The Nightingale Shore Murder

by Rosemary Cook

  ‘she is not catering for hungry schoolboys, but for women, perhaps not over strong to begin with, tired with work of a painful and wearing nature, and often half-sickened by the bad air of unwholesome cottages. They need to be tempted by good and varied food, well prepared, served and carved.’

  Where there was a sheltered garden, tables and chairs were placed outside for tea to be served there, as ‘every hour spent in pure air is of importance to the nurses’ health.’ Excursions and entertainments suggested for probationers and young nurses included

  ‘a dozen miles on the top of a tram, an excursion to a neighbouring village, to listen to an outdoor band, to take a short sea trip, or even to have permission to take afternoon tea at a gaily decorated tea shop; all these are pleasures that will by no means be despised.’

  Miss Loane could not have imagined that, in just a few years’ time, many of these nurses would be living in military camps and nursing gassed and wounded soldiers from the trenches of World War One.

  Even in England, not all the Queen’s Nurses lived this cosy institutional life. Miss Loane’s advice was for Superintendents running a small nursing home where the Queen’s Nurses lived together – usually in the towns. Other Queen’s Nurses were not so lucky, and for them, life was not so gracious. They relied on lodgings or cottages provided and funded by local subscription, which also had to stretch to a means of travelling about their district. The records for every local District Nursing Association contained meticulous entries summarising this minimal local provision, area by area. A small parish in Lancashire, for example, funded ‘One Queen’s Nurse, two furnished rooms and a bicycle.’

  One nurse wrote plaintively (and anonymously) to the Queen’s Nurses’ magazine in 1909, asking that local district nursing Committees ensure that a bath was provided in all nurses’ lodgings. Currently, she explained, they sometimes had to rely on a jug of water and a bowl left outside their rooms by the landlady ‘with the air of one going well beyond her duty.’ Most Queen’s Nurses in 1910, an article on pension funds pointed out, were:

  ‘drawn from the ranks of the daughters of the poorer professional men, struggling medicos, county clergy and unknown solicitors … many of them have been left orphans totally unprovided for, except so far as a fairly good education and robust health and strength are a provision. Very few, indeed, have any private means.’

  They lived on salaries of £30-35 a year, which provided little to spend on comforts or leisure. They were, though, often given gifts of food and drink by local people, patients and their families.

  In addition to managing the servants, the furnishing, laundry and maintenance of the Home, the nurses’ diets and social life, and the Home’s accounts, the Superintendent had her teaching duties. These were ‘generally given in the form of lectures and classes from three to four o’clock twice or three times weekly…’:

  ‘Practical instruction is usually given in the morning, when the Superintendent accompanies each probationer on a certain number of rounds… The Superintendent must on no account find fault with the probationer publicly. In some cases this would so undermine her authority that good work in that house would henceforth be impossible; while in most cases (such is the British love of the oppressed) the severe senior will be voted “an ‘orrid tongued old varmint,” and any neglect or oversight on the part of the probationer will be sedulously concealed. I have known patients circumstantially describe visits that had never been paid, and ascribe effects to poultices that had never been mixed, to try and shield a probationer who acknowledged that she had not been within half a mile of the house.’

  In addition to the clinical knowledge and skills they needed, the nurses were also taught how to develop and nurture good relationships with the patient and their family, and to mobilise the help and support of neighbours, colleagues and local networks: the essential skills that differentiate district nursing from hospital nursing. Ten ‘personal rules for district nurses’ at this time were listed by the indefatigable Miss Loane:

  1. ‘Spare no pains to make the first visit to a patient a successful one. Encourage the friends to talk freely, and never ridicule or ignore their attempts to describe the course of the disease. If they hesitate for a word, supply it.

  2. Never be the first to speak of religion. The nurse’s religion must be shown by acts, not words.

  3. Avoid speaking of politics or any highly controversial matters.

  4. Make a point of learning as soon as possible the names, addresses and occupations of all relatives of your patients who are living in the same town. This simple precaution may save many awkward complications.

