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of your financial hole: it is most annoying and distressing. Especially to me, who can’t assist you and can’t even float my beastly self yet.’
    After the family’s financial troubles and separation in the latter part of the 1870s, while the children were growing up, they might have hoped that the next few years would pass more quietly. But a series of seismic shocks to their family life were still to come: starting in 1886, when Florence’s mother divorced her husband after twenty five years of marriage.

Chapter 7
Shore v. Shore
    Anna Maria Shore’s petition came before the High Court of the Justice, Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division, on 11 th January 1886. Changes to the marriage laws had come just in time for Anna’s generation. Prior to the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, divorce was only possible by an ecclesiastical annulment of the marriage, or through a private (and very expensive) Act of Parliament, which had to be debated in the House of Commons.
    The Act recognised that marriage was a contract that came under the jurisdiction of the courts, rather than a religious sacrament, and removed divorce from the ecclesiastical courts. It established the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes in London, to deal with petitions for divorce: still an expensive business, but more readily achievable for women with some means. The Act also, for the first time, allowed for men to be required to pay maintenance to their ex-wives, and allowed divorced women to control and inherit property in their own right. However, it was not even-handed in its treatment of the marriage partners. A man filing for divorce had to prove only that his wife had committed adultery: the sole grounds on which a divorce could be granted. But a woman seeking a divorce had to prove not only her husband’s adultery, but also that he was guilty of bigamy, desertion, cruelty, sodomy, bestiality or incest. Or, as Emily Pankhurst reportedly put it:
    â€˜According to man-made law a wife who is even once unfaithful to her husband has done him an injury which entitles him to divorce her...On the other hand, a man who consorts with prostitutes, and does this over and over again throughout his married life, has, according to man-made law, been acting only in accordance with human nature, and nobody can punish him for that.’
    Anna Maria’s petition set out the history of the 25-year old marriage, and her case against her husband:
    â€˜The Petition of Anna Maria Shore of 1 Powis Gardens, Bayswater in the County of Middlesex showeth
    That on or about 17th day of October 1861 your Petitioner then Anna Maria Leishman was lawfully married to Offley Bohun Shore at St James’ Episcopal Church in the City of Edinburgh
    That after the said marriage your Petitioner lived and cohabited with the said Offley Bohun Shore, at Derby in the County of Derby and at Stamford in the County of Lincoln and at Langford Park Maldon in the County of Essex and at 2 Queen Anne’s Mansions in the City of Westminster and that there is surviving issue of the said marriage three children to wit:- Offley Bohun Stovin Fairless Shore born 9th August 1863 at Stamford aforesaid Florence Nightingale Shore born 9th January [although her daughter’s birth certificate says 10th January] 1865 at Stamford aforesaid and Urith Beresford Shore born 9th September 1866 at Ashbourne in the County of Derby.
    That in or about the month of June 1878 the said Offley Bohun Shore separated himself from your Petitioner and has never since cohabited with her and that he has deserted your Petitioner without reasonable excuse for two years and upwards.’
    This was the last year in which the family holidayed in Southsea together, and just before Offley Shore was declared bankrupt. Florence was 13 years old. But desertion of the young family would not have been sufficient grounds for a divorce: Anna needed also to prove adultery. Her Petition