If you happened to watch Tom Dalton’s Agatha Christie and the Truth of Murder whodunnit on Channel 5 or have read Rosemary Cook’s The Nightingale Shore Murder then you’ll know some of the story already. On Monday, January 12th 1920, the goddaughter and second cousin of ‘Lady of the Lamp’, Florence Nightingale enters the carriage of a London-to-Brighton South East Express train and some 90 minutes later is found beaten and left for dead in the same, sealed compartment as the train rolls into Bexhill-on-Sea, the resort on the East Sussex coastline whose rakish cadre of military retirees and ‘Ginger Cat’ tea-rooms are evoked so vividly in Christie’s ABC Murders. There are no signs of a violent struggle, and the lady’s suit case is found where it was originally placed in the rack beneath the seat. On her lap is an open book, and by her side an attaché case, its lock torn open and some of its contents partially displayed.
Running down the left side of her face is a drooling line of blood that drips on to her clothes. On her finger is a gold ring, and on her jacket, two brooches. An amethyst pendant and other items of jewellery which had originally been reported missing are subsequently found in a Dorothy bag and a dressing case at home. The weapon used in the assault has never been firmly identified or recovered. [1] According to a friend, Mabel Rogers, who saw her off on the train that day, a dark-haired young man in a brown suit, about 30 years of age, had followed her into the compartment as the train left Victoria Station and had sat down in the far corner. [2]
On Sunday 11th January, 1920, the day prior to the attack on the train, Florence had visited her aunt, the Baroness Farina, in Tonbridge, an idyllic Tudor market town some 30 miles south of London. The Baroness was Florence’s aunt on her mother’s side. The reason for her visit, which lasted some several hours, is not recorded. She had left for Tonbridge on the Sunday afternoon and returned to London the same night.
Her movements that Sunday are a puzzle of the most peculiar kind.
Florence was already at Tonbridge, comfortably situated along the Hastings route, halfway between London and the quiet shores of St Leonards. Logic—and common sense—dictated she either finish the journey to the coast that evening or rest at her aunt’s till the Monday. Yet Florence chose neither. At half-past seven, she turned her back on the coast and retreated to London, only to set off for St Leonards the following day.
Such a frantic, circuitous journey spoke of a sudden, overriding necessity. What business in London was so important that it could not wait? And what dark errand demanded an immediate audience with the Baroness?
Despite the best efforts of Scotland Yard and a Home Office pathologist, the identity of the 55-year old war heroine’s murderer and his (or her) motive remain unknown to this day.
One of the most famous suspects in the case was the so-called ‘Monocled Mutineer’ Percy Toplis who would become the subject of a nation-wide manhunt in the weeks and months that followed the nurse’s death. [3] However, what many people won’t know is that the first man arrested by Police was Ernest C. Brown [4], a former Captain in the RAF and branch division President of the Comrades of the Great War in Glasgow. Both men matched the description of the ‘man in the brown suit’ who was alleged to have travelled alongside Florence in the train carriage that day.[5]
Until now, little about Ernest C. Brown was known, but an interview he gave to the Canadian and American press in 1926 casts new light on the mystery, as Ernest admits to having been a suspect in a further two unsolved mysteries in a period spanning four years. [6] In each case, the scope and potential for espionage is substantial to say the least. His secondment to the Inter-Allied Commission as staff photographer in Constantinople in 1921 is particularly intriguing as this was a critical period politically and economically for Britain, Turkey and Russia. The fact that the brother of Florence Nightingale Shore had served as Military Attaché in Russia during the 1918-1920 Civil War, only adds to the layers of intrigue that starts with Brown’s alleged arrest as a possible spy in a Faslane story in 1918.
Yet all this pales in comparison to an entirely fresh discovery: Nurse Shore’s cousin, Rafaele Farina—whose mother, the Baroness, Florence had visited on the Sunday—was a senior MI5 intelligence officer who would eventually play a role in an explosive espionage scandal that helped crash Britain’s Labour government.
Captain Brown’s Story
Ernest C. Brown’s story was told in the Washington Evening Star by Frederic Gregory Hartswick, a graduate of the Sheffield Science School at Yale University. After a two year draft with the American Ambulance Field Service in France, Hartswick, a former editor at Judge [7], had found himself working features for the New York World. It was here that Hartswick honed his already considerable code-breaking skills, after being drafted in by the paper’s editor, John O’Hara Cosgrave to produce “a code that can’t be broken” for the groundbreaking expedition of the Norge Airship [8], led by another graduate of the Sheffield Science School, Lincoln Ellsworth. This 16-man adventure to the North Pole was being supported financially by the North American Newspaper Alliance.
