The Nightingale Shore Murder

by Rosemary Cook

  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.

  Chapter 6

  ‘Complicated questions were pending’

  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.

  ‘To the Shareholders of the Colonial Trusts Corporation Limited – I beg to inform you that the arrangements have been completed with the trustee of Messrs. Harrington Offley and Offley Bohun Shore for paying off the first mortgage on the Meersbrook estate, which practically secures to the committee, through the assistance of the said trustee, the carriage of this valuable property, upon which the directors have advanced very large sums of money on very inadequate security viz. a fifth mortgage.’

  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 23rd November:

  ‘The bankrupt had not filed statutory accounts but his debts were put down at £100,000. It was stated that complicated questions were pending between the bankrupt and the Colonial Trusts Corporation, and delay had therefore arisen in filing accounts. An adjournment was agreed to.’

  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:

  ‘In the Court of Bankruptcy yesterday Mr Registrar Hazlitt sanctioned an arrangement for the settlement of the bankruptcy of Mr Harrington O. Shore and Mr Offley B. Shore, by which the creditors agreed to accept a payment of such a sum as would provide a composition of 1s in the pound with costs of liquidation. The debts of Mr H. O. Shore were £92,996, of which £68,000 was expected
to rank against the estate, with assets of nominal value of £1,982. The liabilities of Mr O. B. Shore were returned at £94,163, and the assets at £3,850.’

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

  ‘The debtors in this case were two gentlemen connected with the Colonial Trusts Corporation who failed some months since, and whose affairs have been under investigation by Mr C. R. Miles, the trustee. They also appear to have been interested in various collieries, and to have suffered largely by the depreciation of that description of property.’

  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 18th 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.’

  While infectious disease was no respecter of class or status, in other places, the Dringhouses school log book points to the differences between the children of the two schools. In January 1870, ‘Mr Ackeroyd, Lady Meek’s Steward, called to pay for Agnes Armison and three of Mr Forth’s children’. And while the girls at Middlethorpe were learning French from Mademoiselle Laurency, the Dringhouses school children were learning about The Pronoun in their grammar lesson, the Shape of the Earth in Geography, and the names of 36 vegetables in Spelling.

  In the very comfortable surroundings of Middlethorpe Hall, Florence may have been at least partly insulated from her father’s financial embarrassment in London. Her 14 year old sister Urith was also not at home with their parents in early 1881: she was boarding with Miss Katherine Walker, and another boarder, 16 year old Letitia Beasley, in Ecclesall, Sheffield. Their older broth
er Offley, now 18, was a gentleman cadet at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, preparing for his military career. Ten years later, he would be followed there by his cousin, Clarence Hobkirk, the younger son of Margaret Hobkirk, Florence’s maternal aunt. In 1876, Clarence and his older brother Stuart had been left fatherless when John Hobkirk died at the age of just 51, when the boys were aged eight and seven. They may have been particularly close to their Shore cousins, as, many years later, Florence would make provision for both of them in her Will.

  Meanwhile, Florence’s father was still trying to make money. Following his bankruptcy, he had set off on a new venture, going to Iceland to invest in borax – a naturally-occurring mineral used in detergents, cosmetics and enamel glazes, which was greatly in demand at the end of the 19th century. Unfortunately, like Offley’s other ventures, this one did not succeed. The children were beginning to think about ways to earn their own livings. In 1882, Offley junior had passed out from Sandhurst and was set on a military career. He wrote to his father about his younger sisters’ ideas:

  ‘Urith seemed to think that if obliged to ‘go out’ she would take to music more readily than anything else … Florence quite likes the Children’s Hospital idea and is going to write Florence Nightingale … I fear it’s a poor concern she is going for, as regards pay, and will tax her growing strength … I said nothing at all about the possibility of the success of this Borax rendering them free of the necessary [sic] to work for themselves …’

  Florence, now aged 17, also wrote rather wistfully to her father in Iceland: