The Nightingale Shore Murder (2 page)

It was Mabel Rogers who had inadvertently led to Florence to her death. She had accompanied her to Victoria Station in London on the afternoon of Monday 12
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January, and chosen her compartment on the train to Hastings.

Florence had been living at Carnforth Lodge, the Hammersmith nurses' home of which Mabel was Superintendent, since her return to London from war service in France in November 1919. The Home, in Queen Street, was both the residence and the working base for the local ‘Queen's Nurses' – district nurses who had trained under the auspices of Queen Victoria's Jubilee Institute for Nurses. Mabel and Florence were both Queen's Nurses, though Florence was not working following her return from France. A photograph of the two women shows that they looked strikingly similar. Both had dark hair, worn swept up, a broad brow and a straight nose. Florence's face is a little more rounded than Mabel's rather square jaw, and her eyes are slightly hooded under curving eyebrows. Mabel's eyes are larger, under straight brows. Both women have wide mouths, and Mabel's chin is more prominent and firmer. Each wears the same high collared style of dress with a pin at the neck, and they are wearing their Queen's Nurse badges on neck chains: Florence's is the bronze of a qualified QN, Mabel's the larger silver badge of a Superintendent. Florence was a small woman, only five feet three inches in height, and she was dressed for the journey, on the cold January afternoon, in a fur coat over her long dress, with hat and gloves.

Florence had spent the previous day, Sunday, with an aunt and cousin in Tonbridge in Kent, returning to Hammersmith in the evening. Her plan on the Monday was to travel from London to St Leonards Warrior Square Station, via Hastings, to spend a week with friends in the town. Mabel accompanied Florence from Hammersmith to Victoria Station for the start of her journey. They arrived at the station just after three o'clock, and Mabel selected a carriage for her friend – a third class, non-smoking compartment in the last carriage. By unfortunate chance, Florence had been turned away from a different carriage which she would have shared with another female passenger. Florence wanted a corner seat: the woman already in the carriage told her that, although currently unoccupied, the corner seat was taken. So Florence and Mabel moved on, and Mabel found her friend a corner seat in an empty compartment of the next carriage.

Florence's third class ticket did not mean that she would travel in poor conditions. The service to Hastings was operated by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, which ran services along three routes, together forming a triangle: from London to Portsmouth and London to Hastings, and along the South Coast in between. In common with most of the other 100 or so train companies, the LB&SCR had abolished second class carriages, leaving only first and third. Competition for passengers between the different railway companies had led to increasing comfort and amenities to attract travellers, in both classes of carriage.

In the early days of train travel, the cheapest seats were in open trucks or goods wagons with no windows. A terrible accident when a train ran into a landslip in 1841 and eight passengers were killed led to roofs being added to the third class trucks. As passenger numbers increased, some express trains initially had no third class, as these services were aimed at the better off passenger. Then the Midland Railway put third class carriages onto its express trains in 1872, albeit with hard wooden benches. Three years later, the company abolished second class and the third class carriages had upholstered seats and partitions to create compartments. By the 1880s, electric lighting was beginning to replace gas, and lavatories and dining cars were more common in the express trains. Trains were heated by steam pipes running through the carriages, replacing the metal box portable foot warmers that had to be topped up with hot water at stations. Train travel was becoming ever more comfortable, though the traveller's experience still varied widely depending on the line, class and purpose of the journey. From 1908, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway ran a famous service called the ‘Southern Belle', with seven luxurious ‘Pullman' carriages behind its steam locomotives, providing a fast and enjoyable journey to the seaside at Brighton for day trippers and weekenders from London.

More routine and local services had much more basic carriages, though there was always great pride in the LB&SCR steam locomotives which pulled the coaches. Early versions of the passenger locomotives were painted in a dark green livery, with fine red and gold lines. Towards the turn of the century, this was changed to ‘Improved Engine Green' – universally described as a mustard colour, rather than green, and the invention of William Stroudley, Locomotive Superintendent of the company. It has been suggested that he was either colour-blind, or cunning: deliberately describing his new yellow as ‘improved green' to convince his company's board to make the change.

