There was a contused (bruised) lacerated wound on the top of the head, in the shape of the letter H. The outside marks were about two inches and one and a half inches long, and about two thirds of an inch apart. The wound passed completely through the scalp. The second wound was behind the first on the left side at the top of the head, an inch and a half to the left of the mid-line, and triangular in shape. A third wound lay behind this one: it was curved and one and a quarter inches in length. The damage beneath these wounds was massive. There was, Spilsbury reported, a large area of fracture on the left side of the top of the head, corresponding in position to the second and third wounds. Pieces of bone were bent inwards, but were not completely separated from the skull, which, he said, was ‘rather thin’ at the top of the head. Three separate pieces of bone were found attached to the covering of the brain and, placed together, almost filled the gap in the skull. There was a large tear in the brain covering. The membrane was separated from the skull in the margin of the first fracture, with the gap filled with blood.
In his index card on the case, Spilsbury describes extensive bleeding all over the brain: ‘Haem[orrhage] over whole of top and down sides to left ear and behind it and almost to right ear. At back it extends to upper part back of neck.’
At the inquest, Spilsbury continued by describing the state of the brain itself, which was pulped beneath the fracture in a circular area about four inches in diameter. The pulping extended deep into the substance of the brain, so that the cavity of the left ventricle contained both blood and brain matter. There was no doubt that Florence’s injuries were inflicted with enormous force, and caused catastrophic damage: it is astonishing that she retained any consciousness at all in the first hours after the attack.
Turning to Florence’s general health, Spilsbury reported that her brain and spinal cord were otherwise healthy. The heart cavities were slightly enlarged, and there was old thickening of the mitral valve in the heart – which might suggest that Florence had suffered from rheumatic fever at some time in her life. She also had signs of chronic tuberculosis in her lungs and old adhesions in the pleura – the lining of the lungs. TB was not unusual at the time: in 1920, there were 55,000 cases in the UK, and a vaccine against it would not be used in humans until the following year. There was acute bronchial pneumonia in both lungs, a common infection in patients who have been lying in bed and unable to move freely or breathe deeply. Thick pus filled the airways.
‘Cause of death?’ the Coroner asked, needing formal confirmation.
‘Coma due to the fracture of the skull and injury to the brain,’ was the inevitable reply.
‘What do you consider the cause?’
‘They were caused by very severe blows by a heavy instrument having a fairly large striking surface.’
‘Would a revolver cause it?’
‘Yes, the butt end of a revolver of an ordinary size.’
‘Can you form any idea how many blows were struck?’
‘At least three, there might have been more.’
‘Would either cause unconsciousness?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think after one of these blows, the lady could have seated herself in the position she was found?’
‘No. She must have been struck sitting down or placed in the position by her assailant. She could not have placed herself in that position had she been standing up.’
‘Do you consider the weapon penetrated the brain?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think that the injuries could have been caused by an ordinary walking-stick?’
‘Oh no.’
‘Could the lady have been so injured by being struck while leaning out of the window?’
‘No.’
‘Did you see the railway carriage?’
‘Yes, in my opinion she was struck while sitting down.’
Spilsbury also confirmed that he saw no signs of a struggle amongst Florence’s injuries, though the tip of her tongue was bruised.
This led to the even more painful question of whether Florence had suffered a sexual assault of any kind before or after the blows to her head. Miss Bertha Beattie, the house surgeon who admitted Florence to the East Sussex Hospital in Hastings, had noticed that Florence’s tweed skirt was torn, and there was a tear on the left leg of her underclothes, as well as on her scarf. The tears were not the kind of damage that could have been caused by her removal from the carriage, and Miss Beattie was at a loss to explain them. Her senior colleague, Dr Cecil Christopherson, could not explain the torn clothing either. If it had been torn in an assault, he would have expected to see bruises on the body. But he was also stoutly defensive of the hospital staff, saying he was confident that the damage had not occurred after Florence was admitted: he said ‘the staff was quite alive to the possibilities of the case’ – meaning that they knew that all the injured woman’s belongings would be of interest to the police as potential evidence, and should be carefully handled accordingly.