  5. Never repeat what you hear, or describe what you see or do, or carry information of any kind from one house to another. Even the very persons who try to cross-question you will gratefully appreciate this honourable reticence. The fear that their private affairs will become known to all their neighbours is often the reason why the self-respecting poor are unwilling to admit a district nurse.

  6. If obliged to refuse a request, never do it in a peremptory manner but with a gracious reluctance.

  7. Always give the doctors your loyal support. When questioned by patients or their friends as to your opinion of any doctor, say that he understands the case fully and is doing all that can be done. Try to encourage the belief that for all ordinary work one doctor is quite as good as another, and that when there is anything unusual in a case, the doctor will be the first person to suggest consulting a specialist.

  8. Be on friendly terms with the Ministers of every form of faith, with Church Workers, District Visitors, and all who are trying in whatever measure or degree to benefit the poor.

  9. Co-operate with the Relieving Officer, the School Board Visitor, and the Sanitary Inspector.

  10. Receive courteously everyone who comes to see you. Never make an enemy for yourself or the Association.’

  In relation to the doctor, the Superintendent’s chief duty was to see that he had capable nurses – to encourage him to accept that one nurse was as capable as another, to avoid constantly reorganising the day’s work to give him his favourite nurse. For the public, she was to spread knowledge of the work, its methods and aims, to encourage support, and to discourage calls on the charity’s resources from those who could afford to pay for their own care. For the Committee of the Association, the Superintendent’s responsibility was to ‘keep the books, reports and accounts in such perfect order that any information required by them is instantly procurable.’ Perhaps it was watching Mabel juggling all these different responsibilities over many years that made Florence express reluctance to take on ‘management’ herself, and to successfully avoid promotion for many years.

  The work of the Sunderland DNA – nursing, teaching, raising funds, assisting the doctors – continued to expand under Mabel’s and Florence’s leadership. In 1905, the Queen’s Nurses’ magazine reported that ‘Sunderland has made a great advance owing to the intense interest by the workmen in the work of the Association.’ Twenty seven local factories were regular subscribers, and had formed a committee of representatives from which they elected four members to the executive committee of the Association. The following year, it was reported that more than 30 local works were subscribing regularly to the Association, and were represented on the Executive Committee: ‘The income amounts to £769 odd, and of this £470 is contributed by the workmen. Additional premises have been bought for the purpose of enlarging the Nurses’ Home.’

  By 1911, there were seven nurses working alongside Mabel and Florence, though all of the 1901 staff had moved on. The new nurses were Alexina Angus and Isabel Mackinson from Scotland; Edith McKinson, Constance Eales and Margaret Layfield who were more local, from Northumberland and Durham; and two Staffordshire women, Louisa Walker and Ellen Evans – all looked after by a cook and a housemaid. Meanwhile, Mabel’s influence also extended well beyond Sunderland: she was a member of the executive committee of the Association of Queen’s Superintendents of t
he Northern Counties from 1901 to 1913. She travelled to meetings in the major cities across the north of England, and sometimes to London for joint meetings with the Association for Queen’s Superintendents in the Metropolitan and Southern Counties. In 1910, she presented a paper to the Conference of Northern Superintendents on ‘The examination for the Queen’s Roll, its advantages and disadvantages.’ Amongst the latter, she noted the timeless issues that a written exam can never test practical work, common sense, tact or resourcefulness in an emergency; it may procure promotion for a nurse who can write a good paper but who may in other ways be less suitable; and it deters older and more experienced nurses, who have taken exams in the past and don’t want to take any more.

