MEDISCOPE | ISSUE 2 | 02 DECEMBER 2020

THE ANGEL OF DEATH
By Phoebe Yan Chun Po 12P
The role of a doctor is to apply principles and
procedures of medicine to prevent, diagnose and
care for patients, helping save lives and making lives
better to the best of their ability. But have you ever
heard about Dr Death and his 200 patients? An
English general practitioner and serial killer who
intentionally murdered at least 200 of his patients.
Doctor Harold Frederick Shipman was born on the
14th January 1946 in Nottingham. He was born into a
working-class family, and he was the favourite child
of his mother, Vera, who subsequently raised her
child into having a sense of superiority above others.
As a teenager, his mother was diagnosed with
terminal lung cancer, to which he willingly oversaw
her care. When looking after his mother, he was
fascinated by the positive effect of morphine
administrated to his mother, as the morphine gave
his mother a euphoric personality when the drug
was administered, which helped her suffering until
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she succumbed to her disease on June 21st 1963.
Morphine is a strong painkiller, and is used to treat
severe pain, and is often used when weaker
painkillers no longer work; working by blocking pain
signals from travelling from the nerves to the brain,
however certain doses can kill patients and can also
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cause addiction to the drug. After the death of his
mother, he was determined to go to medical school,
and was admitted to Leeds University. Supposedly,
his determination to go to medical school stemmed
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from the death of his mother, however there are
many theories to why we wanted to enter the
healthcare sector; such as the theory, due to his
sense of superiority his mother nurtured him to
have, led him to believe he could ‘play God’.
By 1974, Shipman was a father of two and had joined
a medical practice in Yorkshire, where he thrived as
a family practitioner. However, during this time he
developed an addiction to the painkiller Pethidine,
which is a common injection of medicine used in
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labour. He forged large amounts of the drug,
through prescriptions, which is very illegal; he was
forced to leave the practice when caught by a
colleague in 1975. Before, being caught about his
drug addiction he supposedly had epilepsy (which
was not true), as Shipman would occasionally
blackout during working hours, which was the side
effect of the drug, as the drug pethidine can leave
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patients dizzy. At this time he entered a drug
rehabilitation program, though he only received a
small fine (£600) and a conviction of forgery. At this
current time, doctors who become addicts to drugs
usually receive a suspension of their license to
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practice medicine, yet Doctor Harold Shipman was
still able to work as a general practitioner and his
records of drug addiction were not relayed to the
next medical centre he moved to, Donneybrook
Medical Centre in Hyde. During an interview with the
medical centre, Shipman himself mentioned his
previous addiction, though the centre had no
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records of this. The centre must have thought him
admitting his drug addiction and his rehabilitation
was enough for him to continue to work as a general
practitioner?
During his time at Donneybrook Medical Centre, he
built his reputation as a hardworking doctor, gaining
the trust of many patients and colleagues, however
he had a reputation of arrogance amongst the junior
staff members. During his time here he killed about
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70 of his patients. In 1993, he established his own
surgery, becoming a very well respected member of
the community. At his surgery, Shipman had a long
list of patients who awaited his care, due to the
amount of respect the community had towards him;
he often gave home visits to his elderly patients, to
which the majority of his patients were those of the
elderly age group. Due to his ‘love’ for giving home
visits, it meant the majority of elderly patients were
referred to Shipman, this further reputing his stance
of a patient and saintly doctor.
But how did this well respected doctor kill?
What he would do is that he’d visit, usually elderly
women, either because of check ups or to conduct
surveys (for research or about the general care at
the surgery), the majority of the time Shipman had
the intent to ‘take blood’ as samples for either
testing or research, yet what he was doing is
injecting these elderly patients with lethal doses of
morphine. After injecting the patients with the
morphine, he’d leave, and later that day would be
found dead. Then relatives or friends, who would
find the body, would call up Doctor Harold Shipman
to ask what had happened, but Shipman would say
the patient died of old age, or had heart problems
etc. And for his ‘determination of death’ to be
proven, he would then alter the medical records of
the patients, to line up with the cause of death. In
many cases, after death, relatives of the deceased
are able to have the option to do an autopsy, yet due
to the reverence doctor Shipman had in the
community he persuaded families not to conduct
PSYCHIATRY
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