Mindful of the damaged clothing, and of the earlier press speculation, the Coroner asked Dr Spilsbury sombrely if there was any indication of ‘an attempt to ravish.’ Mabel must have taken some shred of comfort from the pathologist’s emphatic ‘No, sir.’
Miss Beattie, also called as a witness, described how Florence had been brought into the hospital on the Monday evening semi-conscious. She had spoken to Florence, but received no reply; and by that evening, the woman was deeply unconscious. Dr Christopherson confirmed that he had been present at the post-mortem and agreed that coma was the cause of death; and that he had seen no evidence of a sexual assault.
With that, the evidence to the inquest was over. The Coroner summed up the position: the man who had been in the train with Florence could not be found, in spite of great efforts by the police, and the descriptions of him given by different witnesses varied.
‘All we can hope’, the Coroner continued grimly, ‘is that the hand of justice will fall heavily upon the culprit, and I might say that anybody who is helping him puts himself in a very dangerous position. There must be somebody acquainted with the man and his deed, and I wish to offer them a warning.’
He also had reassuring words for the platelayers who had taken so long to notice Florence’s injured state, saying that it was easy to be wise after the event. Under all the circumstances, he thought that ‘the best thing that could be done was done at the time.’
The jury took only a few minutes to return their verdict: that Florence had been murdered by a person unknown. They were ‘fully satisfied that every means had been taken to find this person, and everything was done for Miss Shore after she was found.’
The inquest into her death had taken, in all, a little under three hours. When it closed, on 2nd March, the case appeared to be hanging on the faint hope that someone would come forward to name the chief suspect: the man who got off the train at Lewes. That did not happen. But before the year was out, the police had both a new high-profile (though posthumous) suspect; and, from another source altogether, a confession.
Chapter 26
‘Martha and Mary’
While the inquest and the investigation focused on Florence’s death through the early months of 1920, her colleagues were determined that she should be remembered for her extraordinary life.
‘A shock to the nursing world’ was the headline in The British Journal of Nursing a week after Florence’s death.
‘The murder of Miss Florence Nightingale Shore’, the article went on, ‘a nurse, trained at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, and a connection and godchild of Florence Nightingale, in the train between London and Bexhill, by an unknown assailant, has shocked the nursing world, and the world in general. Warm sympathy is extended to her close friend, Miss Rogers, the Superintendent of Carnforth Lodge Nurses’ Home, Hammersmith, who saw her off on her fatal journey, to be summoned a few hours later to her deathbed, and who remained with her until, still unconscious, she passed away on Friday evening, January 16th, at th
e East Sussex Hospital.’
A nursing sister who had worked with Florence for the French Red Cross in 1914 wrote:
‘The news of the tragedy which ended in her death last Friday came to me with additional shock and horror.
We were together in a Military Hospital attached to the Xth [tenth] French Corps D’Armee on the Somme. The Hospital was in a commandeered hotel, and had as clearing station a chateau close to Arras. We were a Red Cross unit of British doctors and nurses. Some of us had been nursing our British wounded from the Battle of the Aisne during September and October, and being then sent to the Somme, were joined by other nurses, amongst whom was Sister Shore. Here, in November 1914, our patients, with the exception of a few British, were for the most part French soldiers, with whom were many Colonials (Senegalese and Arabs), nearly all ‘grands blesses’, requiring the most careful nursing. Sister Shore threw herself heart and soul into this work, and I can recall not only her energy in preparation as we equipped our improvised hospital – in preparation for the first wounded – but also her absolute devotion to them once under her care.
