It’s important to note that the inquest was conducted at a very early stage of the investigation and that the function of the coroner’s court was to establish the place, time and cause of death as opposed to identifying suspects and apportioning criminal liability. [These] are the function of the police, the crown prosecutor’s office and the courts. Not all evidence and information in the hands of the police would have been aired at the inquest.
It’s a pity too that we’re unable to get our hands on the original police investigation file … Most likely the police file would have been kept open or kept under review for at least 10 years after all conceivable lines of enquiry were completed i.e. at least until January 1930. The case exhibits (e.g. blood samples, broken glasses, Florence’s clothing) would then have been destroyed (or returned to her estate) and the investigation file would have been filed away for a period before being microfilmed and the original documents destroyed. If the case had been of particular public interest (and quite possibly this case was), the file may have been preserved intact.
A homicide case like this should have prompted the police to explore all feasible lines of investigation and should have caused them to look with an open mind at all possible suspects. Certainly Mabel Rogers should have been treated as a possible suspect, since she was the last known person to have seen the victim unharmed at Victoria Station. Her version should not have been treated at face value and at the very least, her alibi should have been investigated to exclude her from suspicion. Perhaps the police did investigate her story: but if they didn’t, that would have been a serious omission, tantamount to incompetence. We’ll only get the answer to this question if we can get our hands on what remains of the police file.
Whether or not police incompetence came into play, it is important to place matters into context. In January 1920, England was recovering from the effects of the Great War and from the devastating effects of the Spanish Flu pandemic. England’s young male population had been devastated by four years of trench warfare. Economic times were harsh and there was a great deal of unemployment with industry in recession; with thousands of de-mobbed soldiers on the streets with scant chance of gainful work. It also seems—as widely reported in the contemporary media—that England was experiencing a crime wave: several high profile murders had occurred as well as many violent robberies. Contemporary pundits opined that this was a product of so many unemployed soldiers roaming society, who were accustomed to violence and death and to whom life was cheap. Police forces would have had their hands full. Moreover, there may well have been a shortage of experienced and able-bodied men, capable of filling the ranks of police forces. Consider too that the police forces of those times did not have the benefit of modern day forensic resources and the professional training associated with our current police.
While it seems from the available information that Mabel Rogers might have had motive, opportunity and the means to attack Florence during a fit of rage or jealously, it also seems that the [Eastbourne] burglar was also a good suspect.’
Unfortunately, the police file on the case is almost certainly lost. There is no record of it at the National Archives, which holds the historic files of the Metropolitan Police. Nor can records from the East Sussex police or the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Company be found in any of the relevant archives.
Without access to more contemporary information, we are left with just suspicion and circumstantial evidence; and the unsolved case leaves only a series of painful unanswered questions behind.
One of these is why Florence returned to London on the Sunday night, after visiting her aunt and cousin in Tonbridge. It would have been easier to get a train from Tonbridge to Hastings than to make the trip back up to London and out again the next day. Maybe she was not sufficiently comfortable with her aunt to want to stay there; or her aunt could not accommodate her. Or was there a special reason for going back to Carnforth Lodge on the Sunday night? The question was never asked at the inquest, so the only living person who could shed any light on this – Mabel Rogers – did not do so. It is simply what happened: a decision that put Florence on the train with her murderer.
Another difficult question is how much Florence was aware of her condition in the hour or so between the attack and the time the platelayers called the guard at Bexhill. Were the movements of her eyes and hands just semi-conscious reflexes; or was she trying to convey information and attract the help she needed? The latter is a horrifying possibility: that she should be aware of her attacker taking her money and jewellery, then awaiting his chance to alight at Lewes; that she should be alone between Lewes and Polegate, not knowing when or if someone would enter the carriage and find her; and then to have the three workmen sitting in the carriage with her but seemingly unaware of her terrible injuries. Better that Florence was not conscious of any of this, and her movements were simply remnants of the body’s reflexes in the twilight between life and death.