Behind this smart locomotive, the third class carriage that Florence travelled in was comfortable enough. Outside, it was painted in plain umber, with the company's initials in gold-shaded black lettering. Inside, the upholstery was sprung or stuffed with horsehair, and buttoned. The walls were panelled with wood, heating was from steam pipes, and the carriage was lit by gaslight. There was a rack overhead for luggage, and a window in each side which could be opened by a leather strap. There was no door handle on the inside: passengers had to lower the window to reach the outside handle, or wait for the guard on the platform to open the door. There was a communication cord which ran between compartments to allow passengers to alert the guard to any problems. Seasoned travellers from this period described the smell of the train as a mix of the coal from the engine – with a different smell in different counties, depending where the coal came from – and gas from the carriage lights.

In 1920, however, the railways were in a state of flux, the consequences of which may have had a direct effect on Florence's journey. From the opening of the first railways – the Stockton to Darlington line in 1825, and the Liverpool to Manchester line in 1830 – to the early years of the 20
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century, there had been decades of expansion, experimentation, competition and development. New technologies for engines, carriages and the wheeled ‘bogies' on which they travelled, track building, braking systems and signalling had been invented, refined, introduced and replaced. Speed records were set and broken, and new forms of heating, lighting and furnishing of carriages were regularly introduced. All long distance express trains had corridors allowing all passengers – even in third class – access to toilets and the dining cars. From a dangerous if heroic novelty, the railways had become a huge industry, burgeoning with competing companies, advertising campaigns and related businesses such as hotels and omnibuses to complete the journey.

Then, when war was declared in 1914, the Government took over the railways. Throughout the war, a Railway Executive Committee, made up of the general managers of the ten leading rail companies under the direction of the Board of Trade, managed the country's rail system. Under the Committee's direction, the railways played a major role in transporting troops and war goods from 1914 onwards. A report in The Railway Gazette in 1919 shows the staggering strain put on the LB&SCR by this work:

By the time the railways were handed back to the companies after the war, they had been working for many years at a rate, and in a role, which had never been anticipated. The railway companies complained that they were not adequately compensated for the impact of this war work on their rolling stock, and the lack of maintenance during this time. While they caught up with the backlog, a shortage of stock led to the withdrawal of restaurant cars, and the re-introduction of older forms of carriage, such as those with non-corridor compartments, especially on the suburban routes.

Non-corridor compartments meant that passengers could not change compartments once the journey had started, except at station stops. Florence's compartment had no corridor, and so no escape route. Her train was not the luxurious Brighton Belle, with its Pullman carriages and electric lighting. It was an ordinary gas-lit compartment, with a single door on each side leading only to the platform or the track. Perhaps if there had been a corridor on the train, Florence might have moved from her original compartment – or been able to escape from it when she needed to. Perhaps the person who attacked her would have been afraid to do so if he thought he could be discovered at any minute by passengers from a neighbouring carriage. For although the compartment had been empty when Florence and Mabel first joined the train at Victoria, just before the train left they were joined by another passenger.

Mabel had stepped into the carriage with Florence to pass the time until the train was due to leave. They had arrived just after three o'clock in the afternoon, and the scheduled departure time was twenty past three. So after finding the compartment, Mabel put Florence's suitcase under the seat, leaving her with a large dispatch box, her umbrella and a black silk handbag. Florence, still wearing her fur coat and hat, took the corner seat on the ‘off-side' – furthest from the platform – facing the engine. She and Mabel talked until a few minutes before twenty past three. That was when a man opened the train door and joined them in the compartment, closing the door behind him. He looked about 28 years old, and was five feet seven or eight inches tall, clean shaven and of slight build. He wore a brown suit of a light cloth, and, unusually on a cold January afternoon, he had no overcoat. He also appeared to have no luggage. Mabel said goodbye to Florence, opened the door and returned to the platform. This would be her last conversation with her friend of more than 25 years. Mabel waited on the platform, looking in at the window, which was open, until the train moved away.

The train leaving Victoria was a long one, made up of 10 carriages behind the steam locomotive. Although usually crowded, especially in mid-week and at weekends, on this Monday afternoon in January the train was not busy. The journey was non-stop to Lewes in East Sussex, though the train slowed to 30 miles per hour to pass through Gatwick and Three Bridges, to the north and east of Crawley. The route continued through the Balcombe Forest and over the Ouse Valley viaduct, through Hayward's Heath, Burgess Hill and on down to Lewes. After Lewes, the next stop was Polegate Junction, where the train divided; four carriages would go on to Bexhill and then Hastings, from where Florence planned to continue her journey to Warrior Square station in St Leonards. The remainder of the train would travel on to Eastbourne. It was at Bexhill station, however, that the train staff were finally alerted to the fact that this journey was no longer routine. Something terrible had happened in one of the third class carriages.

