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Harold Shipman

72 replies

WillowSummerSloth · 30/09/2020 20:47

I'm just watching the 2nd episode. It's just a shocking, devastating story. One thing is puzzling me though - how did he get the diamorphine? I'm a GP and have no access to it and no need to access it. If I have a palliative patient, I prescribe morphine but the district nurse is the person that administers it. I can't even understand how he got this medication. He can hardly have stood in the pharmacy with a prescription in hand?! Was it different back then?

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Zeebeezee · 30/09/2020 23:42

No wonder those in need of a script for Valium or the like for acute anxiety have to suffer on. That is the result of this abuse of drugs now IMO.

These drugs have their place otherwise they would not be manufactured. Shame on Shipman and the likes.

JacobReesMogadishu · 30/09/2020 23:47

I believe when he was in Hyde he was a line/single GP Practice. Which was banned following him. Maybe he didn’t even have a practice nurse?

I remember as midwives we used to pick up pethidine for home births and if not used take it away with us. We can’t do that now. It’s discouraged for a home birth but if used the woman has to pick it up....and dispose of it if not used.

backinthebox · 01/10/2020 00:00

He was a lone GP in Hyde, working from a small surgery with just a receptionist. The surgery across the road had 7 GPs in it, and they whistleblew for ages before anyone listened to them. I used to be a pharmaceutical rep selling painkillers, they warned me off him long before it all came to light. I can still remember the senior lady GP there fiercely barking that I should never go over to the other surgery in town. I never met him although I did go into his surgery to try to make appointments. It was very shocking at the time, and still is.

Jasmin82 · 01/10/2020 00:05

I feel for the families who will never know for certain if their relatives were killed by him because, whiles it's suspected, it was so long ago that they can't be completely certain.
I'm also intrigued in the difference of how the coverage when it was thought it was only older/elderly people that had been murdered focused on the numbers and the way the finding of him having potentially murdered children while at Pontefract Infirmary was covered. It's even more upsetting to think that general attitudes haven't really changed towards older people that much.

purrswhileheeats · 01/10/2020 00:21

My ex was working in Liverpool prison when he was on remand there. He witnessed him shouting 'I shouldn't be here, I don't belong here!' when the guards were moving him.

ShopTattsyrup · 01/10/2020 00:24

I had a colleague who was knew him when he was a junior doctor in the 70s and she was a newly qualified nurse. She said he was a bit of an "smug git" she always thought, she only really remembered him because about 10 or 15 years later she was a ward sister at Thameside hospital near Manchester and spotted that he was the GP of quite a few of the patients (nothing dodgy, just a coincidence). She said she remembered thinking that it made sense for him to be a GP because he hated being told what to go and hated when the nurses knew more than him etc. so she thought he'd probably quite like working solo.

ageingdisgracefully · 01/10/2020 08:05

I've seen programmes about Shipman and liked the fact that the emphasis was on the victims and not him.

I don't suppose we'll ever find out what his motive was.

He was married but I'm not sure about kids.

ageingdisgracefully · 01/10/2020 08:07

Wife Primrose and four children.

Arofan · 01/10/2020 08:14

@purrswhileheeats

My ex was working in Liverpool prison when he was on remand there. He witnessed him shouting 'I shouldn't be here, I don't belong here!' when the guards were moving him.
Well he was right. He belonged in a hell much worse than prison. Evil man.
Peregrina · 01/10/2020 11:02

I felt the greatest sympathy for those who tried to blow the whistle on him and had their concerns dismissed. They must have felt really, really angry that they weren't listened to.

Toddlerteaplease · 01/10/2020 17:26

Mine and my colleagues worst nightmare, would be a discrepancy in the CD book when they are checked!

Pelleas · 01/10/2020 17:34

I thought he had a wife and a few children?

He had a wife, Primrose, and 4 children. His first child was born while he was still a medical student - an unplanned pregnancy resulting in marriage at a young age, as was common in those days.

I have often wondered what Shipman's motive was for the murders. By the accounts of people who saw him moments after he had killed someone, he showed no signs of excitement at what he'd done. A diamorphine overdose isn't what you would choose to kill someone from sadistic motives, as the death would be swift and painless.