The sharp, witty and deeply imaginative Hartswick was an expert in the Playfair Cipher, used in modern cryptic crossword puzzles and cryptograms — and also by the British Military during the war. The men on the Norge voyage needed a way of disguising the crew’s messages that was relatively easy to code and decode. The Newspaper Alliance needed to ensure that their regular stream of updates would be ‘shrouded in an impenetrable mystery’. Hartswick was on hand to oblige. On March 29th 1926, the Italian-made airship was launched at a lavish ceremony presided over by fascist leader, Benito Mussolini in Rome on March 29 1926, at a ceremony at Ciampino aerodrome. The race to produce a code took place in January 1926, and it was during this same period that Hartswick encountered Brown.
The details of their meeting can only be guessed at. All we really know for sure is that Brown had made his way to Canada shortly after his assignment in Turkey. A press report covering the prohibition debates in Melfort, Saskatchewan in October 1923 describes him as a photographer from the Daily Herald. [9] Another, a little earlier that week, had described him as a ‘freelance representative’ of the same newspaper. It appears that Brown had arrived in Melfort from Montreal and made a beeline for the Labour Bureau where he was given a $5 a day job stooking and threshing on a local farm. [10] An article about his capers appeared in the Toronto Star Weekly in February 1926, and in March the same story is taken up by Hartswick in Washington. [11] The following year, the 35 year old photographer, Ernest Craufurd Brown, is being deported from Canada on the Montclare, and arrives in Liverpool on May 1st. [12]
On March 28, 1926, the evening prior to the Norge’s launch, Brown’s remarkable story was published in the Washington Evening Star whose editor, Theodore W. Noyes had long been praising Mussolini’s “wise paternalism and greatness as a public statesman”. [13] The story’s appearance in the Canton Daily News in July was a later syndication. Leaving Rome on April 6th 1926, the ship arrived at RNAS Pulham Airship Station in England on May 12th, where it was received by a party that included British Air Minister, Sir Samuel Hoare, the former head of Mi5 in St Petersburg who had befriended Mussolini on his subsequent Military Intelligence post in Rome.[14]
Assisting the Norge’s flight crew that day was Major George Herbert Scott [15], who like Brown had served with the Royal Naval Air Service at Greenock in Scotland during the final year of the war. As an aerial photographer during the war, Brown had served with Hoare’s Air Ministry, was it possible that Brown had been commissioned as staff photographer to provide images on the mission or take shots during the expedition’s dramatic launch? Was this how Hartswick had come into contact with Brown? His work in a similar capacity for the Inter-Allied Commission in Turkey some five years earlier made it a tantalising possibility.
On the surface of things, Brown’s story for the Washington Evening Star offered a fairly straightforward narrative. In January 1918 whilst serving as an aerial photographer for the British Royal Flying Corps he had been arrested and charged under the Defence of the Realm Act for taking interior shots of a C-Class C6 submarine under the command of his friend, Lieutenant General Roe at the Faslane Naval Base in Scotland. After trawling the War Office records, I believe that the ‘Lieutenant Commander Rowe’ that Captain Ernest C. Brown refers to as his friend at the Faslane naval base near Greenock, is Lieutenant Commander Robert Charles Thornber Roe (born Surrey, 1885) who was commanding the C-Type Submarine, HMS C6 at this time. [16] According to the story told in the Washington Evening Star, Roe intervened on Brown’s behalf and he narrowly avoided court-martial. The submarine under his command had been manufactured by Metro-Vickers. It was during this same period that the Admiralty was beginning to have grave concerns about the ‘virtual monopoly of contracts’ that Metro-Vickers enjoyed over arms sales to the navy. Corruption and bribery scandals, featuring US manufacturers and senior naval commanders were being heard at the Old Bailey shortly prior to Brown’s arrest. As a major shipping crisis emerged at the Admiralty the Americans stepped up their efforts to land lucrative submarine contracts.[17] As a result, senior Admiralty and SiS figures like Hugh Sinclair began to negotiate with controversial Greek-born Vickers arms dealer, Basil Zaharoff who was becoming increasingly useful in negotiating a peace (and trade) deal with Turkey.[18]
