Downstream

Agnes Beckwith. Yet her
1875 Thames swim was still
well known nearly forty years
later. In his 1914 book
Swimming, Montague
Holbein cites her in his
chapter entitled ‘Long-
distance Swimmers and their
Feats’. First comes Lord
Byron, then Dr Beadale of
Manchester, J.B. Johnson,
Boyton, Webb, and Cavill,
then finally Agnes Beckwith
whose five-mile swim,