Original poster
WillowSummerSloth · 01/10/2020 20:38

Yes Pelleas I also wondered about motive. On the TV documentary it said he did one of the murders with the family present so it's hardly like he can spend time feeling elated or whatever the hell he might be feeling. He would just have had to act totally normal and then leave. Such a weird, weird man.

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Original poster
WillowSummerSloth · 01/10/2020 20:39

Sorry, by using the word weird I don't want to sound insensitive. He was also completely evil. I used weird because it doesn't fit with any normal pattern of a serial killer.

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Lolaloveslemonade · 02/10/2020 06:05

TV documentary it said he did one of the murders with the family present so it's hardly like he can spend time feeling elated or whatever the hell he might be feeling. He would just have had to act totally normal and then leave.

This seems to be part of what they do (Murderers) They seem able to switch very quickly from murderer to a different persona.

HS had nothing to clean up and no body to hide so for him it was possible to switch back to ‘caring doctor persona’ almost immediately.

Aquamarine1029 · 02/10/2020 06:15

I have thought of this monster's children many times over the years. I can't even imagine having to live with the knowledge of what their father did. They are yet more victims of his crimes.

emilybrontescorsett · 02/10/2020 06:26

I met a woman who used to live near him as a child. She was at school with some of his children and her mum and Shipman's wife used to take turns collecting the children from school. She said her and her sibling would go to Shipman's house and vice versa. From what she remembered of him he was quite ordinary.
Several people blew the whistle on him but they were always fobbed off. I think it was a solicitor who's mother had died who insisted that her mother's will had been forged by Shipman who eventually brought it to light. Even she was fobbed off by the police. It was only her determined insistence that forced the police to investigate.

FatimaMunchy · 02/10/2020 06:29

JacobReesMoggadishu lone GPs still exist. There is one in our town.

JacobReesMogadishu · 02/10/2020 06:32

@FatimaMunchy

JacobReesMoggadishu lone GPs still exist. There is one in our town.
They must have reallowed it then. It was a definite thing following the enquiry that it would no longer be permitted.
JacobReesMogadishu · 02/10/2020 06:36

I guess from a motive point of view it could be power. Getting a kick out of getting away with it, feeling superior to everyone else who me would have considered too stupid to have realised what was happening. He quite probably got a kick out of being made a cup of tea by the husband of the woman he’d just killed.

It’s scary to think if it wasn’t for the forged will he could have carried on getting away with it, possibly never have been caught.

Peregrina · 02/10/2020 06:51

Where do you live though? I can imagine that in remote places, like some parts of Scotland, where they have difficulty attracting staff, it would either be a lone GP or nothing.

FatimaMunchy · 02/10/2020 07:03

It is a country town in England with a population of about 9,000.
There is another larger practice with multiple GPs.
It had a lone GP for many years, then a married couple had it. The current incumbent said his wife would be joining him, and had a consulting room with her name on, but she never appeared.
I thought the major disadvantage of a lone practice was that they couldn't offer the same services as a larger one. Also, if you don't get on with the doctor you are stuck. It never occurred to me that it could be dangerous until now.

JacobReesMogadishu · 02/10/2020 07:12

I think its probably less dangerous now. They have CQC inspections now which they didn’t used to have. I’m sure the local CCG will also have an overview of stats and performance. You’d like to think any practice with such an amount of excessive deaths would be picked up swiftly these days.

Footle · 02/10/2020 08:10

From a previous documentary I remember that he did break down , just once, under questioning.

BlackAmericanoNoSugar · 02/10/2020 11:30

You have to wonder how many other serial killers have operated in plain sight and never been discovered. If Shipman hadn't falsified the will he might never have been caught, even though people suspected and were raising concerns they weren't being taken seriously.

For instance, after George Floyd was murdered and the video was online it occurred to me that the police officer appeared to be using murder as a form of stress relief. I wonder if there had been 'accidental' deaths in his past that hadn't been filmed. Same for other police officers, there probably wouldn't be available data but how many of them 'find a dead body' every few months or have suspects who die under circumstances that are never investigated. I'm specifically thinking of the US because of the George Floyd case, but there are plenty of countries where the police force is much less regulated and monitored.