Shipman Inquiry Finds Family Doctor Harold Shipman Killed 215 of His Patients
Dame Janet Smith's first report found he killed patients for 23 years without arousing suspicion, and that the safeguards meant to catch him "provided no safeguard at all."
Published
Harold Shipman had been convicted of murdering 15 patients. On July 19, 2002, a public inquiry found that the family doctor from Hyde, near Manchester, had killed 215.
Dame Janet Smith, the High Court judge who chaired the Shipman Inquiry, said there was a "real suspicion" that he had killed another 45. Her first report found that Shipman began killing in 1975, a year after starting in practice at Todmorden in West Yorkshire, and that his first victim was Eva Lyons, in March 1975. He went on to kill 71 patients at the Donneybrook House group practice in Hyde and 143 at the solo practice he set up on Market Street, Hyde, in 1992. Of the 215, 171 were women and 44 were men. The oldest was Ann Cooper, 93, and the youngest Peter Lewis, 41.
The inquiry examined 888 deaths. In 394 it found compelling evidence that Shipman was not responsible, and in 38 the evidence was too thin to form any view. The 15 patients whose murders he was convicted of at Preston Crown Court in January 2000 were among the 215. Smith said she could find no clear motive.
Shipman killed with injections of diamorphine, the medical name for heroin, and then falsified his computer records to explain the deaths. He had been convicted of drug offenses in 1975, yet in 1996 he obtained, in the name of a dying patient, enough diamorphine to kill 360 people. "It is deeply disturbing that Shipman's killing of his patients did not arouse suspicion for so many years," Smith wrote. Most of his victims were cremated, and the certification checks meant to protect the public had failed: "In reality, the procedures provided no safeguard at all." The inquiry's next phase would examine how to stop such a doctor going undetected again.
The inquiry's first report put the number of patients Shipman killed at 215, while a 2007 government report described him as responsible for the murder of around 250.
Sources
- Learning from tragedy, keeping patients safe (Cm 7014), Department of Health / GOV.UK
- Shipman killed 215 patients, inquiry rules, The Guardian (staff and agencies)
- System riddled with failures, says Shipman judge, The Guardian
Related News
- July 14, 2003: Shipman Inquiry Finds a Better 1998 Police Investigation Would Probably Have Saved His Last Three Victims
- January 13, 2004: Harold Shipman Found Dead in His Wakefield Prison Cell the Day Before His 58th Birthday
- January 27, 2005: Final Shipman Inquiry Report Finds He Killed Patients as a Junior Doctor, Raising His Toll to About 250