Harold Shipman cremation location (14th Jan 1946 to 13th Jan 2004)

 

Harold Shipman is one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history having killed about 250 people (mostly women.) Four years after being sentenced to life imprisonment he hanged himself in his prison cell aged 57. He lay in a mortuary for over a year before being cremated. Here I am at the crematorium where it happened.

 

Shipman was jailed for life in 2000 for the murder of 15 people but it's thought he murdered between 200 and 300 people between 1971 and 1998. He subjected them to a diamorphine overdose and hoped their proximity to death meant the murder would be overlooked. Most victims were cremated so the true number who were murdered remains unknown. Shipman spend less than four years in prison. He hanged himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison in January 2004 the day before his 58th birthday. When found he had already died.

 

Perhaps he would have murdered more of his patients had it not been for Dr Linda Reynolds of the Brooke Surgery in Hyde (near Shipman’s surgery.) She countersigned cremation forms and was worried enough about the high death rate among Shipman’s patients to inform the coroner. Shipman was known to be an effective doctor with an understand bedside manner (his IQ was 140, most doctors are 120.) Nobody knows why he did it. Perhaps the reason was rooted in his childhood. He was particularly close to his mum who died of lung cancer when he was aged seventeen. As the cancer took over doctors administered morphine and he witnessed how instantly the pain subsided giving blessed relief.

 

Shipman's widow, Primrose, has always refused to talk about his death. She was advised by police against burying her husband in case the grave was attacked.

 

Here I am at the crematorium which is about a mile south from Sheffield city. It's a rather bland building. There wasn't a single person there except a security guard who suddenly appeared. He began walking toward me though I didn't see him at first. I was too busy pointing and saluting for the camera. I said I wasn't a burglar and "take a photo of me if you want to" but he didn't and seemed more interested in a stream of text messages that beeped into his phone.

 

Up behind the building lies a sprawling Garden Of Remembrance. I had a stroll around it but down Shipman's "cremains" are there (cremains from CREmation reMAINS.) They probably went to his wife and four children. I wonder how many people he murdered - he killed seven people in February 1998 alone. He isn't on official lists of serial killers as the number of victims can't be verified. Columbian Luis Garavito is the world's most prolific serial killer with 193 proven murders.

 

I doubt I'll visit this crematorium again. I sat in the car and looked at the chimney through which particles of Shipman were ejected. Is there an afterlife where deeds go rewarded or punished? If death is like a television being turned off then he got away with it.