Harold Shipman

Harold Frederick Shipman (14 January 1946 – 13 January 2004) was a British general practitioner (a type of doctor) and serial killer. He is thought to have killed 250+ of his patients. He was a psychopath.

Early life and career

Shipman was born on 14 January 1946 in Bestwood council estate in Nottingham. He studied Medicine at the Leeds School of Medicine on scholarship. In 1974 he became a GP in Todmorden. In 1993 he started his own doctors' surgery in Hyde.

Crimes

In 1975, he was convicted of forging prescriptions for pethidine, to which he was addicted.

On 5 October 1999 he was put on trial and found guilty of 15 murders. On 31 January 2000, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for each murder. On 10 February 2000, exactly 10 days after his conviction, he was struck off from the General Medical Council Register. An investigation identified another 235 suspicious deaths. His usual way of killing was using morphine. Most of the patients he killed were old women.

Death

While he was an inmate in Wakefield prison, West Yorkshire, he committed suicide with bedsheets on the day before his 58th birthday on 13 January 2004. He was discovered hanged at 6.20am, prison staff tried to revive him but pronounced dead at 8.10am. It is not known why. At the time of his death he was still married to Primrose Shipman.

Shortly after 11am, an undertaker's van took Shipman's body from HM Wakefield Prison to the Medico Legal Mortuary Centre for identification. He was cremated in a secret location.

Aftermath

A garden in memory of Shipman's victims was opened in Hyde Park on 30 July 2005.

In pop culture

Post-punk band The Fall released a song about Shipman called "What About Us?". Actor James Bolam portrayed Harold Shipman in the ITV crime drama Harold Shipman.

Related pages

• John Bodkin Adams - British general practitioner and suspected serial killer
• Michael Swango - American doctor and serial killer