Downstream

On 30 June 1905 her father
hired a boat and a boatman
and, on a diet of mainly bread
and milk, she dived into the
Thames at Putney. ‘It was an
awful trip,’ she later wrote. ‘I
shall never forget that swim
through the flotsam and
jetsam of London, dodging
tugs and swallowing what
seemed like pints of oil from
the greasy surface of the
river.’ As she got to
Blackwall ‘three and a half