The final unanswered questions are about her attacker. Who was the man who attacked Florence so viciously, and left the train at Lewes, leaving her to die? Was he fooled by her fur coat and hat into thinking that she would be carrying a lot of money and valuables, and then disappointed that his audacious and risky assault resulted in just three pounds and some jewellery? Did he really mean to kill the woman with the three heavy blows to the head, or was his intention just to stun her enough for the robbery?
And afterwards, when the local and national newspapers were full of the story of the decorated war nurse who took four days to die of her wounds; when it became clear that the anonymous woman on the train was a skilled and dedicated servant of the sick and wounded, related to the famous Florence Nightingale; did he feel any degree of remorse at the brutal way he had ended this life?
It is a tragic irony that the woman who had travelled across half the globe and served in two war zones should meet her death on a suburban train in southern England.
Florence had emerged from her eventful and sometimes stressful childhood to forge an adventurous life and a distinguished career in the profession that her godmother had transformed into one of respectability and opportunity. She was one of the ‘many honourable women’ that Kipling paid tribute to in his poem about nurses in South Africa. Florence herself might have preferred her brother’s simple epitaph: ‘She was a good soldier.’
Epilogue
It is a sad fact that, had Florence Shore not been murdered, no-one beyond her family would have heard of her. She was a dedicated and heroic army nurse; but so were thousands of others, as the writings of Sister Luard and Vera Brittain, amongst many others, demonstrate. Even the recognition of her exceptional service by the award of the Royal Red Cross would not have made much impact outside of her profession. But because of the brutal nature of her death, her life and work came to the public’s attention, and, for a few months at least, there was public indignation and sorrow at the terrible end to such a worthy life.
The contemporary newspaper coverage of the crime provided the clues to start uncovering more about this particular nurse, by naming her father and aunt, her family connection to Florence Nightingale, and some notable moments in her career – like her trip to China. After that, Florence was rescued from anonymity by the meticulous record-keeping of the 19th century, and in particular, of the then Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute for Nurses – now the Queen’s Nursing Institute. Quarter by quarter, the Institute recorded who was training or working for them, and where they were deployed, in its own magazine. The Queen’s Nurses ‘belonged’ to the Institute for the rest of their careers, until their names appear on the ‘resigned from the Institute’ list (because of marriage or illness or ‘family duties’), or under the deaths. The magazine also encouraged the Queen’s Nurses to write letters and articles, descriptions of practice and notes about their district, for publication in its pages. These are a rich source of background and context, and since every element of the nurses’ lives was prescribed by the Institute and i
ts Superintendents, we can deduce a lot about Florence’s working life from the generality of her colleagues’ experience. Periodically, and luckily, there are articles written personally by Mabel Rogers, which bring us even closer to Florence’s life. With regard to her death, we benefit from the insatiable interest of the early 20th century in death and scandal, which meant that inquest proceedings were published verbatim in the newspapers. On this at least we have plenty of first-hand accounts from those involved in the drama.
Tantalisingly, a religious Abbe from France refers to Florence’s ‘autograph book’, in which he had written an appreciation of Florence’s work. This suggests a document filled with comments that would have built up a fuller picture of Florence from the people who knew her But the likelihood is that this was lost in the bombing of the Nightingale Shore home which destroyed the memorial bedroom in which Florence’s belongings were displayed.
From Florence herself, there is only scant evidence on which to build a picture of her personality and her feelings. There are some brief letters, preserved in the family, to her father, her godmother and her sister-in-law; but Florence didn’t write for the Queen’s Nurses’ magazine, as Mabel did, so there is no word from her there. Caroline Shore, her sister in law, had her views – but she admitted her own bias, because of her love for Offley, and her jealousy of his relationship with his sisters. She also saw Florence differently at different times: sometimes she was ‘shy and difficult’; sometimes ‘sweet’ and big-hearted, sometimes ‘determined and pugnacious’.
