Serial homicide by doctors: Shipman in perspective

The previous BMA chairman, among others, is on record as saying that Harold Shipman is unique, yet medicine has arguably thrown up more serial killers than all the other professions put together, with nursing a close second.1-4 Dentistry too has had its notorious characters, yet among veterinarians homicide seems to be almost unknown.

“Jack the Ripper,” the perpetrator of five unsolved murders in 1888 in London, is thought to have been a member of the medical profession, although there is no conclusive evidence. Sir William Gull, “physician in ordinary” to Queen Victoria, and Dr Thomas Barnardo were prime suspects, and there were advocates for Montague John Druitt, a barrister (he was from a respected medical family and may have passed himself off as a doctor); a Dr Stanley (he may have been fictitious); the Polish Dr George Chapman (real name Severin Klosowski); and the Russian Dr Alexander Pedachenko.5-7 Nor has conclusive evidence been found for Gaylord Sundheim (a psychotic who had studied medicine) being the “mad butcher” of Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1930s.8