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Ponds and pools of water were in those days common in the public ways, and one in the near neighbourhood of this house became, on an afternoon of September, 1785, the scene of the following brutal outrage:

A youth was suspected of picking a gentleman’s pocket close to the Adam and Eve, whereupon some of the by-standers took him to an adjoining pond and ducked him very severely. A sailor, not satisfied with the discipline of the crowd, threw him again into the water, and kept him under till he was drowned.

A little further on to the right of the road there stood in my time a high mound, covered with grass, beneath which was a reservoir which supplied the neighbourhood with water; it was removed, if my memory is correct, about 1846-47, when its site was occupied by one of the earliest experimental baths and wash-houses, which have since given place to some sunless houses, under the shadow of the Congregational Church, in what is known as Tolmer Square.

From this mound the road to Hampstead, a comparatively short period before the above date, was fringed with pastures to the right, and with gardens, fields, hedgerows, and orchards on the left, with only two or three cottages and a roadside alehouse between the Adam and Eve and the High Street, Camden Town.