Britain’s most prolific serial killer of the modern age, whose photo I will not be sharing here, worked for a number of years at The Surgery at 21 Market Street, in the small Tameside town of Hyde. The town has the unfortunate distinction of being associated with two of the 20th century's most notorious cases of serial murder, for it was here that Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were living at the time of their arrest in October 1965. Just under thirty-three years later, Harold Shipman, a popular local GP, was arrested for the murder of one of his patients by means of the powerful opiate diamorphine; like the Moors Murderers, Shipman would be handed a whole life order.
Shipman was caught because he forged the will of a patient, making changes to award himself a great deal of money. The patient, Kathleen Grundy, was a well-known figure in the local community who had once been the Mayoress of Hyde, and who had died in June 1998 at the age of 81. When her GP, Dr Shipman, told her family that the cause of death was old age they were a little confused, for Kathleen had been fit and active up until she died. But of course, people trust the doctor. It was only when Kathleen’s family were shown a will that she had supposedly amended not long before her death that their suspicions became more concrete. The document was sloppy, typed out on a dodgy typewriter, and certainly not the sort of document they would have expected Kathleen to have made. Luckily, the police took the family seriously, and began an investigation, which eventually led to police re-examining the cases of more than 100 of Shipman’s deceased former patients. At trial, Shipman was found guilty of fifteen murders.
But there were almost certainly more. Shipman had been working in medicine since the 1970s, and it seemed impossible that he had not killed until the 1990s. Initially, the Government announced that an inquiry would be held behind closed doors to establish what had gone wrong in the Shipman case and what could be done to ensure nothing like it ever happened again. However, thanks to the tireless work of the families of the doctor’s other potential victims, not only was a public inquiry launched, but it sought to determine as best it could whether each of those individuals had in fact died at his hands.
The inquiry concluded that Shipman was guilty of at least 214 murders, though it is believed that the true figure could be as high as 250. One thing that almost all of the media coverage had in common was its fixation on the commonalities between the victims – almost all of them were over the age of sixty, and the majority were women. Some of these people had been killed while patients in the hospital where Shipman worked as a junior doctor in the early years of his career, but his later modus operandi was to visit his patients at home, inject them with an opiate, and then certify their death as due to natural causes. Nobody will ever know why Shipman committed the murders, as he took his own life after only two years in prison. There was no financial reward in most of the cases, so it appears that Shipman killed because he enjoyed it.
While there was of course media interest in the case, one journalist described in this BBC documentary (which I highly recommend) that the coverage was muted compared to that of the Soham Murders only a short while later. As the BBC documentary explains, a colleague of Shipman's had actually attempted to raise the alarm earlier. Disturbed by the sheer volume of deaths which Shipman was certifying, she spoke to the police, whose investigation was cursory at best. This doctor felt that Shipman was getting away with his crimes because people expected his victims, many of them over 80, to die, regardless of how fit and healthy they may have been. The women were invisible, and despite the doctor pointing out how strange it was that the victims all seemed to die in the afternoon (unusual) and with their doors unlocked (also unlikely), nobody was listening because nobody cared about the habits of elderly women.
The term "elderly" was used extensively in the media coverage of the case, despite many of Shipman's victims only being in their 60s. While I admire the dedicated coverage of Manchester Evening News, which has attempted to humanise the otherwise all-too-invisible women who died, I am hesitant to focus too heavily on the fact that many of them were perfectly fit and healthy; had they not been healthy they would still have deserved to live. The fact is, society views the chronically ill and older women (and elderly men) in much the same way - burdensome and boring. It seems highly likely that part of the reason Shipman was able to continue killing for many decades was because the lives of his victims were held to be of less importance. It was ageism, a sort of proxy ableism, and sexism. But there was also the issue of class.
People really do trust their doctors, especially people who hail from a pre-internet (and thus pre-freebmd) age. Those people trust their doctors because they see them as their social betters - usually better educated and often hailing from a more affluent social class. In 2012, nurse Rebecca Leighton spent six week in prison after being wrongly accused of poisoning her patients. The real culprit was eventually caught and found guilty at trial, but Leighton's life was in tatters. The media storm that surrounded her may well have had its roots in the Shipman case - perhaps people were now more likely to believe that such a thing could happen. But the readiness with which people condemned Leighton may have had as much to do with social class and a tendency to view nurses' specialty and skill as inherently less than their doctor colleagues. Many of Shipman's victims were also working class, which only added to their invisibility in society.
Historians often use the victimised people from the past to illustrate an intellectual point. We all do it, harvest stories and turn them into convenient anecdotes. The media very often does the same when it comes to murder and other serious crime, and yet historians seem to be immune to the charges of insensitivity that many journalists face. That seems a bit strange. Historians have as much responsibility as anybody else to keep the humanity of their subjects at the heart of their work. Where that isn't possible, it might be worth thinking about whether the work they intend to embark upon is really all that ethical.
Next week I will leave the modern age behind and travel back to a time when criminals raided gravesites on behalf of medical men, engaging in the illicit trade in body parts. But to end here, I would like to show you some of these women whose lives were full of value and meaning, regardless of the state of their health or who might still be missing them. They matter because they existed.
Marie West, who ran a clothing shop.
Irene Turner, who had recently returned from a holiday in Torquay.
Lizzie Adams, a passionate dance teacher, who had recently returned from a holiday in Malta.
Jean Lilley, described by a friend as "full of zest, full of life"
Kathleen Wagstaff, who regularly walked the mile into Hyde. She spoke on the telephone with her son the week before she died about upcoming Christmas celebrations
Bianka Pomfret, described by her former husband as "an outgoing and lovely person".
Norah Nuttal, whose son was visiting her at the time of her death.
Maureen Ward, a former college lecturer.
Winifred Mellor, who was looking forward to an upcoming trip to Israel.
Joan Melia, whose niece said, "she would walk everywhere. She was out in rain or snow."
Kathleen Grundy, a former mayoress of Hyde.
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