In January 1920, freshly recruited as Branch Secretary of the Comrades of the Great War in Glasgow, Brown was arrested in Hammersmith and questioned over the assault of Nurse Nightingale Shore after it was found that he matched the description of the man seen by the victim’s friend and house-mate, Mabel Rogers. Two years later in January 1922, he was charged by Police in Turkey; this time for the murder of a military officer. Brown had found employment as a photographer with a Commission dispatched to Constantinople by the British and American Governments to record human rights abuses in Galata and Thrace. On each occasion, a representative of some authority or other would intervene and Brown would be released. [19]
In relation to Toplis and the Étaples Mutiny, the fact that Ernest C. Brown was a Branch President of the Comrades of the Great War in Glasgow is an intriguing detail. Harry Fallows — the only person ever to place Toplis at the scene of the crime — talks about flashing his Comrades of the Great War membership card in his handwritten formal statement to Hampshire Police, despite only having completed a few months active military service.[20] Secondly, a genuine Étaples Mutineer, James Cullen — a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain — had his demobilisation case taken up by Comrades of the Great War and discussed in Parliament by Winston Churchill. The man discussing Cullen’s case with Churchill was the organisation’s founder — the ultra-Conservative MP Wilfrid Ashley. Like Brown, Cullen was also from Glasgow.
Before we carry on with Brown, I’d like to take a look at some complex political issues that were developing between Britain, Turkey and Russia at this time. And there’s two men I’d like to introduce you to: Florence’s brother, Brigadier General Offley Shore, and mystery Intelligence man, Sir George Makgill founder of Section D, a ‘secret unity’ of Mi6, and a man likely to have been known to Florence cousin at Mi5, Rafaele Farina.
[1] Train Outrage Mystery, Aberdeen Press and Journal, 19 January 1920, p.5; Hastings Train Outrage, Missing Pendant Found, Daily Herald, 16 January 1920, p.1. At the inquest the issue of the amethyst pendant, platinum ring with six diamonds (and a sapphire) and a wristlet watch had not been fully accounted for. If her friend’s account is anything to go by, Florence was kitted out with enough bling to sink a battleship when she got on the train.
[2] Dramatic Story at the Inquest, Daily Mirror 05 February 1920, p.2
[3] Toplis was also the subject of Alan Bleasdale’s controversial war drama, The Monocled Mutineer in 1985, in which the dashing young impostor (and criminal) is depicted as having taken a leading role in the Etaples Mutiny of September 1917. In April 1920 he was found guilty in absentia for the murder of taxi-driver Sidney Spicer and pursued across Britain. He died in a police ambush in Penrith, Cumbria on June 6th 1920. He was linked by the Worlds Pictorial News to an Anarchist Club based in the East End of London.
[4] Getting a positive ID on Ernest C. Brown has proved difficult as there are very few references to his age in any press reports of the day. At the time of Florence Shore’s death it was reported that a man of around 30 years of age was in custody.
[5] Train Outrage Mystery, Aberdeen Press and Journal, 19 January 1920, p.5
[6] Brown’s story appeared in the Toronto press in February 1926. A very similar article, co-written by Brown and F. Gregory Hartswick appeared some weeks later in the Washington Evening Star in March 1926. The Evening Star report featured no caricatures or illustrations. From what I can gather, the Washington Evening Star syndicated articles and interviews with the Canton Daily News on a regular basis.
[7] The Writer (US), Volume 29, 1917, p.74
[8] Almost Perfect Cipher System, F. Gregory Hartswick, Esquire, April 1936, p.88, p.140
[9] ‘No Decision in Dry Act Debate’, Star Phoenix, October 11, 1923, p.5
[10] ‘British Journalist Finds Life on Canadian Farms far Better’, The Saskatoon Phoenix, October 8, 1921, p.1, p.3
[11] ‘January Jinx Laid Death Trap Thrice’, February 20, 1926, p.48
[12] Ernest Craufurd Brown, b.1892, photographer, deport, The National Archives, Britain And Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960. I have found no matching records in births, deaths and marriages for that name in either England or Scotland. Robert Dunmoor Craufurd Brown, a 19th-century Scottish author and dramatist. He is best known for writing a series of plays that explored the political intrigues and power struggles of the 16th-century Scottish court.
