Free The Nightingale Shore Murder by Rosemary Cook Page A

satisfaction to Anna that costs were awarded against her husband.
    Divorce was still an uncommon occurrence at this time – there were only around 300 divorces a year in England in the 1880s – and divorces initiated by women were even more unusual. Anna Maria, whose paternal grandfather was a churchman, and whose father was an important and respectable solicitor in Edinburgh, must have found it difficult to take her marital troubles to the courts. But she does at least seem to have been spared the additional burden of prurient publicity, since the divorce trial occupying the newspapers at the time was that of Lord and Lady Colin Campbell.
    Married in July 1881, the couple honeymooned in the Isle of Wight accompanied by a hospital nurse, as Lord Campbell was already suffering from venereal disease. The marriage was only consummated later that year, infecting Lady Campbell – formerly Gertrude Blood – with the condition. After a miscarriage and an operation, in 1884 she applied for and was granted a judicial separation, on the grounds of cruelty: the only way to avoid the obligation of ‘enforced cohabitation’. Later that year, both husband and wife petitioned for divorce, each accusing the other of adultery. In Lady Campbell’s case, she was accused of adultery with four men: a Duke, a fire chief, a noted solider, and the couple’s doctor. So the case, with the two petitions consolidated into one trial by the Court, was officially known as ‘Campbell v. Campbell and Campbell v. Campbell, the Duke of Marlborough, Captain Shaw, Colonel Butler and Dr Bird.’
    The jury cleared Lady Campbell of the accusations of adultery; but no divorce was granted, and the couple remained married until Lord Campbell’s death 11 years later.
    For Florence, even after bankruptcy, desertion, adultery and divorce, the family’s upheavals were not over. Just eight months after his divorce was finalised, her father Offley Shore re-married, to a woman young enough to be his daughter.

Chapter 8
The second Mrs Shore
    Offley Shore’s second marriage took place in Westminster Register Office on 2 nd July 1887. The couple was married by licence by the Registrar: a licence being an alternative to having the marriage banns publicly read in the bride’s and groom’s home parishes on three separate occasions. Licences had to be paid for, but were a quicker – and more discreet – way of obtaining permission to marry than having the banns read. Three public readings of the banns would, of course, offer the opportunity for someone to come forward to object to the marriage.
    The marriage certificate described the groom’s profession as ‘gentleman’, and his condition as ‘the divorced husband of Anna Maria Shore formerly Leishman.’ His residence at the time of the marriage was 113 Haymarket, London – the same street in which he was said to have conducted his adulterous affair at number 23. His bride was Annie Wakefield, from Spalding in Lincolnshire, a spinster, and daughter of John Wakefield, deceased. The column for the ages of the parties records that Offley was 48 years old, and Annie was 23. The witnesses do not appear to be close family members of either party to the marriage: they were a Fred and Frank Lampard.
    Pictures of Offley Shore in mid-life show him even more balding, with huge Victorian mutton-chop whiskers but no moustache and a bare chin. Young Annie Wakefield might once have dreamed of something more than this quiet wedding in a London Register Office, with no family members to be her witnesses. But she was obviously determined – or persuaded – to become Offley’s wife, for better or worse: for there is a curious post-script to this marriage. A hand-written correction on the marriage certificate was added four years after the event, in 1891, by the Registrar, in the presence of the Superintendent Registrar, and two witnesses by the name