  Mabel also attended the Jubilee Congress of District Nursing, held in Liverpool from 12-14 May 1909, to celebrate 50 years of district nursing. Amy Hughes, the General Superintendent of the Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute at the time, reported to the Congress that there were now more than 3,500 names on the Roll of Queen’s Nurses. William Rathbone’s ‘successful experiment’ had spread rapidly across Britain and abroad: as well as Wales, Scotland and Ireland, there were representatives at the Congress from nursing associations in Canada, the United States, France, Norway, Sweden, Holland, Denmark, Australia, Bermuda, Switzerland and Africa. The Italian National Council of Women and the Bulgaria Red Cross Society both sent delegates to the Congress to learn more about this organised system of nursing in the home.

  And it was not just the idea that travelled. Queen’s Nurses themselves were taking advantage of their professional status to travel abroad in a way that most unmarried women of modest means would rarely manage. They wrote letters and articles to the Queen’s Nurses’ magazine describing their travels and their experiences of nursing in Jerusalem, Malta, Italy, The Bermudas, the Balkans and South Africa. Letters from Queen’s Nurses in Labrador, Canada, came via dog mail across the ice floes until the worst of the freezing conditions cut the communities off until the Spring.

  The proud Lord Mayor of Liverpool was pleased to promote his City’s part in this astonishing expansion and development of a whole new part of the nursing profession, and of the Institute which led it. He announced at the Jubilee Congress that:

  ‘Not merely was the work started in Liverpool, but without northern energy and northern means the Queen’s Institute could not have become rapidly the great national Institute it now is.’

  The audience, according to the official record, responded ‘Hear, hear.’

  Chapter 16

  ‘A day in the life of a kingfisher’

  While Florence and Mabel were helping to celebrate district nursing’s Jubilee, and Queen’s Nurses were making themselves indispensible all over the country, the first decade of the new century also brought major advances in medicine, and new discoveries in the sciences. The Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute was quick to incorporate these advances into its training, and to encourage its nurses to learn about them. The Institute arranged a lecture for all Queen’s Nurses in London, in February 1913, on the subject of ‘How living germs attack and defend us in Nature’ illustrated, according to a report in the Queen’s Nurses’ magazine, ‘by a series of excellent cinematograph pictures.’ The article records the wonder and excitement of the nursing audience at the presentation:

  ‘No-one, hearing the title of the speech, would dream of the fairyland into which Dr. Macleod led all those who were fortunate enough to be present. The audience sat entranced by the marvels which appeared before them. We saw blood corpuscles whirling merrily along the stream; germs, “all alive and kicking”, in the process of being captured by “nature’s policemen”, the white corpuscles, and resenting the treatment very strongly! Fascinating as the pictures were in themselves, their instructive value was greatly emphasised by Dr. Macleod’s vivid and graphic remarks. When it is remembered that the films were actual photographs from the blood of a frog, the miracle of modern science is brought home very clearly.’

  In spite of the fact that some of the Queen’s Nurses present could have been, like Florence and Mabel, veterans of the Boer War, and all of them dealt daily with the messy realities of illness and injury in the poorest of homes, the organisers felt that the lecture could not end there:

  ‘Lest we should carry away too creepy an impression,’ the article continues, ‘we were shown another aspect of Nature; a series of charming photographs of “A day in the life of a kingfisher”; including his toilet, capture of food and subsequent dinner, his alarms at a water-rat, and his final good-night. These, with some wonderful representations of the growth of birds in April, and the development of various flowers, concluded the entertainment.’

  As the twentieth century entered its second decade, the Queen’s Nurses out and about in Britain’s towns and villages were no doubt well aware that their skills and expertise were in demand, at home and abroad. And they were filled with the confidence instilled by their Institute that they were the best trained nurses of their day. They could not have known that the two biggest tests of the resilience of district nursing, and of the nurses themselves, were now imminent: the first World War and the global flu pandemic.

  For Florence, the years around the turn of the decade had brought a series of bereavements. In 1895, her great-uncle, the Reverend George Brewin, who had been an enduring presence in the lives of both Shore sisters, died at the age of 75. Her uncle Harrington Shore, who had been her father’s partner in the family’s financial disaster thirty years before, died in 1908. And in 1910, her famous godmother Florence Nightingale died at her South Street home in London, after many years of illness. Florence had idolised the nursing icon, writing to her and visiting her regularly.

