Stuart Shorter
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Stuart Shorter (born Stuart Clive Turner on 19th September 1968 in Cambridge - died 6th July 2002 in Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire) was a homeless man whose life was chronicled by Alexander Masters in his book Stuart: A Life Backwards.
Stuart was born in a condemned cottage on the edge of Cambridge, to his father, Rex, a gypsy; and his mother, Judith, a barmaid. Judith later remarried, to Paul. Stuart had two siblings: an older brother, Gavvy; and a younger sister, Karen. He also suffered from muscular dystrophy, which he inherited from his father.
As a child, Stuart 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 notorious paedophile Keith Laverack, who, in 1996, was himself jailed for eighteen years for various offences against children.
No doubt these childhood traumas had an effect on Stuart's mental stability: 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.
In 1998, following a five-year jail sentence for armed robbery, Stuart's life reached its lowest ebb. Whilst living in a subterranean multi-storey car park, he was rescued by two outreach workers, and was found 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. Stuart 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 July 6th, 2002, just outside his home village of Waterbeach, Stuart Shorter stepped in front of the 11.15 p.m. London to King's Lynn train, and was killed instantly. He was thirty-three years old. As to the cause of his death, the jury returned an open verdict.
