Note 427 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY (continued 4)

William Curtis (1746-99) had this botanical garden in Lambeth Marsh, and there collected some of the material for his Flora Londinensis. Later, he opened his large establishment at Brompton. In 1782, he rendered a curious service to the suburbs by writing A Short History of the Brown-Tail Moth, to allay “the alarm which had been excited in the country round the Metropolis by an extraordinary abundance of the caterpillars of this moth, and which was so great, that the parish officers … attended in form to see them burnt by bushels at a time” (Nichol’s Literary Anecdotes). Curtis was buried in Battersea parish church.