0:15

Pushkin. On

0:28

the twenty first of August nineteen

0:30

seventy four, Elaine Oswald

0:33

made a visit to the doctor's office in

0:35

a small town not far from Manchester

0:38

in the north of England. Oswald

0:40

had a slight pain in her side, but

0:42

she was hoping to go into work later that day. Oswald

0:46

had never met this particular doctor before,

0:48

and he was only a few years older than she was.

0:51

She was only twenty five. He had

0:53

spectacles and the kind of big brown

0:55

beard that was fashionable at the time. The

0:58

doctor couldn't have been friendlier or

1:00

more accommodating. He sat beside

1:02

her, not over on the other side of a big desk,

1:05

and he told her she might have kidney stones.

1:08

He prescribed some strong painkillers,

1:10

then suggested she go home and rest. Leave

1:13

your door unlocked. He said, I'll come

1:15

round after my morning clinic has finished

1:18

and do a blood test. Later

1:20

that day he stopped by. His wife

1:23

and son were in the car outside. He said,

1:25

just a quick jab with a needle to draw

1:27

the blood and he'd be on his way. The

1:30

needle slid into her arm.

1:34

The next thing Elaine Oswald remembers

1:37

was waking up on the floor with a

1:39

doctor and two paramedics trying to

1:41

revive her. She was rushed

1:43

to hospital, where the staff, she recalled,

1:46

treated her like the scum of the earth.

1:48

They assumed she'd overdosed on those

1:50

painkillers. The young doctor

1:53

was much kinder. She must have had an

1:55

allergic reaction, he said, Thank

1:57

goodness he'd been there to administer the kiss

1:59

of life. He promised to write up

2:01

the case for a medical journal. She

2:04

was grateful, of course, who wouldn't

2:06

be. When she was discharged

2:09

from hospital, the kind doctor even

2:11

invited her and her husband for dinner. It

2:13

was a pleasant evening. He gave her

2:15

a medic alert bracelet so that no

2:18

future clinician would accidentally

2:20

prescribe similar drugs. She'd

2:22

go on to have two children, toughing

2:25

it out through the agonies of labor without

2:27

pain relief. Elaine

2:31

Oswald eventually moved to America,

2:33

became a professor of English, and

2:36

for the next twenty five years assumed

2:39

that the kind doctor, a man

2:41

called Harold Shipman, had

2:43

saved her life. She

2:45

couldn't have been more wrong. I'm

2:48

Tim Harford, and you're listening

2:51

to cautionary tales.

3:30

It took twenty five years for the world

3:32

to realize that Harold Chipman was

3:34

not the kindly doctor who believed

3:36

in his patients while others treated them

3:38

badly. Not the bold life

3:40

saver who'd leap to administer the kiss

3:42

of life, Not the caring man

3:45

who'd go the extra mile to visit his

3:47

patience at home rather than drag

3:49

them into the clinic. No, Harold

3:52

Shipman was a murderer, and

3:55

not just any murderer. In

3:57

sheer numerical terms, he

4:00

was the worst serial killer in

4:02

history. There

4:05

are plenty of notorious killers,

4:07

the charming Ted Bundy, John

4:10

Wayne Gaycy, the Killer Clown, the

4:13

son of Sam David Berkowitz. But

4:16

while Bundy, Gaycey, and Berkowitz

4:18

between them killed more than seventy

4:21

people, Shipman alone

4:24

killed more than two hundred. Often

4:27

his victims would be people living by themselves,

4:30

elderly but in perfectly fine health.

4:33

Shipman would come round, inject

4:35

them with an overdose of morphine, just

4:37

as he had injected young Elaine Oswald,

4:40

and then sign a death certificate saying

4:43

that they had died of old age. When

4:47

I began researching this cautionary tale,

4:49

I knew that Shipman was a terrible man.

