Ryan Green - Harold Shipman: The True Story of Britain’s Most Notorious Serial Killer

Copyright Ryan Green 2015.

All rights reserved

ISBN-13: 978-1522788065

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author.

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The man on the cover of this book looks like he could be anyones grandfather. Its easy to imagine him doting on his little grandkids, reading them stories from his lap and letting them play with his big, bushy beard. If you were told he was a doctor, I bet youd imagine he was a good, kind and gentle one, with an easy, affable manner and deep care for his patients.

Harold Frederick Shipman certainly projected all those qualities, but only so that he could hide the evil that lurked deep inside. Shipman abused his trust and used his position to kill no less than 218 of his patients found their end at his hand, making him the United Kingdoms most prolific serial killer by a long shot.

This book tells Shipmans story, from his childhood under a domineering mother to his pathetic death in a prison cell. It will put you in the perspective of those who lived and worked in proximity to him, showing you the considerate but sometimes haughty doctor he presented himself as before taking you through the process of wrenching off that mask and uncovering the full extent of the evil festering within.

We will make a study of the mans possible motives and close with a look at the systemic failures that allowed him to kill and steps taken to make sure nothing like his murderous spree ever happens again.

Turn the page and begin to look into the life and mind of the ultimate human paradox: the healer who kills Doctor Death.

Knowing what we do today about everything that happened and what Shipman did, its sometimes possible to forget the fact that those who lived and worked with him would have had a very different perception of him while they were living through it. Hindsight colours how we view the past and it is a lot easier for us to see warning signs and obvious red flags that we really might not have been able to connect if we were in the same situation as Harold Shipmans contemporaries.

There is no doubt that those red flags were there and that if someone had had the notion to diligently investigate and follow where they led, Shipmans killing spree would have been ended far sooner and a lot of grief and loss would have been avoided. We will examine some of them as we explore the story of Shipmans life before his crimes came to light in this chapter, but even as we do so, spare some effort to trying to put yourself in the place of Shipmans contemporaries and close relations. Try to forget the killer you know for a few moments and imagine how you would have reacted to the information available to you, and also remember that you might not have had any knowledge of even some of those surface facts that might have tipped the balance of suspicion for you.

Devils like Shipman deserve no sympathy, and this is by no means a plea to show him any. However, a really important part of figuring out how things like this can happen and of making sure they dont happen again that is often overlooked is gaining an understanding of the processes that were at play the minds of those who were living through the tragedy and yet were unable to see it. You can never predict it any one of us can find ourselves in a similar situation someday, and we all need to be able to identify those thought processes that may blind us to what is happening.

TV shows and books in the True Crime genre sometimes have a tendency to be overzealous in analysing the childhoods of killers and violent criminals to find connections between their upbringing and their actions to the point where they draw links far too tenuous to be taken seriously. The case of Harold Shipman is not one of those cases. This is one of those stories about which we can almost be completely certain that the way he was raised and the experiences he had in his younger years definitely informed and affected what happened later on.

Harold Frederick Shipman was born on the 14th of January 1946 to Vera and Harold Sr. He was their second child Freddy, as he was affectionately known, had a sister seven years older named Pauline and was joined by a younger brother named Clive four years after he was born. Despite his being in a normally less than privileged position among his siblings, Vera had a very special liking for Freddy. It was obvious even to neighbours that he was her favourite, and that she saw him as being the brightest and most promising of her offspring.

Vera had something of a superiority complex when it came to all of her children. She controlled who they could play with and when, but with her Freddy she took it to another level where his brother and sister could dress casually he would have to wear a tie, and his associations were even more tightly controlled. That sense of superiority inevitably rubbed off on her son, and he grew up somewhat of a loner with few friends, though he was an enthusiastic athlete and played soccer in school.

The sequence of events that undoubtedly had the biggest impact on Harold Shipmans life was the illness and death of his mother. Sometime in his adolescence Vera developed terminal lung cancer, and the young Harold took it upon himself to be at her side and take care of her as much as he could. For him, this meant rushing straight home from school to be by her side and keep her company. Vera no doubt loved these sessions and grew to anticipate her Freddy coming home as the highlight of her day. Without a doubt, its while spending time with his mother that Shipman developed the winning bedside manner that endeared his patients to him in his medical career.

Another thing he witnessed that would have altogether darker imprints on the future is that Shipman was also present when the family doctor was attending to Vera. This meant he was present when Veras cancer was severely advanced and she was in constant pain. The doctor would administer morphine to Vera, and Shipman witnessed how her pain would instantly disappear almost as soon as the drug was administered. The fascination with opiates similar to morphine would never wane, and would manifest itself first as an object of personal addiction, and later as his chosen modus operandi for ending his victims lives.

In a more general sense, it is almost certain that this proximity to someone so close to him in the last stages of her life, coupled with the almost angelic aspect he witnessed a medical professional in of taking away his mothers pain spurred him on to choose to become a doctor in the first place.

Vera passed away on June 21st 1963 and Harold would later bend all of his efforts towards entering the medical profession.

A young man with a life as sheltered and with as little interaction with his peers as Harold Shipman had could reasonably have been expected to have very little luck with romance. Shipman, however, was more fortunate he caught the eye of a young lady by the name of Primrose. Primrose had grown up in very similar conditions to Shipman she too had a controlling mother who limited her interactions with other children, no doubt one of the factors that drew the two together.

In 1966, Shipman and Primrose got married he at the age of 19, she at 17 and five months pregnant with their first child. Shipman beat the odds again with this whirlwind romance the pair of them proved to be exceptionally well-matched for each other and remained together for the rest of his life. Primrose would stand by him through everything that happened and would vociferously come to his defence through a minor crisis early on in his career, as well as later on when his killing spree was uncovered.