Harold fredrick Shipman was born on January 14 1946 and died january 13 2004
He was known to his aquaintences as Fred Shipman and he was a general practitioner and serial killer
He murdered about 250 of his patients. Shipmans murders raised questions about the powers and responsibilities of the medical community.
Harold became interested in medicine after watching his mother receive morphine injections to ease the pain she suffered while dying of lung cancer. In 1970 he received a medical degree from Leeds university.
A few years later , he became a general practitioner in Todmorden in Lancashire. In 1975 he had been discovered to have written several fraudulent prescriptions for opiate pethedine, to which he had become addicted. Forcing him out of his practice and into drug rehabilitation.
In 2000 he was convicted for 15 counts of murder and one account of forgery. He was sentenced to life in prison. Shipman commited suicide while in prison , hanging himself in his cell.
A government inquiry was ordered to figure out just how many more people he possibly killed; in 2005 it was revealed that he had killed an estimated 250 people in 1971 ; in most cases he injected them with a leathal dose of diamorphine . He singed death certificates reckoning they died of natural causes.