Harold Shipman

Harold Frederick Shipman (1946 to 2004) was an English general practitioner who became one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history. Born in Nottingham, he studied medicine at the University of Leeds, graduating in 1970, and later practised as a family doctor in Todmorden and then in Hyde, Greater Manchester, where he opened his own surgery in 1993 and was a respected member of the community. In 1975 he had been fined for forging prescriptions of pethidine for his own use. In 1998 a local doctor raised concern over the high death rate among his patients, and the forged will of his last victim, Kathleen Grundy, led to his arrest. He was convicted in January 2000 of murdering fifteen patients and given a whole life order. The Shipman Inquiry, chaired by Dame Janet Smith, examined all deaths he had certified and found that he targeted vulnerable elderly patients, killing them with fatal doses of drugs; the estimated number of victims is about 250. He died by suicide in prison in 2004. His case is recorded in the Medicine Atlas as a landmark of medical ethics, certification and regulatory failure rather than as healing practice.