The Nightingale Shore Murder (8 page)

She left Lhassa on 22
^nd
January and arrived at Ta-chien-lu on 12
^th
April, still determined to return to Tibet to spread the gospel. The Tibetans, the paper reported, called her ‘Annia', the name for their women religious leaders: and, to look more like one, she had all her hair cut off.

Florence was in China at exactly the same time as Annie Taylor: perhaps she read about the woman's travels in the China Inland Mission paper,
China's Millions
. If so, Miss Taylor was probably one of the few people who could have made Florence feel that her trip to China as a governess was tame and unadventurous.

Another might have been Alicia Little, part of whose time in China also coincided with Florence's visit. As Mrs Archibald Little, she was the wife of a merchant who spent 50 years in China, developing several businesses in Shanghai with his brother. Prior to her marriage, however, she had been a novelist, writing romances as A E N Bewicke. In China, Alicia Little wrote twelve more books of fiction, with China as the setting. Her novels centred on some of the key issues of colonial society in China. She wrote about relationships in colonial communities, where junior officers in the foreign service were forbidden to marry for six years, and ‘concubinage' was common. In fact, it was not banned by the British until 1910, and even then did not stop immediately. Alicia Little wrote about the schools that were set up for Eurasian children – often by missionaries and concerned European women – and which separated the children from their Chinese mothers. But the issue on which Little had the most impact, by moving outside of the realm of fiction into activism, was the Chinese custom of footbinding.

The purpose of footbinding, which had been practised in China since at least the first century BC – and, according to myth and legend, much longer – was to achieve a foot no more than three inches long. Such a tiny foot was considered a sign of daintiness, civility and attractiveness. It also became associated with eroticism and fetish. A three inch foot was known as a ‘golden lotus', a four inch one was a ‘silver lotus' and anything larger an ‘iron lotus'. To restrict growth to this abnormal size, footbinding began when girls were between the ages of three and eleven, and was undertaken initially by their mothers or other female relatives. First, the four smaller toes were broken and folded under the foot. Later the arch of the foot was broken so that the foot could be folded in two, with a deep cleft between the heel and the sole, which might be deepened by cutting. Tight bandaging held the foot in this position and restricted any further growth. Infections, gangrene and even septicaemia sometimes resulted, and some girls died. The whole process was extremely painful, and continued throughout the woman's life. The bound feet restricted walking, so had the effect of confining women close to home. It was not however restricted to higher class women, who had household servants to wait on them; it was also performed in working families, in the hope that it would make the girls more attractive to potential husbands. When this failed, they would resume work in spite of their bound feet.

Alicia Little was vehemently opposed to footbinding, which was called ‘one of the greatest curses in China'. In April 1895, she founded T'ien Tsu Hui, the Natural Feet Society, and persuaded women in Shanghai to join. Together they sent 10,000 copies of an anti-footbinding leaflet around China, and collected examples of where the practice had been abandoned to encourage other places to follow suit. (The support of the ruling dynasties for footbinding has waxed and waned over the centuries as the leaders changed – the Europeans were not the first to suggest that the practice should be ended.) Later, Chinese women took over leadership of the Society and the movement joined in the wider cause of more liberation for women in China. In 1902, Tz'u Hsi, the Empress Dowager, issued a proclamation banning footbinding. But it was the 1911 revolution, which ended the Ch'ing dynasty, which also finally – formally – ended the practice of footbinding. Like many such customs, it was several decades later before the practice really died out. But Alicia Little's campaigning work, described in her book ‘Intimate China', certainly helped sound the death knell for this mutilation of Chinese girls, and was probably her proudest achievement.

Florence Shore's stay in China is more of a mystery than the lives of the traveller and the novelist who left their written records. There is no record of how Florence came to be working as a governess in China, or the exact dates of her stay. She was not recorded in the UK 1891 census, which took place on the night of 5
^th
/6
^th
April, so it seems likely that her stay in China included this year. Her application to train as a nurse in Edinburgh must have been made in 1892, by which time, her hospital record shows, she had worked for two years in China, so allowing time for her to make the application and be accepted, she must have been back in England by Autumn 1892. The journey to and from China was a long one – it took Hudson Taylor five months to travel from England to China by ship in the 1860s, though the coming of steam ships and the opening of the Panama canal speeded up the journey soon afterwards – so it is possible that Florence was out of England for the best part of three years.

Florence was said to have been religious throughout her life, and her great uncle on her father's side, George Brewin, was a curate in the parish of Wortley, near the Shore home, for the whole of his ministry. Perhaps he was able to help Florence find a position as governess to a missionary family during their posting to China. Or she could have worked for a merchant's or diplomat's family, based in one of the treaty ports. One of her references for the nurse training school in Edinburgh, to which she applied immediately after her China trip, was from a Mrs Mackintosh, of 22 Balderton Street, London. Was this the family whose children Florence had taught in China? The Mackintosh family was not resident at Balderton Street at the time of the 1891 census, so they may have been in China at that time, with Florence working for them as a governess. Whatever the nature of her employment, she would have returned to England with some extraordinary new experiences from life in the Middle Kingdom. Victorian society in Edinburgh, where Florence went next to start her nurse training, was, quite literally, a world apart.