So there are gaps in the story of Florence’s life which remain unexplored. The formative years of her childhood, from six years old in Derbyshire to 16 at school in Yorkshire are largely unrecorded, apart from her trips abroad. The Middlethorpe Hall school records are nowhere to be found: a lot of historical material was lost when the building was first converted into flats, then transformed into a nightclub, before being allowed to fall derelict. Now it is a country house hotel, and you can walk up the beautiful wooden cantilevered staircase that Florence would have used. But there is no record beyond the simple census list of Florence’s time there.
The other blank in Florence’s life story is her young adulthood, from 18 to 28, when she started her nurse training. Early in this period she was offered a position at £40 a year, according to her brother’s letter, but we don’t know what this position was. We can only guess why she went to China, and with whom, and what she thought of it. And what was she doing before she went to China, in the years following her parents’ divorce and remarriages? Which parent, if either, did she live with? And what did she do to occupy her time and energy? To these intriguing questions we have, so far, no answers.
Florence slips quietly through her own story, telling us very little herself. But at least now, however imperfectly, her life’s achievements are remembered, as well as her death.
Sources
Chapter 1
Secondary sources:
Down the line to Brighton by Muriel V. Searle, published by Baton Transport in 1986
Fire and Steam – How the railways transformed Britain by Christian Wolmar, published by Atlantic Books, London, 2007
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 17 Jan 1920 (‘Train mystery ends in tragedy’) [accessed via the East Sussex Archives]
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 20 Jan 1920 (‘Hastings train mystery’) [as above]
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 7 Feb 1920 (‘Train murder deadlock’) [as above]
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 5 Mar 1920 (‘No clue in railway murder’) [as above]
Our Railway History by Rixon Bucknall, published by R Bucknall, London, 1944
The pocket encyclopaedia of British steam locomotives, by O.S. Nock, published by Blandford APress Ltd in 1964
The Railway Gazette 21 Feb 1919 (LB&SCR and war work) [accessed at the National Railway Museum, York]
The West London Observer 23 Jan 1920 (‘The train murder’) [accessed via Hammersmith and Fulham archives]
Travelling by Train in the Edwardian Age by Philip Unwin, published by Allen & Unwin, London, 1979
www.lbscr.demon.org.uk re history of London, Brighton and South Coast Railway
Chapter 2
Secondary sources:
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 17 Jan 1920 (‘Train mystery ends in tragedy’) [accessed via the East Sussex Archives]
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 20 Jan 1920 (‘Hastings train mystery’) [as above]
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 7 Feb 1920 (‘Train murder deadlock’) [as above]
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 5 Mar 1920 (‘No clue in railway murder’) [as above]
Chapter 3
Secondary sources:
Blood on the Tracks – a history of railway crime in Britain by David Brandon and Alan Brooke, published by The History Press, 2010
Merstham town website: http://www.merstham.co.uk/merstham (murder in the tunnel story reproduced with kind permission of Kevin Austen)
Murder on the Brighton line: the murder of Mr Gold by Percy Lefroy 1881. Article by William Owen Gay (former Chief Constable of British Transport Police) part of a series Murder in Transit published in the BTP Journal and reproduced with kind permission of the British Transport Police [accessed via www.btp.police.uk].
