The Nightingale Shore Murder (5 page)

In tribute to the famous nurse, many baby girls of this time were named after Florence Nightingale, including one in another branch of the Shore family. In 1863, a baby born on 21
^st
March was named Florence Nightingale Shore. But she suffered from an obstruction of the bowels from birth, and died five days later.

Offley and Anna Maria Shore's daughter Florence, however, thrived. Stamford would have been a good place for a young family. It was an ancient borough and market town, 40 miles from the cathedral town of Lincoln. ‘Morris' Directory and Gazetteer of Lincolnshire', published in 1863, gives a glowing contemporary picture of the town as it was when the Shores moved there in the early 1860s:

The population at this time was around 6,800, and the town was a busy and thriving centre of local life, with a 100 year-old Town Hall, Assembly Rooms, a Literary and Scientific Institution, a Mechanics' Institute, and several reading rooms and libraries. It was ‘well-lighted with gas' and had schools for both boys and girls, a corn and provision market on a Friday, and fat stock markets held fortnightly. The Stamford, Rutland and General Infirmary, where Florence's father worked, was ‘
an elegant stone building, about a quarter-of-a-mile from the town on the Deeping road, and stands in the midst of a beautiful part of the county
.' The Morris Directory names Mr C Winstanley as house surgeon at the Infirmary, and Miss Eliza Lovell as matron: Offley Shore, a junior physician at the hospital, does not yet warrant a listing amongst either the ‘gentry' or the ‘trades and professions' in the town.

A younger sister to Offley and Florence was born in Ashbourne in September, 1866, and named Urith Beresford Ffoye Shore – her names also linking her to the different branches of the family. The family home was back in Stafford Street, Derby at this time, as this is the address listed for Offley Shore in the medical register for 1871; though the family is rarely to be found there together.

In the year of Urith's birth, Dr Shore published his first, and apparently only, book: a handbook on self-care and treatment in the home ‘for the use of the non-medical public'
. Domestic Medicine: Plain and Brief Directions for the Treatment Requisite before Advice
(price 2 shillings) was published in both Edinburgh and London. Its four sections covered ‘Common diseases'; ‘What to do in cases of emergency – bleeding, poisoning etc'; ‘Management of the sickroom'; and ‘Health promotion, including diet, exercise, sleep and climate'. It was not an original concept: books on domestic medicine had been published in England at the rate of one or two a year during the 1860s. Five were published in 1864, including the eleventh edition of one (Thomas Graham's
Modern Domestic Medicine
), and the 24
^th
edition of
An Epitome of the Homeopathic Domestic Medicine
(to which had been added an appendix on the treatment of diphtheria). The even more ambitious
Dictionary of Domestic Medicine and Household Surgery
, by Spencer Thomas, was published the year before Offley's book.

But if not original, Offley Shore's
Domestic Medicine
was well-received. An enthusiastic review in the London Daily News said
‘This is one of the medicine books that ought to be published. It does not recommend any particular system and it is not in any sense an advertisement for fees. It is from the pen of Dr Shore, an eminent physician ... we can recommend it to the attention of heads of families and travellers.'

The eminent Dr Shore appears in pictures around this time with a high domed forehead, long straight nose, receding hair, and a very full moustache with waxed ends. In 1868, back in Derbyshire, he was taking an interest in local politics, being one of around 100 supporters listed in the Derby Mercury as members of the General Committee for Securing the Re-election of Thomas William Evans Esq and Charles Robert Colvile, Esq, in the South Derbyshire Elections. Their opposition, recorded in an even longer list, was the General Committee for Promoting the Return of Sir Thomas Gresley, Bart, and Mr Rowland Smith. Heading the list of the ‘M's' was Sir Oswald Mosley, Bart.

In January 1871, Offley Shore was at a Christmas Ball in the Assembly Room of the Town Hall in Ashbourne, where a local newspaper reported that ‘
the attendance was very large and brilliant. Amongst the company present we noticed the following: Mr Offley Shore and Mrs Shore and party...
' In April 1871, neither Offley nor Anna Maria Shore appear in the UK census: perhaps they were abroad, as the three young Shore children were being looked after away from home at the same time. Florence, who was six years old, was a boarder at an establishment in Mickleover, Derbyshire, with her brother, recorded as ‘Offay' B Shore, aged seven, and sister Urith B Shore, aged four. The young siblings were in the care of William Hansom and his wife Elizabeth, who ran the establishment at 58 The Green, Mickleover.

