Downstream

has one of the longest
continuous traditions of
Thames swimming. Regattas
were held here in Victorian
times, although this area of
the Thames was famous then
for another reason: it was
where ‘baby farmer’ Amelia
Dyer, eventually hanged in
1896, threw the bodies of the
children she had murdered
into the water. As for
swimming, when the narrator
of Three Men in a Boat