— Lake
When I was young (in the middle of the last century), school holidays were always hot and dry — every August day was a scorcher. It really was (at least, that's how I recall it). So what were we to do? Earlier generations might have cooled off in one of the ponds on the Common, but we were much too fearful of "Parkies" (the brown-suited, trilby-hatted, bicycle-riding keepers who kept an eagle eye on everything).
But there are accounts in memoirs of cooling off here . . .
[EXAMPLE?]
I can't resist finishing off with a few more pond— and lake-related stories.
There are a number of wonderful reports of people being dumped in the Black Sea for punishment....oe..g. ? Caskowisky
But alo in the Lskr (actually or threatened)
As we've noted before, Wandsworth Common was often used for sermonising and speech-making at mass political and religious gatherings. A number were attacked by hostile locals, which raised the issue of a public right to free speech.
In the following case, from 1912, the police argued that, since they could not guarantee the safety of a speaker who had been threatened with a ducking (or drowning), therefore they must ban the entire gathering.
"In November last Mr. Boulter was going to speak on Wandsworth Common on the evidences of the Christian religion. A number of rowdy youths, said to be "students and fish porters," whose religious convictions were deeply outraged by this proposal, declared their intention of preventing the address by force and of throwing Boulter into the pond . . . "
A police officer gave information that a riot was to be apprehended, and that 500 policemen would not be sufficient to prevent it. Upon this Boulter was ordered by Mr. Curtis Bennett to desist from his intention and bound over to keep the peace, or alternatively to go to prison for three months.
This is probably the most outrageous perversion of justice where the right of free speech was concerned that has ever taken place in this country. The matter was made worse by the Home Secretary's subsequent declaration in the House of Commons that he was satisfied the police took a wise and prudent course.
That the obvious duty of the police, when a number of persons who can be identified openly purpose to commit a breach of the peace in order to prevent another man exercising a public right, is to proceed against those prospective law breakers, not against the man who is exercising his right, does not seem to have occurred to Mr. McKenna [the Home Secretary*] any more than to the magistrate, or the policemen themselves.
A pretty state of things in a free country under a "Liberal" Government! But there it is.
There are several delightful references to fishing and the lake on the St Mary Magdalene cope, including these:
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