginger you get the hate crime version of the name from the US South.
Hmm… That didn’t seem right to me, so I looked it up
https://professionalmoron.com/2022/04/18/history-of-knock-knock-ginger/
That feels a bit more like it to me, though surprised it’s not even a century old, I figured it was Victorian
Yeah a poem about whipping gingers on the back. From 1967.