  Florence Nightingale’s death was met with an outpouring of grief and appreciation from the public, even though she had not been active in public for more than a decade. Her contribution was summed up in a comment from Harriet Martineau which was quoted in the editorial of Nursing Notes in September 1910: ‘She effected two great things, a mighty reform in the care of the sick and an opening for her sex into the region of serious business.’

  The same issue of Nursing Notes reprinted a poem about Florence Nightingale’s death from the 16th August edition of the Evening News, which ran:

  ‘At Chelsea, under the lime-tree’s stir,

  I read the news to a Pensioner,

  That a noble lord and a judge were dead –

  ‘They were younger men than me’, he said.

  I read again of another death;

  The old man turned, and caught his breath –

  ‘She’s gone?’ he said; ‘she too? In camp

  We called her the Lady of the Lamp.’

  He would not listen to what I read,

  But wanted it certain – ‘The Lady’s dead?’

  I showed it to him, to remove his doubt,

  And added, unthinking, ‘The Lamp is out’.

  He rose – and I had to help him stand –

  Then, as he saluted with trembling hand,

  I was abashed to hear him say,

  ‘The Lamp she lit is alight to-day.’

  The poem’s author is identified only by their initials at the end of the piece. The initials are ‘F.S.’, raising the interesting idea that, unless it is just a coincidence, Florence Shore herself might have written it.

  Florence Nightingale left an estate worth just over £35,600 after taxes, and a very long and detailed Will with three codicils, setting out the disposal of her possessions, including her many books and papers. She made no fewer than seventeen separate monetary gifts to relatives, or the children of relatives; and sixteen monetary gifts to nurses and other colleagues from her professional life. These included the Secretary of the Army Sanitary Commission, the Reverend Mother of the Hospital Sisters in Great Ormond Street, the Matron of Paddington Infirmary, and Florence Shore’s old Superintendent at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Miss Spencer. Seven servants received sums of money or gifts, amongst them Eli
zabeth Wiggins, who received £20 and Miss Nightingale’s cats, and her maid Ellen Tugby, who, if still in her service, received £205 and her parrot ‘with my best thanks for her loving service.’

  ‘Two little godchildren’, out of a number of such relatives, some formal and some informal, are mentioned in the Will: Ruth Verney and Kathleen Verney both received books. Florence Shore is not mentioned in her godmother’s Will.

  A year later, in 1911, Florence’s father, Offley Bohun Shore, died at St Faith’s private nursing home in Ealing, West London. He was suffering from heart disease and died of ‘mitral regurgitation and infarct of the lung’. At 72, he had outlived his second wife, Annie, though she had been 28 years his junior. And in spite of the turmoil that Offley had caused in the family’s life, Florence had kept in touch with him while he was in St Faith’s at the end of his long life, organising nursing care for him.

  Florence’s 70 year old mother, Anna Maria, died at Whickham Lodge in Dawlish in Devon the following year. Coincidentally, she died on the same date that her daughter would die of her injuries eight years later: 16th January. Anna had been living in Devon with her second husband, Joseph Henry Laye, now retired from his army career with the rank of Major General. Anna left all of her estate – only £680 net – to Joseph Laye, her ‘beloved husband’.

  A happier event in the Shore family had also taken place in the early years of the century. Offley Bohun Fairless Stovin Shore, Florence’s brother, had fallen in love at the age of 45. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Indian Army, and had been posted to Canada on a two year secondment to advise the Government there on its army, because his health was not good enough to allow a return to India for some time. He sailed to New York in December 1906, with letters of introduction to the Sinnickson family of Philadelphia from mutual friends in England. He fell in love with Caroline Perry Sinnickson, the eldest daughter of the family, and they were married in 1908 in Philadelphia.