Stuart Shorter (born Stuart Clive Turner on 19 September 1968 in
Cambridge – died 6 July 2002 in
Waterbeach,
Cambridgeshire) was a homeless man and advocate whose life was chronicled by
Alexander Masters in his book. Shorter was born in a condemned cottage on the edge of Cambridge, the son of Andrew Turner (called Rex in the book and dramatisation), a
gypsy and Sonia (Judith), (née Tierney), a barmaid. Sonia later remarried, to David Shorter [Paul]. Stuart had two brothers and one half-sister, Andrew [Gavvy], Kai [Marcus] and Zoe [Karen]: most noted in the novel are his older brother, Gavvy, and younger sister, Karen. Marcus is only mentioned briefly in the book. Shorter suffered from
facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, which he inherited from his father, and
borderline personality disorder. As a child, Shorter was sexually abused by his brother, and also by a
babysitter, after which he was put into a children's home. Here, he was abused again by the
paedophile Keith Laverack, who in 1997 was jailed for 18 years for various offences against children. During his adult life, Shorter was in and out of various
homeless hostels, as well as spending much time in
prison for a number of
violent crimes. He also fathered one son, the Little'Un, who lives in Norwich. In 1998, following a five-year jail sentence for
armed robbery, Shorter was living in a subterranean
multi-storey car park when he was rescued by two outreach workers, who found him a
flat to live in. He subsequently became one of the first people to bring
The Big Issue into Cambridge, and his work as an activist for the homeless began when he presented a short
BBC2 documentary,
Private Investigations, denouncing police plans to ban homeless people from the city centre. In 1999, Shorter became a leading figure in the campaign to release Ruth Wyner and John Brock, the Director and Day Centre Manager of Wintercomfort for the Homeless, who had been sent to prison because some of the people they were looking after had been secretly trading drugs on the charity's premises. Shorter negotiated with police to organise marches and vigils, and arranged the campaign's most successful gesture, a three-day sleep-out of homeless people outside the
Home Office in London, which ended in the release of the "
Cambridge Two" after just six months. On 6 July 2002, just outside his home village of
Waterbeach, Stuart Shorter was hit by the 11.15pm London to
King's Lynn train, and was killed instantly. He was 33 years old. As to the cause of his death, the jury returned an
open verdict. Despite an overall lack of evidence that Shorter purposefully walked in front of the train, the coroners report stating that this was contrary to how his body was positioned at the time of death, there are hints that suggest Shorter may have intended to die. Shorter had a long history of attempted suicides and his sister Zoe once mentioned in an interview that Shorter informed her that were he ever to commit suicide he would make it appear accidental as he felt that the prospect of his mother losing both sons to suicide would be too much for her to bear. ==References==