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

Street, Derby at this time, as this is the address listed for Offley Shore in the medical register for 1871; though the family is rarely to be found there together.
    In the year of Urith’s birth, Dr Shore published his first, and apparently only, book: a handbook on self-care and treatment in the home ‘for the use of the non-medical public’
. Domestic Medicine: Plain and Brief Directions for the Treatment Requisite before Advice
(price 2 shillings) was published in both Edinburgh and London. Its four sections covered ‘Common diseases’; ‘What to do in cases of emergency – bleeding, poisoning etc’; ‘Management of the sickroom’; and ‘Health promotion, including diet, exercise, sleep and climate’. It was not an original concept: books on domestic medicine had been published in England at the rate of one or two a year during the 1860s. Five were published in 1864, including the eleventh edition of one (Thomas Graham’s
Modern Domestic Medicine
), and the 24 th edition of
An Epitome of the Homeopathic Domestic Medicine
(to which had been added an appendix on the treatment of diphtheria). The even more ambitious
Dictionary of Domestic Medicine and Household Surgery
, by Spencer Thomas, was published the year before Offley’s book.
    But if not original, Offley Shore’s
Domestic Medicine
was well-received. An enthusiastic review in the London Daily News said
‘This is one of the medicine books that ought to be published. It does not recommend any particular system and it is not in any sense an advertisement for fees. It is from the pen of Dr Shore, an eminent physician ... we can recommend it to the attention of heads of families and travellers.’
    The eminent Dr Shore appears in pictures around this time with a high domed forehead, long straight nose, receding hair, and a very full moustache with waxed ends. In 1868, back in Derbyshire, he was taking an interest in local politics, being one of around 100 supporters listed in the Derby Mercury as members of the General Committee for Securing the Re-election of Thomas William Evans Esq and Charles Robert Colvile, Esq, in the South Derbyshire Elections. Their opposition, recorded in an even longer list, was the General Committee for Promoting the Return of Sir Thomas Gresley, Bart, and Mr Rowland Smith. Heading the list of the ‘M’s’ was Sir Oswald Mosley, Bart.
    In January 1871, Offley Shore was at a Christmas Ball in the Assembly Room of the Town Hall in Ashbourne, where a local newspaper reported that ‘
the attendance was very large and brilliant. Amongst the company present we noticed the following: Mr Offley Shore and Mrs Shore and party...
’ In April 1871, neither Offley nor Anna Maria Shore appear in the UK census: perhaps they were abroad, as the three young Shore children were being looked after away from home at the same time. Florence, who was six years old, was a boarder at an establishment in Mickleover, Derbyshire, with her brother, recorded as ‘Offay’ B Shore, aged seven, and sister Urith B Shore, aged four. The young siblings were in the care of William Hansom and his wife Elizabeth, who ran the establishment at 58 The Green, Mickleover.
    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