Bexhill, a seaside town just 10 minutes from the journey's end, was the last scheduled stop for the train before Hastings. The guard on the Hastings train was Henry James Duck, known as Harry, from the nearby town of St Leonards: Florence's ultimate destination. Duck had been in charge of the train from Victoria, accompanied by Guard George Walters, and Guard Herriet. A photograph of the three men, who were to be key players in the events that followed, shows them each wearing the long dark jackets of the LB&SCR uniform, with a double row of brass buttons and the company's initials on the collar. Each wears a watch-chain across the front of the jacket, and a peaked cap with the company badge on the front. Duck and Herriet wear traditional neckties; Walters has a bow tie. Henry Duck has a heavy dark moustache and heavy eyebrows.

When the train divided at Polegate Junction, Duck was in charge of the Hastings portion. He signalled to the guard on the Eastbourne train that all was well when his part of the train was ‘slipped' just before Polegate, and stepped off the train at the station to check on his carriages. He saw nothing out of the ordinary during this stop. Although he did not notice it at the time, three railway workers – George Clout, Ernest Thomas and William Ransom, all platelayer's labourers employed by the LB&SCR – had joined the train at Polegate. They had taken seats in the same third class compartment as Florence. Once on the move again, the train took another 15 minutes to reach its next stop, at Bexhill.

It was twenty past five in the afternoon, two hours after leaving London, when the Hastings train pulled in to Bexhill station. On that early January afternoon, it was already nearly dark, and it was raining. The guard Harry Duck later described it as a ‘dark and dirty night'; and he inspected the train by the light of his hand-held lamp. There were no lamps at all at Lewes station, and unlikely to have been any at the smaller Bexhill station, where Harry Duck again stepped onto the platform to check on passengers leaving and joining the train, and to make sure that all the doors were shut for departure. This time, however, the stop was not routine. On the platform, the guard was approached by George Clout, one of the platelayers who had joined the train 15 minutes earlier at Polegate Junction. ‘Have you seen that woman back there?' he asked Duck. ‘She is in a deplorable state.' Duck looked into the carriage the man was referring to, and saw Florence alone inside, sitting in her corner seat facing the engine. When he got into the carriage, he could see immediately that she had terrible head injuries.

The platelayers had not realised at first that the lady who they thought was asleep or reading was in fact barely conscious. The carriage was dimly lit, and they would have thought it impolite to stare at a lady passenger. George Clout, who came from Bexhill himself and was on his way home, said that he only began to think that something was wrong about a mile out of Polegate station, when he noticed blood on the lady passenger's face. He mentioned it to William Ransom, saying he thought that the lady had had ‘a nasty knock'. But Ransom's hearing was affected by a heavy cold and he did not hear the comment. The remark was heard by the other platelayer, Ernest Thomas: he looked across, but in the poor lighting, he could not tell whether the blood was wet or dry.

Henry Duck made a hurried inspection of the carriage, and saw no obvious signs of a struggle. Florence was sitting in her corner seat with an open book on her lap, and her hat on the seat beside her on top of a small case. The only anomalies were a newspaper, partly on the seat and partly on the floor, which had blood on it; and Florence's glasses, which were on the floor.

Instinctively, Duck spoke to the injured woman, asking ‘However did you come by these injuries?' – but he got no reply. He thought however that the injured woman had heard him, as he later gave evidence that ‘she turned her eyes round'. Other evidence given by the platelayers at the inquest would corroborate this, and raise the disturbing possibility that Florence was still partly conscious at that point, at least an hour after the attack, but unable to call for help. In view of the seriousness of her injuries, the guard made the decision not to remove Florence from the train at Bexhill. Instead, he took the train on to Hastings, while George Walters stayed with Florence in the compartment. At Hastings, she was carried from the train to an ambulance, and taken to the hospital in the town. According to one newspaper report, one of Florence's friends from St Leonards was at Hastings station to meet her, and saw her carried unconscious from the train.

It was only after the train had arrived at Hastings that Duck became aware of the blood spatters on the back of the seat, and some marks on the floor that he thought might also have been bloodstains. He also did not know at this stage that some of Florence's clothing was torn, including her undergarments. Something appalling had obviously happened in the blood-stained carriage; and as a seasoned railwayman, Harry Duck must have immediately wondered if it had taken place while the train was in the Merstham Tunnel.