For most of the 19
^th
century, hospital nursing had been the province of drunks and paupers. But by the time Florence Nightingale Shore began her nurse training at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, on 1
^st
January 1893, the influence of her godmother Florence Nightingale had radically changed nursing. Nightingale had made it possible for respectable lay women to become nurses, and opened up one of the very few alternatives for middle class 19
^th
century women to a life of marriage and children, or spinsterhood in the homes of male relatives.

A Nightingale Fund for the training of nurses had been established by admirers of her work while Florence Nightingale was still in the Crimea, organising the nursing in the army hospitals. By the time she returned to England, a sum of £55,000 was available, and the Nightingale Training School was set up at St Thomas's Hospital in London in 1860. The core of the curriculum was set by Nightingale herself in her book ‘Notes on Nursing', and ‘Nightingale nurses' were recognised as educated, knowledgeable and skilled people, in stark contrast to most others calling themselves nurses. (Registration of trained nurses, and the legal protection of the title ‘nurse', was still sixty years away.) Nightingale nurses were soon in great demand in both hospitals and workhouses. The matrons of several of the famous London hospitals had passed through the Nightingale school, as had those in charge at the Liverpool Royal Infirmary, the army's Royal Victoria Hospital at Netley, and the Cumberland Infirmary. Miss Spencer, in charge of the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh when Florence Shore applied there, was also a Nightingale nurse.

Florence's decision to become a nurse was, unsurprisingly, influenced by her godmother. She wrote to Florence Nightingale about her desire
‘to become a hospital nurse ... probably inspired by your kind interest in being my godmother
.' In another letter she added that her ‘
ultimate hopes are to become an Army nurse as you were.
'

The Royal Infirmary Edinburgh was a venerable institution, already more than 150 years old when Florence arrived. It had been set up in 1729, following an appeal for funds by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, with just four beds in its first building, the ‘Little House' at the head of Robertson's Close. It was granted a Royal Charter in 1736, and moved seven years later into new premises in the present Infirmary Street. The ‘Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh' had more than 200 beds. Further building, including two additional surgical hospitals, created increasingly cramped conditions and finally led to the RIE moving into a specially-commissioned new hospital in Lauriston Place in 1879. This was the hospital to which Florence applied for her nursing training.

Her application came with recommendations from Mrs Mackintosh in London, and from Mrs Brewin, wife of the Reverend George Brewin. Florence was within days of her 28
^th
birthday when she started her nurse training, and had a lot more experience of the world than most women of her age and time. However, the rules of the hospital that governed probationers' work and their lives were all about compliance and conformity, and they applied to everyone from the youngest and most raw, to the oldest and most experienced. The Regulations stated that:

Such a controlled environment was entirely the norm in the new world of more professional and respectable nursing. And the Edinburgh school came highly recommended. Florence Nightingale wrote a note to her god-daughter at the beginning of her training, in a letter dated January 3
^rd
1893, expressing approval at her choice of institution:

So Florence's nurse training began at a chilly Scottish New Year, on a salary of £10 per year with uniform, food and accommodation. Her training record shows that, during her probationer year, ‘she was almost twenty-six weeks in Medical Wards, nearly twenty six in Surgical, and on leave for three days.' At the end of this exhausting and demanding year, Florence's supervisor reported on her impressions of the new Nurse Shore. They must have come as a harsh blow to Florence, carrying the weight of her godmother's name and her father's history at the same institution, and after a year of such hard work.

‘
She proved kindly, fairly capable',
the note on her training record begins, optimistically, before following up with ‘
not very bright or thoughtful, nor possessed of tact. She did not carry out the promise of the first few months.'

Yet Florence must have impressed some of her tutors: she was awarded second prize in anatomy and physiology, and presented with two books, ‘Shakspere's Works' and Norris' Notes, by Charles W. Cathcart MB, FRCS, Lecturer.

In spite of any misgivings about Nurse Shore's performance, the Infirmary did not – as it could have – decide to extend her training by the extra three months. Instead, Florence was taken onto the staff on 1
^st
January 1894 as an ‘Extra Night Nurse'. Her routine in this post is set out in instructions to the night staff:

Later, Florence returned to day duty, and she was sent to a variety of different wards as she worked out her two years' contracted service at the hospital. By this time, she was earning £21 a year – equivalent to around £5,000 today.

It was during Florence's second year at the Royal Infirmary, in April 1894, that Mabel Rogers came to Edinburgh for her nurse training, and the two women met for the first time. Mabel was almost exactly the same age as Florence. Her father was a solicitor; she came from a family of four girls in Reading and went to school in Oxfordshire. It was reported that Florence and Mabel ‘became great friends at once.' It was a friendship that would last for the rest of Florence's life, and see their two careers run inseparably throughout that time. When Florence finished her required two years' service at the hospital (plus an additional nine months) and left for a brief holiday, in September 1896, Mabel still had a year's service to work. During this time Florence went to the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin to learn midwifery. She would complete the course in May 1897, at the age of 32, at the same time as Mabel finished her two years' service in Edinburgh. Florence's stay in Dublin would be almost the last time they were separated for 17 years.