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By Root 1240 0

the running track and the football field. But he did not involve himself in the camaraderie of sport. His unshakeable belief in his innate superiority alienated those who would otherwise have been his friends. An isolated adolescent, he had to cope as his beloved mother wasted away with terminal lung cancer. He would race home after school to make her a cup of tea and chat with her. It was clear that she found great solace in his company. It is thought that Shipman learned his engaging bedside manner then. He would also play out his mother’s deathbed scene over and over with the elderly women that would become the majority of his victims.

Towards the end of her life, Vera was in great pain. Shipman watched in fascination as the family doctor injected her with morphine. It took away the pain, but it did not stop Vera growing thinner and frailer. Then on 21 June 1963, at the age of 43, his mother died. Shipman himself was just 17. The loss seems to have left him with no regard for human life or feelings towards others.

Two years after his mother died, Shipman was admitted to Leeds University Medical School, after re-sitting the entrance examinations. At university he was a loner and most of the teachers and his fellow students at Leeds could barely remember him. Those who did claim that he looked down on them, seemingly bemused by the way his fellow students behaved.

‘It was as if he tolerated us,’ said one. ‘If someone told a joke he would smile patiently, but Fred never wanted to join in. It seems funny, because I later heard he’d been a good athlete, so you’d have thought he’d be more of a team player.’

However, on the soccer pitch he revealed another, darker side. His intense need to win made him extremely aggressive both on and off the ball.

At school, Shipman had never shown much interest in girls.

‘I don’t think he ever had a girlfriend,’ said one teacher. ‘In fact, he took his older sister to school dances. They made a strange couple. But then, he was a bit strange, a pretentious lad.’

However, at university he quickly acquired a girlfriend. She was daughter of his landlord, a 16-year-old window-dresser name Primrose, three years his junior. She also came from a strict background with a mother who controlled her acquaintanceships. No calendar girl, Primrose was delighted to have found a boyfriend. They married in November 1966 when she was 17 and five months pregnant.

Shipman’s sense of superiority was not dented even when he had to re-sit a number of exams at medical school. But he eventually got the grades to graduate and moved on to a mandatory period of hospital training, becoming a junior house doctor at Pontefract General Infirmary. It is thought that he began his career of killing there – murdering at least ten patients, including a four-year-old girl.

In 1974 he joined a medical practice in Todmorden in Calderdale, West Yorkshire. By this time he had two children. In this small Yorkshire town, Shipman blossomed. No longer the withdrawn loner, he was suddenly outgoing and became respected by both his patients and his fellow practitioners, who welcomed the up-to-date information they got from a young doctor, fresh from medical school. But the staff under him at the practice saw a different side of Shipman. He was often rude and liked to belittle his juniors, frequently berating them as ‘stupid’. He also had a way of manipulating the other doctors and the general opinion was that he was a control freak – though he was also seen as hard-working, enthusiastic and sociable.

But soon problems surfaced. He began having blackouts. He told the other partners he suffered from epilepsy. However, the true reason for the blackouts was soon revealed. The practice’s receptionist Marjorie Walker discovered some discrepancies in the local chemists’ narcotics ledgers. The records showed that Shipman had been prescribing large amounts of pethidine – a morphine-like analgesic whose addictive properties are still in dispute – in the names of several patients and on behalf of the practice itself. These discrepancies were