The Nightingale Shore Murder by Rosemary Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

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 ‘1 st 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 21 st 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:
    â€˜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