Having left hospital medicine, Offley Shore's medical interests appeared to turn briefly towards public health. In 1873, he attended a meeting ‘on the sanitary position in London', which considered the work of ‘Mr Stanford, one of the most distinguished chemists of the day.' Stanford had discovered that ‘animal impurity' – that is, excreta – could be treated to become a useful purifier; and that charcoal could be used to stop disease spreading, through charcoal filtration. The meeting, it was reported, ‘
was numerously and influentially attended ... among those present we noted particularly Offley Shore
.' The meeting is also notable for taking place in the offices of the Colonial Trusts Corporation, at 31 Palmerston Buildings, Old Broad Street. It could have been this connection, rather than an interest in public health, which explained Offley Shore's interest: he and the Corporation had a business relationship that would soon deteriorate into a bitter financial dispute. The resulting court case would ruin the Shore family finances for the second time, and tear the family apart.

The Colonial Trusts Corporation Limited was an early entrant into the sub-prime lending market. Established just two years before the public health meeting, it
‘undertook to invest money lent to it on the security of land in the colonies, and to pay a liberal rate of interest
.' But although it was a new company, the Corporation was not starting from scratch. It had taken over the business of the Colonial Securities Company Ltd, gaining a ‘
good substantial business ... an influential connection, and ... the services of an experienced staff
' at home and abroad. Ten thousand shares in the new Corporation were issued in 1871; and a board of Directors was appointed, chaired by the Right Honourable Viscount Bury KCMG, MP. Lord Bury, who was also Under Secretary of State for War, would later chair the public health meeting on the company's premises, at which Offley Shore was present: a first indication of a connection between the doctor and the Corporation.

In 1873 the Corporation declared a dividend of 10% for the year; in 1874 the dividend was 12%. That was the year in which the Corporation started selling debentures, or municipal bonds, of counties, towns and other municipalities in the province of Ontario, Canada,
‘at prices yielding between 6% and 7%, payable in sterling in London
.' It promoted the debentures in classified advertisements in local newspapers across the UK and Ireland, from Dublin to Liverpool, and Hampshire to Norfolk.

In these prosperous times for the company and its shareholders, Dr and Mrs Shore and family spent a long summer holiday at Southsea, on the south coast of England. The Southsea Visitors' List was published regularly in the Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, with readers invited to fill in a card, available at the post office and other public places, if they wished to advertise their presence in the town. The Shore family indicated that they were visitors at number 1, Eastern Parade, from early July to mid October 1875. Florence was ten years old, Offley was twelve and Urith was eight.

They were in many ways privileged children – the family was well-off, they learned horse riding and languages, and Urith at least learned to play the piano very well. They also travelled in Europe from a young age: in 1872, the children were in Dresden with ‘Miss Bowe', probably a governess. Portraits of the three children with Miss Bowe show Offley at nine years old, serious and curly-haired with the straight nose and high forehead of his father. Florence at seven has masses of long blonde hair held back by a band; she has a firm chin and a slightly anxious look. Urith is five, still with baby roundness to her face, with long brown hair worn loose like her sister. When Florence was 14, she visited Holstein in Prussia, saving amongst her possessions until her death an envelope addressed to her there. Many years later, one of the children's aunts would write about their childhood ‘
… of the lovely, gay little people they were – of the proud Mother and Grandmothers, how well Flo rode, how eager and alert Offley was …'

But there were shadows over their childhood. Offley would later tell his sister-in-law that
‘we were often promised candy and ponies on a holiday, and then told at the psychological moment that it wasn't forthcoming and the promise was only an exercise in fortitude! So we soon ceased to cry at disappointments! That's the way my Spartan Mother brought us up.'

