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tempting to think that he might finally have had enough of living under his parents’ roof and decided to strike out on his own, but it is more likely that he was urged to do so by his father in the hope that it might prove the making of him. The incentive was probably the American Civil War, the first great conflict of modern warfare, where new technologies like machine guns, anaesthesia and photography were deployed on the battlefield for the first time. The war was attracting reporters and journalists from all over the world and when, on 4th April that year, the
City of London
docked in New York from Liverpool viaQueenstown, Ireland, Francis was amongst the passengers 39 . Where he went and what he did while he was there is not known but he seems to have had a fair degree of exposure to the American newspaper industry because after his return he adopted the less formal, more free-flowing style of his American fellow reporters and for the rest of his journalistic life, intentionally or otherwise, American expressions and forms of spelling crop up in his writing.
    Between his return to England in 1866 and 1870 Francis was employed by the
Oxford Journal
and once again he lived with his parents who were resident in the city at the time 40 . Sporadic examples of journalism published under his own name begin to appear from this time although, since they were usually signed only with his initials, F.C., they are difficult to track down. In 1884 he wrote a series of three articles for the
Tricycling Journal
about a journey that he undertook on such a machine from London to Oxford in which he described the landscape and notable sights along the way. He evidently loved the English countryside and in later life he published polemics about the protection of public open spaces and rights of way. He also wrote other accounts of meandering through the rural landscape by canal boat. In all of these there is evidence of the keen eye for geographical detail that must have stood him in such good stead during the three years that he later spent mapping Cambridge and its surroundings.
    The census of 1871 is the only one during the entire life of his parents in which Francis was not living at home. They had left Oxford to settle in Cambridge and Francis journeyed to London in an apparent attempt to break into the world of mainstream national journalism. It does not appear to have been met with success. On the night of Sunday 2nd April he was living alone in a private hotel in Essex Street. The street, which is just off the Strand, is close to Fleet Street, then the heartland of the British newspaper industry. It is an obvious place to live for someone trying to make their way in the profession of journalism but in the case of Francis there is a surprising entry under ‘Rank, profession or occupation.’ It reads: ‘No occupation.’ Most people who were temporarily out of work would have entered ‘Reporter, unemployed’ or similar. If they were fortunate enough not to have to work they entered ‘Living on own means’ or ‘Annuitant’. The words ‘No occupation’ usually indicated someone who was permanently unable to work through mental or physical incapacity.
    Even stranger is the entry under ‘Where born’. The convention was that a person entered first the county and then the town of their birth and everyone else on the page has done just that. Francis entered ‘Cambridge, Ealing Grove’. He had been born in Acton so the entry should have read ‘Middlesex, Acton.’ Ealing Grove was the name of Lady Noel Byron’s boarding school where his parents had taught until 1835, two years before Francis was born and to which they may later have sent their son. It is nowhere near Cambridge. It is almost as if he was deliberately interpreting the question to mean ‘Where educated’. Even then there is an anomaly. He may well have attended the school at Ealing Grove but there is no evidence of his having enrolled in, let alone graduated