The Nightingale Shore Murder

by Rosemary Cook

  In the long hours at the hospital bedside, watching the nurses caring for Florence, Mabel must have been painfully reminded of all the years that she and Florence had worked together doing the same for their patients. They had met in 1894 in Edinburgh, where they had both chosen to do their nurse training. The Scottish capital would have been a bold choice of destination for Mabel, whose family was from Devon and who had gone to school in rural Oxfordshire. It was a more obvious destination for Florence, since it was her mother’s home city, and her father had trained there as a doctor.

  Offley Bohun Shore, Florence’s father, was the fifth child and third son of another Offley Shore and his wife Eliza. He was also cousin to the father of Florence Nightingale, the pioneering nurse for whom Florence Shore would be named. It was Miss Nightingale’s father William who had changed the family’s name to Nightingale from Shore. As Florence’s aunt, Baroness Farina, pithily put it, ‘The Nightingales were Shores, but changed their name when certain property was bequeathed to them.’ The property in question was a very valuable bequest from Peter Nightingale, William’s great-uncle, commonly known as Mad Peter. In a letter to Florence Shore, Florence Nightingale would once comment that she was ‘very fond of the name Shore.’

  The Shore family had come into the manor of Norton, four miles south of Sheffield, in the 17th century. In about 1666, the manor had been purchased by Cornelius Clarke of Ashgate. When he died, he bequeathed it to Robert Offley, his nephew, from Norwich. In 1751, Stephen Offley of Norton died without leaving children to inherit, and the manor of Norton became the property of Samuel Shore, who had married one of Stephen Offley’s sisters. Samuel had two sons, the eldest of whom, also called Samuel, married a woman called Harriet Foye of Castle Hill, Dorset. Their son Offley Shore inherited the manor: his son, Offley Bohun Shore, was Florence’s father.

  The Shore family was well-known in the area, and involved in all kinds of local activities. Offley Shore senior – Florence’s grandfather – lived in Norton Hall as Lord of the Manor. The Manor was ‘a handsome stone mansion in a finely-wooded park’, and Norton itself ‘a small, well-built village, situated on an eminence … a scattered parish, undulating and well-wooded, very fertile ground, with many herds of milch cows’, according to the local Directory. The area was noted for the manufacture of scythes, sickles, files and cutlery. Offley Shore senior was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Derbyshire in 1832. He lived the busy and varied life of a country gentleman, subscribing to sweepstakes at Chesterfield races, attending dinners and presentations with local MPs, and speaking at meetings about the Corn Laws. He gave an annual gift of bread to the poor at Christmas, put up a prize of three guineas for ‘the best stallion of the draught kind’ at the local show, and was President of the North Derbyshire Agricultural Society. In 1841, he served on the Grand Jury hearing the case of the murder of the Earl of Chesterfield’s gamekeeper.

  Offley Shore senior was also a business man, but not ultimately a successful one. His financial dealings would cause the family enormous problems and eventually lose them the manor which had been theirs for nearly 150 years.

  In the 1830s, Shore sat on the provisional committee investing in the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Line & Manchester Railway. Proposed capital was £800,000 in 8,000 shares of £100 each. He was also on the provisional committee of the Sheffield & Midland Railway, with even higher capital; and he was an Honorary Director of The Farmers’ and General Fire and Life Insurance, Loan and Annuity Institution. With partners Hugh Parker, John Brewin and John Rogers, Shore was also a banker; and it was this, rather than speculation on the railways, that ruined him.

  Parker Shore & Co. of Sheffield had been in business for more than 70 years, and two generations. Their bank was so highly-regarded in the area as ‘a legend of trustworthiness’ that a local saying grew up: ‘As sure as Shore’s bank’. But in 1843, the Sheffield Bank failed, and all the partners were bankrupted. Debts proved at the first meeting of creditors amounted to nearly £120,000, which was said to be around one third of the whole amount: an extraordinary amount of money, equivalent to many millions today. Among the creditors were many members of Offley Shore’s own family: Maria Shore, Urith Lydia Shore, Amelia Shore; and the Reverend George Brewin, Offley’s brother-in-law. In December 1843, following several stormy meetings with creditors and the appointment of assignees to oversee repayments, Shore appealed against the fiat of bankruptcy, but failed to get it overturned.

