Downstream

accidental, and Kew is no
exception. It was incidents
like these, and particularly the
plight of unmarried mothers,
that inspired Jerome K.
Jerome to a more sombre
passage in his otherwise
comical Three Men in a Boat,
when the three friends
discover the dead body of a
woman, lying ‘very lightly on
the water’. She had ‘loved
and been deceived . . . left to
fight the world alone, with