General Chat

The exhumation of his victim he intended to defraud of £400,000
brought about Shipman's downfall. Fortunately people close to the victim knew her to be a strong healthy woman.

At the time it perhaps made a lot of sick people wonder about their Doctor.

And he was set to benefit from the deaths (or at least some of them wasn't he?) so maybe the answer David is greed. And arrogance that he was above discovery.

It does leave all those families wondering doesn't it....
Yes it may have "helped" some in that they no longer suffered but it wasn't his choice to make.

Comfortable or not, his victims met their end because he abused his position and their trust.

Killing for his own gain was hardly an act of kindness.

I would have hated someone I cared about to have been his patient.

He was a popular Doctor.No doubt. What pity (far too late) that his partners and colleagues didn't notice the abnormally high death rate among his patients.

The grandmother of someone I worked with died while she was a patient of his.

Although she wasn't acknowledged as one of his victims, her family were worried she may have also been hastened out of this world.

For many years, I wondered if the Senior Mistress from my high school had been one of his victims.

I was still in contact with her until she died .............. she lived in the area where he was a doctor, and died just before he was found out.

I finally found a list of his victims online, and neither she nor her sister was on there.


As for what makes someone ignore the Hippocratic oath, you might well ask what makes anyone become a serial killer ......... which is what he was.

My mother died of bowel cancer the same week as I had my cat put down and I know which death I would prefer.

Just another perspective on Harold Shipman is that I wouldn't mind being his patient. All of his victims, as far as I am aware, died quietly, many in their own comfortable chair with a cup of tea, in the company of somebody they trusted with no fear or inkling of their impending end.

I started a reading a book last night about a Doctor Harold Frederick Shipman.
He hung himself in his prison cell after having been convicted of murder.
I'd read about this in the news papers of course. If he hadn't been discovered by forging a patients will and having two patients from his waiting room as witnesses he might still be plying his his trade today. The woman he stood to inherit from was one of his several victims.He is alleged to have murdered 285 patients.
What makes a man who has devoted his life to curing and healing and signed the Hippocratic Oath become such a prolific murderer?