  In 1845, a family home ‘late in occupation of Offley Shore’, was to let in Spondon; it had a coach house, stables and ‘good pleasure and kitchen gardens’. By the end of that decade, Norton Hall was unoccupied. In 1850, the Sheffield Freehold Land Society purchased 31 acres ‘forming a portion of the large domains of Offley Shore which have been brought to the hammer under an order from the Court of Chancery’. Shore was to remain in bankruptcy for at least 17 years, throughout the childhood of his youngest son Offley Bohun Shore. By the time he made his Will, however, in October 1867, he once again had various shares and sums of money to leave to his family.

  The Will is a long and very complex handwritten document, containing lengthy explanations of how Offley Shore’s father, Samuel Shore, disposed of his property, and settled annuities on Eliza, Offley’s wife; perhaps in order to protect her from her husband’s financial problems. Offley’s Will makes detailed provision for the disposal and distribution of his own assets, principally to his three sons, Harrington Offley, Sydney Foy and Offley Bohun Shore. There is also a sentence informing his daughter, Caroline Stovin (she had married the Reverend Charles Stovin, from Surrey) that ‘it is not from any want of natural love and affection that I do not make any further provision for her by this my Will but because I consider she is most amply provided for and I am sure she will see the justice of this my Will in favour of her brothers …’

  In keeping with the complexity and changeable nature of the Shore fortunes, Offley felt the need to add a codicil to his Will, just nine days before he died, after he and his eldest son, Harrington, had sold an estate. This gave Harrington a large advantage in the value of the bequests, which Offley Shore senior sought to remedy by leaving another estate to be shared between the two younger sons. This last minute addition was witnessed by Benjamin Spawton and John Bisbey, respectively butler and coachman in the Shore household.

  The final curious twist in this financial maze led to a statement being added to the Will and codicil by Spawton, and witnessed by a Commissioner of Oaths, two months later. This listed individually all the changes made to the Will; and confirmed that, though the two witnesses had not actually seen Offley Shore writing the changes and additions contained in the codicil, they were convinced that he had made them:

  ‘I make oath and say as follows that on the day on which the testator signed the said codicil and just before doing so he rang the bell for me and told me he wanted me and John Bisbey the other attesting witness to the codicil to see him sign the same at that time he was turning over the pages of the said codicil and he had a pen in his hand and though I did not actually see him make the alterations and interlineations above set forth I have no doubt whatever that he then and there made the said interlineations and alterations before he [unreadable] the said codicil.’

  Was this just the deceased’s solicitor being over-cautious about a late codicil? Or had someone questioned the changes that altered the balance of bequests between the three brothers, and challenged the witnesses about whether these had truly been made by the old man so close to his death? There is no way of knowing. But with the death of Offley Shore, the Shore family’s destiny passed into the hands of the three brothers. Perhaps Caroline Stovin had cause eventually to be grateful that she was well provided for without her family’s support; because in less than ten years, two of the brothers had bankrupted the family again.

  Yet the youngest son, Florence’s father Offley Bohun Shore, had entered a solid profession that held out the prospect of ready employment and a reasonable income. He
studied at Edinburgh University and graduated as a Doctor of Medicine in 1860. He was entered onto the Medical Register of England for the first time in 1861; in fact, he was one of the first doctors to be required to register in this way, as a result of the 1858 Medical Registration Act. This was intended to impose some structure on the profession of medicine, which had evolved in several directions over the preceding few centuries.

  In the 17th and 18th centuries, ‘physicians’ were regarded as members of a learned profession, while surgeons, or ‘barber-surgeons’, were considered craftsmen. Each part of the profession had its own professional College, concerned with protecting the good name of its members, and upholding the standards of their practice. The Royal College of Physicians, founded by Henry VIII in 1518, lays claim to being the oldest medical college in England. Henry VIII also had a hand in the surgeons’ destiny, bringing together the Fellowship of Surgeons and the Company of Barbers in 1540, to create the College of Barber-Surgeons. In 1745, the surgeons parted company with the barbers to form the College of Surgeons, which received a Royal Charter in 1800 to become the Royal College of Surgeons in London – and later ‘of England’. Surgeons in Edinburgh were recognised as a craft guild as early as 1505, when they were incorporated by a ‘seal of cause’ granted by the town council of Edinburgh.