She was in charge of a ward, which, like all our wards, consisted entirely of very serious cases. That which fell to my charge was adjoining, and I well remember our meeting in some dismay in the endeavour to count our dirty ward linen in the primitive and very limited space allotted as its common receptacle; for in those early days contrivance was our watchword. Everything had to be made to ‘do’, and pressed into the service. No duty came amiss to any of us. Nor when convoys of wounded arrived could anyone be off duty, sometimes either day or night. Indeed ordinary off duty time, brief at the best, was in those days more honoured in the breach than the observance by many of us, especially those trusted with most responsibility, and amongst those none was more entirely self-forgetting than Sister Shore. She lived for her patients, whose grateful affection was her well earned and best reward, and we all felt deep admiration for her devotion and high sense of duty, and her consistent goodness of character… She was very proud of her baptismal names ‘Florence Nightingale’, linking her as they did to her great relative and namesake, in whose footsteps she was, indeed, a worthy follower’.
Like her godmother Florence Nightingale ten years before, Florence left a detailed Will disposing of her assets and possessions. It had been written in March 1915, just after her sister’s death, and named her brother Offley and cousin Clarence Hobkirk as executors. Clarence was the younger son of Florence’s maternal aunt, now the Baroness Farina: he was four years younger than Florence, and six years younger than Offley, whom he had followed to Sandhurst Military Academy before embarking on his own very successful army career. With Offley Shore living in California at the time of Florence’s death, it was Clarence Hobkirk who was granted probate and administered the estate.
The first and largest individual bequest in Florence’s Will was the gift of £1,000 to Mabel Rogers. There were bequests of £500 and £25 to the children of a Scottish pastor from Kinross, probably an old friend of the family from Edinburgh days; and £100 to Florence’s god-daughter Margaret Dru Drury in Grahamstown, South Africa. Margaret was the youngest of six children of Dr Edward Guy Dru Drury, a distant relative of Florence’s, whose life was spent in Grahamstown. Two former servants, Lily Lowes and Kate Eagling were remembered with gifts of £50 and £30.
Then there were more personal bequests. ‘I give my diamond pendant (the one given to me by my sister) to my cousin Stuart Tatton Hobkirk and I request (but without imposing any obligation upon him) that if he does not marry he will leave it to Elspeth Hobkirk the daughter of his brother Clarence Hobkirk.’
Stuart Hobkirk never did marry; and Elspeth, inheritor of the necklace, was another member of the family to pursue a military career, rising to the rank of Colonel. Elspeth Hobkirk was also bequeathed the carriage clock which Florence had been given by her godmother at the very beginning of her nursing career.
With £3,600, part of her own inheritance from her sister Urith, Florence instructed her executors to set up a trust and invest the sum in securities, with the income being paid to her cousin Stuart Hobkirk, the St Ives artist, during his life, and after his death, to her brother Offley. Following his death, the income was to go to any children of Offley, and if he had none, to any children of Stuart. The rest of her estate was left to her brother. The net value of the estate was just over £13,000, so with less than £5,500 allocated to pecuniary bequests and the trust fund, Offley would have received a sum of around £7,500. He and Clarence Hobkirk, as co-trustees of Florence’s estate, agreed the disposal of the rest of Florence’s effects.
The dispersal of Florence’s estate was not to be final act in the story of her life, however. The idea of a memorial to commemorate her was suggested within weeks of her death, and it was Mabel Rogers who led the fundraising and planning efforts for it.
‘It is felt on all sides,’ reported The British Journal of Nursing in February 1920, ‘that some permanent memorial should be raised to perpetuate the memory of Florence Nightingale Shore … The present Home of the Hammersmith District Nurses, Carnforth Lodge, at which Miss Shore lived, the Matron of which, Miss Rogers, was her close friend, has been sold, and the nurses will have to find other quarters. It is proposed that the new building should be called after Florence Nightingale Shore, and should combine with the nurses’ home a children’s treatment centre and a clinic for disabled solders, which would be a memorial to Sister Shore’s work during the war. In addition, one of the rooms in the Home would be set apart as a guest room for Queen’s nurses, so that any member of the QVJI [Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute for Nurses] might feel that she could come there at any time for a night or two. Miss Shore was a Queen’s Nurse, having been enrolled in 1898, and in forming this project her friends are carrying out what they know would have been Miss Shore’s own wish, as she was conversant with the impending change, and had expressed her intention to help personally in carrying it through.
