Harold Shipman

[WillowSummerSloth]

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?

You have to wonder how many other serial killers have operated in plain sight and never been discovered.

There are undoubtedly serial killers operating as we speak.

I did wonder how many other doctors merrily got away with killing people at the time, given how incredibly easy it was for Shipman. I would hope that none were in his league, but if as a doctor you found someone inconvenient it appears that it would have been child's play to get rid of them.

I seem to remember that Shipman timed his suicide to preserve his wife's right to a pension.

There was another doctor in the 60's who was accused of the same but got off. Cant think of his name

I imagine we hear very little about his family because of the possibility of them being hounded and associated with him, even though they were entirely innocent.

Imagine being married to that and then finding out everything he’d done.

They interviewed some people about his suicide and most seemed to think that justice had finally been done. Those who felt that the last chance of finding out what had happened to their relatives conceded that even if he’d stayed alive he was never likely to speak out.

Evil evil man. I’m not a supporter of the death penalty but I don’t think it’s wrong to be glad that he’s dead.

Amazing that Hyde had also suffered due to the Moors Murders in the 60s as well - they covered that in the programme about how the people there couldn't believe it - it's not a large town so it is amazing to have both these awful things in one town.

@MoonJelly

I did wonder how many other doctors merrily got away with killing people at the time, given how incredibly easy it was for Shipman. I would hope that none were in his league, but if as a doctor you found someone inconvenient it appears that it would have been child's play to get rid of them.

I seem to remember that Shipman timed his suicide to preserve his wife's right to a pension.

The Gosport hospital deaths still seem to be under investigation, Centrering on one doctor.

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/jane-barton-gosport-hospital-deaths-opiates-painkillers-prescribing-inquiry-a8419061.html

It does seem like maybe she was more trying to help people who were dying anyway??? But that’s what people thought about Shipman when he was first arrested so who knows.

I've read the memoirs of a midwife at Tameside who knew him quite well and said 'no one ever suspected a thing'. He used to turn up at the hospital to be with patients in labour as support. Clearly she wasn't aware of all the people who were suspicious.

Finished watching this & like a lot of people I assumed his victims were at death's door anyway. It was really sad seeing how the lady at the end was really active & would be 90 now if she hadn't been murdered.

I'm convinced his motives were power & control. Simple as that. Chilling.

I am sure I recall his wife taking the police to court because she wanted her jewllery back which had been siezed..... jewellery shipman had stolen from his victims.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-341723/Shipmans-wife-claims-10-000-jewellery-haul.html

I got the impression that his wife was extremely naive, so she probably didn't know where the jewellery came from.

I seem to remember that Shipman timed his suicide to preserve his wife's right to a pension.

You do remember rightly - I was going to make the same comment.

I hadn't realised this programme was on - I'm going to start watching now. Thank you OP for putting this on my radar.

I thought at the time how odd it was that she never questioned why her husband had all this jewellery. Other people's wedding rings and personal items of jewellery. Nobody gives it to the doctor surely? I thought then she must have known somethings terribly wrong.

I suppose if she had questioned, she might have thought her husband was a thief - almost no one in the wildest imagination would jump to the conclusion that this made him a serial killer?

I think he stashed the jewellery away in the garage so his wife might not have come across it.

What horrified me about it all was the fairly casual nature of his killing. One case involved a patient who was perfectly well, he just chose to drop in on him on his way home one afternoon and killed him. Had he taken a different route home, presumably that patient would have survived. It's as if it had become almost a matter of routine for him.

Is this on Amazon or Netflix

It’s on bbc I player

Thanks

@MoonJelly

What horrified me about it all was the fairly casual nature of his killing. One case involved a patient who was perfectly well, he just chose to drop in on him on his way home one afternoon and killed him. Had he taken a different route home, presumably that patient would have survived. It's as if it had become almost a matter of routine for him.

Absolutely!

The casual callousness - you wouldn't kill a dog on a whim like that.

He was a massive egoist - he did it because he could. If he hadn't got greedy, he would have continued to kill probably for the rest of his medical career - and maybe beyond, as he could have secreted drugs away for future use. His contempt of the police when he refused even to look at them when he was being questioned; his need to control everything and everyone around him to the extent of committing suicide so that his wife would receive a pension; his refusal to accept any responsibility . . . I don't think he was insane- just massively narcissistic.

I also think his wife was a greedy and unpleasant woman. She may or may not have known about what he was doing - but to sue for the return of jewellery which had obviously been stolen from his victims was horrendous! What sort of person does that? Any normal person would want it out of the house and never want to even see it again - they would want it retired if possible, but they certainly wouldn't want to keep personal items stolen from vulnerable people who had been murdered but someone they liked and trusted.

I wonder where she is now - or even if she is alive.

What's the tv show on?

I haven't seen the TV programme yet but read a book recently by Richard Henriques who was the prosecutor in the case. There were some interesting points that I'd never heard before, one being that Shipman's mother died of cancer when he was in his teens and he was there when a GP gave her a dose of morphine at home and she died half an hour later (no suggestion that that GP did anything wrong) and he perhaps that he got his obsession with death then. Very chilling that he killed patients in the same way. There was a theory that he felt these mostly healthy, active ladies in their 60s, 70s, 80s didn't deserve to live as his mother died in her 40s.

Another thing I didn't realise was that 5 of his patients were murdered in his surgery! The statisitcal chance of a GP having even 1 patient die in their surgery over a course of a career is exceptionally low.

I worked in a chemist in the late 80s. We had people coming in with prescriptions for Pethidine