[13] Washington Evening Star, December 3 1925, p.6
[14] Like George Makgill Hoare had been a founding member of the Anti Socialist Union.
[15] Polar Airship Arrives, Dundee Courier, April 12th 1926, p.5
[16] Service Records, R.C.T Roe, The National Archives. ADM 196/154/62. f. 62
[17] American Hustle for the Allies: How Submarine Contract was Carried Through, Yorkshire Evening Post 16 May 1918, p.3. The man at the centre of the claims was Charles M. Schwab. see also: Charles Schwab and the Shipbuilding Crisis of 1918, Robert Hessen, Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies Vol. 38, No. 4 (Oct 1971), pp. 389-399, Penn State University Press
[18] Brown’s friend, R.C.T Roe later became Secretary of the PGA (Professional Golfing Association).
[19] The timeline provided by Brown is at best a little vague. He says he arrived in Turkey shortly before the Mundania Conference. This would have been October 1922. The atrocities in Thrace were first being reported in May 1921. As a response, an Inter-Allied Commission and Occupation was established to maintain the peace.
[20] Harry Fallows, Statement prepared for Sergeant White of Hampshire Constabulary, April 29th-30th 1920.
You can buy The Nightingale Shore Murder by Rosemary Cook at the link below:
https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/essays-and-literary-criticism/the-nightingale-shore-murder/
Nurse Shore Nightingale – Raphael Farina Family Tree
Find A Grave (Shore’s aunt and cousins Stuart Hobkirk, Baroness Farina, Raffaele Farina)
Sources
The Nightingale Shore Murder: Death of a World War 1 Heroine, Rosemary Cook — view blog
Jeremy Stone – Find A Grave (Shore’s aunt and cousins Stuart Hobkirk, Baroness Farina, Raffaele Farina)
Edinburgh Evening News 13 January 1920, p.5
Almost Perfect Cipher System, F. Gregory Hartswick, Esquire, 1936.
Imperial Spies Invade Russia: The British Intelligence Interventions, 1918,
A. J. Plotke, Greenwood Press, 1993
The British Military Involvement in Transcaucasia, 1917-1919, Artin Hagop Arslanian, 1974
The First World Oil War, Timothy C. Winegard, University of Toronto Press, 2016
Britain in the Web of the Pro-German Spider : A Decade of Decadence, George Makgill
Foreign Policy of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Jamil Hasanli, Routledge, 2015
1926/27 Rigaer Adressbuch, British Mission in Riga featuring Secretary to the Legation, Rex Leeper and Raphael Farina
Tracing Your Secret Service Ancestors, Phil Tomaselli
Latest Theories Concerning Percy Toplis, Sunday Post 13 June 1920, p.16
Train Outrage Mystery, Brown Aberdeen Press and Journal 19 January 1920
Train Outrage, Daily Herald 15 January 1920, p.1
Scotland Yard Assist in Tracking Assailant, Nottingham Evening Post 17 January 1920, p.3
1948-1949 Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale
The Murder of a Journalist, Harper’s Magazine, John Bartlow Martin (Don Mellett murder)
Zinoviev Letter, The Red Letter Forgeries, Sunday Times, December 18, 1966
The Zinoviev Letter: The Conspiracy that Never Dies, Gill Bennett
MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Keith Jeffery
Red Letter Sensation: Forged in Riga: Daily Herald 25 March 1929
Aleksandr Chayanov and Russian Berlin, Frank Bourgholtzer
A Sound Policy Toward Russia, Dr. Jakob Gavronsky, House of Commons, Justice, 03 July 1919, p.8
Release of funds to Brigadier Shore, PRO CAB. 23/4, War Cabinet, 294, Minutes of a Meeting of the War Cabinet held at 10, Downing Street on Friday, December 7 1917
Alexander Guchkov and the End of the Russian Empire, William Ewing Gleason (former head of the Russia– Eurasian Studies Program of the US State Department’s Foreign Service Institute)
Search For a Man in a Brown Suit 17 January 1920 – Manchester Evening News – Manchester
Nurse Nightingale Shore Murdered, Illustrated Police News January 22 1920, p.2
Who Killed Miss Shore: New Clues to Man in Brown Suit Daily Mail, 19 Jan. 1920, p.5
Florence Nightingale Shore Inquest: No Light in Train Crime – read in full
Bexhill-on-Sea Observer 24 January 1920, p.8