A man was floating face down in the canal at Camden Lock while a crowd on the towpath asked if anyone could swim, and Beatrice Millar, 71, took off her shoes and went in after him.
Beatrice Millar was walking the towpath with her husband on a Friday lunchtime when she heard a splash and saw a man face down in the water, with a small crowd at the edge and nobody going in. She remembered the life-saving drills she had learned at school aged about nine, took her shoes off and jumped, and she held his head out of the water and got him to the side, where they were both pulled out. He came round with the paramedics.
20 September 2026
Photo via Islington Tribune
A 71-year-old retired psychotherapist jumped into the Regent's Canal at Camden Lock to reach a man who was floating face down in the water, and held his head up until the two of them could be pulled out, the Islington Tribune reported on Friday.
Beatrice Millar, who lives in Islington, was walking along the towpath with her husband at lunchtime on a Friday when she heard a splash and saw a small crowd gathered at the edge of the murky water, and beyond them a man lying face down, according to the paper, which spoke to her afterwards at home.
Can anyone swim
Somebody in the crowd was asking whether anyone could swim, and Ms Millar told the paper that people were not saying no so much as thinking that they did not want to get in, and that for her the question did not really arise.
When I realised no one was going to get in and this man was dying in front of our eyes, I just had to do it.Beatrice Millar, to the Islington Tribune
She said she remembered the life-saving drills she had been taught at school when she was about nine, and that she took her shoes off and jumped, and that once she was in the water her body seemed to know what to do without being asked.
It was amazing how my body remembered what to do in those circumstances.Beatrice Millar, to the Islington Tribune
Photo via Islington Tribune
To the side
She held the man's head out of the water and brought him to the side of the canal, where other people pulled them both out, and paramedics treated him on the towpath until he came round, the paper reported, adding that he was not a small man and that she had been puffing and panting by the end of it.
They are so intense those moments, when you have somebody's life in your hands and you don't know whether they are going to make it or not.Beatrice Millar, to the Islington Tribune
Ms Millar said she was in a daze afterwards and had wanted to carry on with her walk, but her husband persuaded her to go home and dry off instead, and as she walked back along the towpath to the bus people kept telling her she was a hero, which she said was touching, though she felt she had only done what had to be done and that there had not been much time to be scared.
Senior women
She retired from psychotherapy about six years ago, and she told the paper that she has spent much of the time since knocking on doors and talking to people about politics, having felt for most of her life that she was unhappy about the state of the world without knowing what to do about it.
Asked what the rescue showed, she gave the paper a four-word answer: senior women are powerful.
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