A project known as ‘the new Domesday Book', which aimed to catalogue people and their lands and wealth, reported the extent of the Shore family's holdings at this time. According to the Derby Mercury, Offley Shore's land extended to 116 acres, with a gross estimated rental of £559 and 16 shillings a year. His older brother Harrington Shore had 58 acres and rental of £293 and 16 shillings a year. The brothers' financial health was about to be more forensically examined, however, and the Shore family's comfortable life would be abruptly interrupted, as the fortunes of the Colonial Trusts Corporation took a sudden turn for the worse.

In October 1878, the Corporation issued a circular announcing that it could not pay interest on its debenture coupons, and called a meeting of shareholders. Two petitions were presented to the Chancery Division of the High Court in the same month, asking for the winding-up of the company, which had stopped making payments. A liquidator was appointed, subpoenas were issued for the company's books between 1875 and 1878, and a winding-up notice was issued. Messrs. Brown and Co, stockbrokers of Fenchurch Street, made a request for summonses to be issued against the Directors of the Corporation, ‘
for publishing to the shareholders and others misstatements as to the position of the company alleging certain surpluses, when, in reality, there were none.
' It was suggested that Lord Bury should resign his Government position. But the Lord Mayor of London decided that this charge could not be substantiated, and refused to issue the summonses. In November, another circular issued on behalf of the Corporation pleaded with shareholders to try to save the doomed company – and indicated clearly where the blame for the crisis lay.

The statement puts the blame squarely on the previous Directors, for entering into such risky transactions. It goes on to say that the Corporation is trying to re-negotiate the equity of redemption of Meersbrook and the Lendridge estate, and new leases for a colliery and lead mine, owned by the Shores. It ends by begging the shareholders to support the committee in trying to achieve the ‘resuscitation' of the company, rather than allowing it to be wound up.

Offley Shore, renowned physician, author and landowner of the long-established Derbyshire family, found himself in the bankruptcy court in November 1878. The Pall Mall Gazette reported on the case on 23
^rd
November:

One hundred thousand pounds was a huge sum in 1878, equivalent to at least seven million pounds today, depending on the measure used to compare financial worth across the centuries. So Offley Shore found himself bankrupt, with a wife and three children – now 15, 13 and 11 years of age – to support. In October 1879, Offley was back in court. The Pall Mall Gazette reported:

Another paper, the Daily News, gave more background on the brothers' financial dealings:

Harrington Shore, this paper reported, was not a bankrupt, but was treated as a ‘liquidating debtor', with unsecured liabilities of £92,996, while Offley Shore was bankrupt with unsecured liabilities of £68,000 – £20,000 owing to the Colonial Trusts Corporation. ‘
Both gentlemen'
, the paper concluded laconically, ‘
were mixed up in their transactions in regard to collieries and other public companies
.'

Offley Shore would remain in bankruptcy for another 18 months, although his address throughout this period was Queen Anne's Mansions, Westminster. This was a block of flats built by Henry Hankey in the 1870s, and, at 14 stories high, said to be the highest residential building in Britain. Too high, according to some: Queen Victoria is said to have complained that they blocked the view of the Houses of Parliament from Buckingham Palace. The flats were rented at considerable expense to highly respectable tenants: which raises the question of how Offley maintained this home throughout his bankruptcy, which was finally annulled in April 1881.

The impact of this difficult time on his family is easier to deduce: in the 1881 census, Offley Shore is recorded as 42 years old, married, but living alone in London; an MD but ‘not practising.' The following year is the first in a pattern of years in which the Southsea Visitors' List records that Mrs Offley Shore was holidaying in the seaside town, not with Mr Shore, but with Mrs Leishman: Anna Maria and her mother staying at number 1 Marine Parade, or at Purbeck House, Clarence Parade, between 1882 and 1886. When not at Southsea, the two women lived together in London: according to a letter from Anna Maria's son, they had to move from the Kensington Road to the Richmond Road, ‘
the former rooms having been let over their heads
.' The children were all separated: Offley at Sandhurst training for the Army, Florence away in York and Urith staying with relatives. What Offley Shore was doing during this time would later become the basis for a bitter dispute in the matrimonial court.

At the time that her father's bankruptcy was annulled in 1881, Florence was 16 and, on the night of the census, she was at Middlethorpe Hall in York.