Chapter 4
Primary sources:
Daily Mail 7 Mar 1922 (‘Is the women doctor wanted?) [accessed via http://newspapers.bl.uk]
Hastings Mail 9 Jan 1904 (‘Hospital blunder’) [accessed via www.hastingschronicle.com]
Hospital Records Database (history of Hastings Hospital) [accessed via The National Archives www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/hospitalrecords]
Personal communication: Information supplied by Queen’s University Belfast (admission of women medical students)
The Medical Register 1919, 1923 and 1927 [accessed via www.gmc-uk.org/doctors/medical_register]
Secondary sources:
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 17 Jan 1920 (‘Train mystery ends in tragedy’) [accessed via the East Sussex Archives]
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 20 Jan 1920 (‘Hastings train mystery’) [as above]
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 7 Feb 1920 (‘Train murder deadlock’) [as above]
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 5 Mar 1920 (‘No clue in railway murder’) [as above]
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk (women doctors)
Milestones of medicine, published by Reader’s Digest, 1998
Chapter 5
Primary sources:
British Army WW1 Medal Rolls Index Cards, 1914-1920 [accessed via www.ancestry.co.uk]
Free BMD Index for birth, death and marriage certificates of Shore family and relations [as above]
Indian Army List 1912 [as above]
Morris’ Directory and Gazetteer of Lincolnshire, 1863 [as above]
Royal College of Physicians [www.rcplondon.ac.uk]
Royal College of Surgeons of England [www.rcseng.ac.uk]
The Census 1861 and 1871 [accessed via www.ancestry.co.uk]
The History, Gazeteer and Directory of the County of Derbyshire, 1857 [as above]
The Medical Register 1861 [accessed via www.gmc-uk.org/doctors/medical_register]
The Post Office Directory for Derbyshire 1876 [accessed via www.ancestry.co.uk]
The Will of Offley Shore died 19 Jan 1870 [accessed via Probate Registry, London]
Secondary sources:
‘An Enchanted Journey – The letters of the Philadelphia wife of a British Officer of the Indian Army, Ed. Alan Jones, published by The Pentland Press, 1994
British Library catalogue (books on domestic medicine) [www.britishlibrary.org.uk]
Derby Mercury, 18 Apr 1832 (Offley Shore senior appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Derbyshire) [accessed via www.newspapers.bl.uk]
Derby Mercury, Jan 1833 (Offley Shore senior at dinner for Lord Cavendish and Thos Gisborne, with Samuel Shore, High Sherriff) [as above]
Derby
Mercury, Oct 1833 (Offley Shore senior in deputation to present plate to retiring MP) [as above]
Derby Mercury, Jan 1840 (Offley Shore senior giving annual gift of bread to the poor) [as above]
Derby Mercury, 24Jan, 1843 (failure of Sheffield Bank) [as above]
Derby Mercury, Jan 1845 (former Shore home to let) [as above]
Derby Mercury, 24 Dec 1850 (Sheffield Freehold Land Society purchase of Shore lands) [as above]
Derby Mercury, 27 Aug 1861 (Offley Shore application to Derbyshire Royal Infirmary) [as above]
Derby Mercury, 2 Oct 1861 (Offley Shore appointment to Derbyshire Royal Infirmary) [as above]
Derby Mercury 23 Oct 1861 (re Offley Shore marriage to Anna Maria Leishman) [as above]
Derby Mercury, 8 Apr 1963 (Offley Shore resignation from DRI) [as above]
Derbyshire Post Office Directory 1876 (re Norton Hall) [accessed via www.ancestry.co.uk]
Derybshire Post Office Directory 1849 (Offley Shore as Lord of the Manor of Norton) [as above]
Domestic Medicine: plain and brief directions for the treatment requisite before advice can be obtained. By Offley Bohun Shore, published in Edinburgh 1867 [accessed via www.britishlibrary.org.uk]
Florence Nightingale by Cecil Woodham Smith published by Constable and Company Ltd, London, 1950
Glasgow Herald 9 Mar 1867 (re Offley Shore’s book on Domestic Medicine) [accessed via http://newspapers.bl.uk]
Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle 5 Mar 1873 (public health meeting attended by Offley Shore) [as above]
Hartley W C E (1975) Banking in Yorkshire. Clapham: The Dalesman Publishing Company
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 17 Jan 1920 (‘Train mystery ends in tragedy’) [accessed via the East Sussex Archives]
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 20 Jan 1920 (‘Hastings train mystery’) [as above]
The Nightingale Shore Murder Page 27