The money needed for the building will be raised by means of a shilling fund, thus enabling the general public to contribute to it, but any number of shillings may be given by any individual.’
Mabel started the appeal for funds for the new centre with a letter to the Matron in Chief of the Queen Alexandra’s Military Nursing Service Reserve, with whom Florence had served for four years:
‘I am enclosing a copy of the memorial to Miss Shore which we hope to get inserted in some of the papers’ she wrote. ‘Would it be asking too much that your name might be placed at the end with others as approving of the project.
I am hoping to send the papers to the press tomorrow and so should be very grateful if you could let me have an answer by telephone. Dame McCarthy hoped to have mentioned the matter to you on Friday but had not the opportunity.
Apologising for troubling you, Yrs faithfully, M Rogers.
The enclosed letter for the newspapers began by rehearsing Florence’s nursing career, before continuing:
‘Yet in all these crowded & perilous hours, she still had thoughts for those on district work. The memorial she would have most have desire [sic] for herself would have been something in connection with that.
Hence it has been decided to appeal for contributions of 1/- & upwards to allow even the poorest to participate in it, to extend & develop the usefulness of the Hammersmith District Nursing Association. Carnforth Lodge, its headquarters, where Miss Shore often stayed, has been sold. With £5000 that is asked for [sic] it is proposed to find a new home, in which Queen’s nurses will live & to provide a Childrens Treatment Centre & a clinic for men still needing treatment in their disablement.
One room would be set apart in which to keep tangible mementoes of her life’s work, & it would be available as a Guest room for Queen’s nurses passing through London. In spirit & in realisation this chamber would express the idea beautifully conceived of the French Abbe attached to the Hospital where she first worked, who wrote in her autograph book ‘I name you Martha of th
e Gospel because you are busy without rest in aid of our dear French soldiers, & Mary because your heart is always lovely bending over their beds. You are an honour to English nurses. God bless you and give you the best part.
Will you kindly assist by sending a contribution to –
The Hon Treasurer FNS memorial
Councillor Marshall Hays
22 St Peters Square
Hammersmith W.6
This appeal has the approval of the Patron the Bishop of London.’
Over the next two years, donations arrived from individual Queen’s Nurses, from District Nursing Associations, and from others who had known Florence in her work: two QNs in France sent 20 francs. Florence’s sister-in-law’s family in America sent £10, her brother Offley donated furniture for the memorial room, and his wife Caroline sent a donation ‘asking that flowers might always be kept in the visiting sister’s room as Florence and Aunt Florence were always so fond of them.’ An anonymous donation of £200 early in 1922 meant that the fund amounted to £1,050 by February that year, and the purchase of a new home for the Hammersmith District Nursing Association – a detached building called Clifton House at 10 Mall Road, Hammersmith – was underway. Alterations were in hand to adapt it to its new purpose, and the memorial bedroom had been identified. The final total for the memorial fund reached £1,100.
*
On Saturday 1 July 1922, the Nightingale Shore Home was opened by Princess Louise, the Duchess of Argyll, in the presence of Councillor Marshall Hays, the Mayor of Hammersmith, who had been Treasurer of the memorial fund; Dr Walter Fry, the Chair and Honorary Secretary of the Committee of the Hammersmith DNA; and the Bishop of Lichfield, the Right Reverend J A Kempthorne. The new Home at Mall Road was described by the British Journal of Nursing as ‘quite near a busy main thoroughfare (King Street), and not far from the Hammersmith Broadway’, but the surroundings were ‘quiet and restful’. The Home itself was
The Nightingale Shore Murder Page 23