By IAN HERBERT in Hyde
Shipman. Once, it was merely a name. There were seven of them in the south Manchester telephone book which covers the town of Hyde, including one, Dr H. F., of The Surgery in Market St.
But all that was before June 1998, when the popular GP attempted
to forge a £386,000 will in the name of Kathleen Grundy, an 81-year-old patient and former mayoress of Hyde.
He chose a woman whose daughter, Angela Woodruff, was a sharp-witted probate lawyer. After Grundy's death, the forgery was exposed by Woodruff, police arrested Shipman and so began arguably one of the most astonishing stories in British criminal history.
It revealed Harold Shipman - Fred to all who knew him - as Britain's most prolific killer. Between March 1975 and June 1998, he killed at least 179 women and 44 men, the oldest 92, the youngest 41.
"You murdered each and every one of your victims by a calculated and cold-blooded perversion of your medical skills," said Shipman's trial judge, Justice Forbes, jailing him on 15 murder counts on January 31, 2000. "I have little doubt that each of your victims smiled and thanked you as she submitted to your deadly administrations."
Shipman was born in Nottingham's Bestwood council estate and worked his way through the 11-plus into the city's High Pavement Grammar School, where he was known as a loner.
In 1963, while 17 and studying for A-levels, his mother, Vera, died at the age of 43 from cancer. Later there was speculation that her death explained his obsession with killing. Neighbours told how he watched doctors injecting his mother with morphine before she died.
He started studying at Leeds University Medical School in 1965 and graduated in 1970, becoming a houseman at Pontefract General Infirmary in West Yorkshire, before joining his first practice in the Pennines.
It was there he began forging prescriptions to supply himself with hoards of the painkiller pethidine, which he injected for six months to the point where his veins collapsed. When his drug habit was discovered, he resigned immediately. He was later fined £600 at Halifax magistrates' court on drugs and forgery charges.
But despite his case coming before the General Medical Council, he was not struck off or even censured. He underwent a course of psychiatric treatment and returned to work as a medical officer in Durham before moving to the Donneybrook practice in Hyde.
Within four months he left the Donneybrook practice, taking 300 patients and refusing to pay his share of a tax bill. His move to 21 Market St was the fulfilment of all he had worked for.
He established himself as a pillar of Hyde society. He chaired the local medical committee which supervised GP practices in his area, and was also a member of the local community health council and sat on the parent-teachers' association of the school in Mottram which his four children had attended.
The Shipman inquiry showed levels of aggression and conceit, from the humiliation of young drugs sales reps to unusual behaviour at a lecture. A witness said: "He kept interrupting and disagreeing with the visiting lecturer in a very pompous way."
Psychiatrists told the inquiry Shipman's arrogance was "almost certainly a mask for poor self-esteem".
- INDEPENDENT
By IAN HERBERT in Hyde
Shipman. Once, it was merely a name. There were seven of them in the south Manchester telephone book which covers the town of Hyde, including one, Dr H. F., of The Surgery in Market St.
But all that was before June 1998, when the popular GP attempted
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