There was a youth on the bank holding a stick over the water, apparently waiting for the child to come up to the surface.
"The coroner: 'How old was the youth ?' 'Well, he stood five feet six inches, and might have gone in without getting out of his depth.

I heard a woman cry, "Why don't you go in!" I dived in five or six times, but did not bring up the body.' The witness added that he and his brother had saved many lives at this spot, the latter having effected as many as twenty-five rescues in a year.

Alfred Terry, a silk weaver, described the point at which the child was drowned as a veritable death-trap, and mentioned that he had been instrumental during the past twelve years in saving considerably over one hundred lives at that spot.
"'One hot July afternoon in 1900,' he added,'my mother and I had five of them in the kitchen at one time with a roaring fire to bring them round.
That was during the school holidays; they dropped in like flies.' "Accidental death was the verdict." But when the little ones play in the gutter, danger lurks very near, as witness the extract of the same date-- "At an inquest at the Poplar coroner's court to-day, on a three-years'-old girl named Bertiola, it was stated that while playing with other children she was struck on the head with a tin engine.

Three weeks later she was playing with the same children, and one of them hit her on the head with the wooden horse.
"The coroner: 'Two similar blows in a few days, that is very strange.' "Dr.Packer said that death was due to cerebral meningitis, the result of a blow on the head.
"The coroner: 'I suppose you can't tell which blow caused the trouble' 'No, sir, I am afraid not.' "The jury returned a verdict of accidental death." But sometimes the boys and girls of the underworld collaborate in their play, for just now (July) "Remember the grotto! please to remember the grotto!" is a popular cry.

Who has not seen the London grottos he who knows them not, knows nothing of the London poor.
I was watching some girls play "hop-scotch" when a boy and girl with oyster shells in their hands came up to me preferring the usual request, "Please to remember the grotto!" Holding out their shells as they spoke.
"Where is your grotto ?" I said.