142 KEW GARDENS 



He was convicted and hanged on Kennington 

 Common, along with the notorious highway- 

 man, Jerry Abershaw, and with a woman named 

 Sarah King, when a newspaper of the day could 

 remark on the curious coincidence that this 

 was also the name of Little's victim, the 

 housekeeper. 



Notices of Kew naturally become rarer after 

 the poor old King had been shut up at Windsor. 

 In 1813, Sir Richard Phillips made his Morning's 

 walk from London to Kezc, where he did not 

 admire George III.'s unfinished " Bastile," then 

 cumbering the ground. He is not the only writer 

 of the period to mention a singular exhibition, 

 not quite obliterated a dozen years later, a fresco 

 on a scale unsurpassed by Raphael or Michael 

 Angelo. "As I quitted the lane, I beheld, on 

 my left, the long boundary- wall of Kew Gardens ; 

 on which a disabled sailor has drawn in chalk 

 the effigies of the whole British navy, and over 

 each representation appears the name of the 

 vessel, and the number of her guns. He has in 

 this way depicted about 800 vessels, each five or 

 six feet long, and extending, with intervening 

 distances, above a mile and a half. As the 

 labour of one man, the whole is an extraordinary 