The Hall, in the village of Bishopthorpe to the south east of York, was built for Thomas Barlow, an industrialist from Sheffield, between about 1699-1701. It stood three storeys high, originally with a flat roof and balustrade, though by Florence's time there it had a pitched roof with an eagle from the Barlow family's crest on it. The front door, under a columned porch, opened onto an entrance hall and a sweeping cantilevered wooden staircase, flanked by beautifully wood-panelled rooms. Two single storey wings had been added to the house early in the 18
^th
century, enlarging it even further, and there was an impressive stableyard and large garden outside. The Hall had remained the home of the Barlows – Thomas Barlow's grandsons, John and Samuel, carving their initials in the newel post on the first floor landing in 1764 – until around 1850. That was the year that the last of the family line, Frances Wilkinson, great-great-grand-daughter of Thomas, and widow of the Reverend Edward Leigh, left to move into one of her properties in the village of Dringhouses, and Middlethorpe Hall was let out to tenants.

The census of 1851 shows that the Hall was being used as a private school for girls. Sisters Lucy and Eleanor Walker were the tenants, and there were 21 pupils aged between nine and 18. Ten years later, the school was in different hands. Anna M Johnson, aged 42, is listed in the census return as the teacher, with her cousin Susan Steel, ‘Mamselle Laurency', the French teacher, and Elizabeth Pearson. There are 35 pupils and seven servants in residence. It is not certain that Florence Shore attended Middlethorpe Hall when it was a school, as no school records survive and she is not listed on the 1871 census – she would only have been six years old at the time. And in the 1881 census, she is a ‘visitor' although her occupation is given as ‘scholar'. But her application to the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Reserve, some years later, gives York as the place of her schooling, so it is possible that she would previously have been at Middlethorpe Hall as a pupil – particularly as the Shore family was related to the Wilkinsons by marriage.

Coincidentally, another famous nurse named Ethel Manson, later Ethel Bedford Fenwick, also went to school at Middlethorpe Hall a few years before Florence, and recorded the fact in her ‘Who's Who' entry. Mrs Bedford Fenwick would be the leading light in the campaign that led to a formal register of qualified nurses being set up in the 1920s. Her path would also cross again with Florence's in the deployment of nurses to the field hospitals of the First World War.

Florence's position as distant cousin and regular visitor to the Wilkinsons is underlined in the slightly exasperated tone of a letter from Frances Wilkinson to her mother Louisa in January 1884, when Florence Shore was 19. Frances Wilkinson was ten years older than Florence Shore, and had just completed a course in landscape gardening – she was on her way to becoming England's first professional landscape gardener, known as Fanny Rollo Wilkinson, responsible for Vauxhall Park in London, and, with her sister Louisa M. Garrett, a notable supporter of votes for women. She wrote: ‘
There seems no help for it but Florence's coming here before she goes to you. I do not believe she ought to use her eyes without an alteration in her glasses. She says she always squints.'

Interestingly, while her family home was being used for the private education of girls with families who could pay school fees, Frances Leigh (nee Barlow, later Wilkinson) was founding and supporting a school for the children of the village of Dringhouses, just across the Knavesmire racecourse from Middlethorpe Hall. ‘St Edward's National School, Dringhouses' had opened in 1849 in a brick schoolroom next to the church, and later moved to a new building paid for by Leigh across the village street.

From 1862, it was compulsory for the principal teacher of a school to keep a daily log book of events concerning the school and its teachers. The log book for Dringhouses School dates back to 1863, and records some of the local events and issues which might also have affected the girls at Middlethorpe Hall, on the other side of the Knavesmire. The scarlet fever outbreak in the village, which saw 24 children absent from school on 30th January 1871, must have equally concerned the teachers at Middlethorpe. In January 1876, the log records: ‘
Very small attendance this week due probably to the cold weather and to the fact that one of the children has died of an infectious disease
.' In June: ‘
There appears to be fever of some kind in the village, which seriously affects attendance. The Acomb school is closed on the same account
.' In 1879, ‘
The school is closed this week owing to the increased spread of measles. There are 45 children at home from this cause
.'