  Meanwhile, in England, Apothecary-Surgeons, with their own Society created in 1815, were generalists who undertook care of people in the community: hence GPs’ premises and consultations are still referred to as ‘surgeries.’ The 1858 Act standardised at least some aspects of these very different parts of the profession, aiming to end what was frankly described as ‘the evils of rampant quackery and illegal practice. The absence of uniformity in training or examination. The jealousies, antipathies and hostilities between members of the profession…’ Whether or not it succeeded in these aims, the Act bequeathed one very familiar aspect of modern medicine: the system of referrals from GPs in the community to consultants in hospitals. This addressed the vexed question of who ‘owns’ the patient when many different kinds of doctor are involved in their care. The result has been neatly summarised as: ‘The physician and surgeon retained the hospital, while the GP retained the patient.’

  In October 1861, the newly-qualified Dr Offley Shore married Anna Maria Leishman at St James’ Episcopal Church in Edinburgh. She was just twenty, and the eldest of two surviving daughters of John and Hannah Leishman, a long-established Edinburgh family; her father was a ‘Writer to the Signet’, a form of solicitor, and her grandfather was a churchman. The Leishmans’ younger daughter, Offley’s sister-in-law Margaret would later marry the Baron Liugi Farina as her second husband, becoming Baroness Farina – Florence’s aunt in Tonbridge.

  Offley’s home in 1861, once he had left his parents’ house at Clifton, was in Stafford Street in Derby. He wrote a letter to the Committee of the Derbyshire General Infirmary, via the classified advertisements of the Derby Mercury newspaper of 27th August 1861, applying for the position of Junior Physician at the hospital. The paper went on to report that Dr Shore was the only candidate for the position; and he was unanimously elected to it. The retiring Dr Heygate agreed to be his supervisor, and Offley Shore thanked the Committee most warmly for the appointment. The following year, Offley’s brother Sydney married Dr Heygate’s daughter Louisa, cementing the relationship between the two medical men even more closely. At least until around 18 months later, when Offley Shore resigned his position at the Infirmary, ‘in consequence of his removal from Derby having obtained another position.’

  So, in August 1863, the Shores’ first child was born in Stamford, Lincolnshire, where Offley had taken up his new post at the Stamford, Rutland and General Infirmary. The impressively-named Offley Bohun Stovin Fairless Shore (his middle names reflecting the surnames of various branches of the family) was to become a very successful soldier, serving in India, Mesopotania (now Iraq) and Russia. He appears in the Indian Army List in 1912 as a Colonel in the HQ Staff of the Army in India, where his ‘1st class language skills in Russian’ are noted. By the time of Florence’s death in 1920 he would be a Brigadier General, and holder of the Distinguished Service Order.

  Florence Nightingale Shore was also born in Stamford, on 10 January 1865. Her namesake and godmother, Florence Nightingale, had been back from the Crimean War for nearly a decade, and was internationally famous for her work there in improving the organisation of the hospitals and the nursing care of the wounded and sick soldiers. Since her return she had published ‘Notes on Nursing’, her hugely popular textbook, and had opened the Nightingale Training School in St Thomas’ hospital in London. Although she had been seriously ill, and lived almost completely confined to her London home, Nightingale was still at the height of her influence. She wrote hundreds of letters, and used graphs and statistics to demonstrate her points to politicians and anyone else she thought could bring about change and improvement in the care of the sick. She was held in enormous public esteem and affection for these achievements.

  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 21st 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 town, when approached from the south, has an interesting and picturesque appearance; several ancient buildings, with towers and steeples, being seen grouped together; which are surrounded by wooded hills and groves and fields producing excellent pasturage, with a variety of beautiful landscapes, studded with elegant seats and mansions.’

  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 24th edition of An Epitome of the Homeopathi
c 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.