4:53

I didn't understand quite how terrible

4:56

I vaguely had in mind a doctor who

4:58

started down this path by easing

5:00

the deaths of patients who were in pain and

5:02

terminally ill, and then got carried

5:05

away. But the truth is

5:07

so much more horrible than Shipman

5:10

would kill healthy people, then

5:13

to explain their deaths, he'd

5:15

say they'd been drug addicts. He'd

5:17

retrospectively tamper with their medical

5:19

records and leave the bereaved

5:21

families bewildered. More

5:24

than once, he killed someone

5:26

in his clinic, then would claim

5:28

they'd died of heart failure. He

5:31

may have killed a severely disabled

5:33

four year old girl. When

5:35

one middle aged man, Jim King,

5:38

was misdiagnosed with cancer, Shipman

5:42

intercepted the letter from the hospital with

5:44

a good news that he was cancer free

5:46

after all. Shipman supplied

5:48

Jim with morphine, got him hooked,

5:51

and watched as Jim lost his job

5:53

and pawned his possessions. Meanwhile,

5:57

Shipman skimmed off some of that morphine

6:00

and used it to murder Jim King's

6:02

own father. Why

6:05

did he do it? Plenty

6:07

of people have speculated, but

6:09

nobody knows. One doctor,

6:12

an expert witness at Shipman's trial

6:15

mused that while some doctors would

6:17

relax from the stresses of the profession

6:19

by playing a round of golf, Shipman

6:22

seemed to relax by murdering his

6:25

patience. Shipman,

6:28

who killed himself in prison, never

6:31

offered an admission of guilt, let

6:33

alone an explanation. But

6:35

this cautionary tale isn't going to pick

6:37

apart Harold Shipman's psychology.

6:40

No, this tale, like all

6:42

our tales, is about the lessons

6:45

we can learn here. The

6:47

lesson is that Harold Shipman could have been

6:49

caught much earlier. Maybe

6:51

not as early as nineteen seventy four when

6:54

he injected the young Elaine Oswald

6:56

with morphine, perhaps intending

6:58

to kill her, and perhaps with some other

7:00

wickedness in mind, but he

7:02

could have been caught early enough to have saved

7:04

more than a hundred lives. In

7:10

the early hours of July the twenty

7:13

ninth, nineteen seventy six,

7:15

in the Bronx, New York, Jody

7:18

Valenti and her friend Donna Lauria

7:21

sat in their oldsmobile chatting.

7:24

They were just outside Donna's home, Donna's

7:26

parents were inside. Both

7:29

of them were in medical training, Jody

7:31

to be a nurse, Donna to be

7:33

a medic, but Donna would

7:35

never get the chance to finish her studies. Jody

7:39

Valenti was a young woman like Elaine Oswald,

7:43

but her brush with death at

7:45

the hands of a serial killer was

7:47

a complete contrast with Elane's.

7:50

As Jody and Donna were talking, a

7:52

man walked up, pulled out a pistol,

7:55

and shot them both. Donna

7:58

Laurier died instantly. Jody

8:01

Valenti took a bullet in her leg and

8:03

she survived. She was,

8:06

of course traumatized, and

8:08

she obviously understood quite how

8:11

close she had come to death. Unlike

8:13

Elaine Oswald, she didn't spend

8:15

the next twenty five years believing

8:18

that her attacker was a hero who

8:20

had saved her life. The NYPD

8:23

had a clearly defined problem. Someone

8:26

calling himself the Son of Sam was

8:29

wandering around New York City shooting

8:31

young people, leaving some dead, some

8:34

disabled, and the whole community

8:36

in a panic. He had to be

8:38

found, and eventually, in

8:40

August the following year, he

8:42

was found. In

8:48

the case of Harold Chipman, the

8:50

Greater Manchester Police faced a radically

8:53

different problem. The problem,

8:55

in fact, was to realize

8:57

that there was a problem, because

9:00

The police had no idea that people were

9:02

being murdered. People were

9:04

dying, yes, but according to their doctor,

9:07

they were dying of natural causes. The

9:09

deaths were a surprise to friends and

9:12

family. Most of the time, the victims

9:14

weren't seriously ill, just old and

9:16

alone. In the morning, there would

9:18

be pottering around, catching the bus

9:21

or dropping in on a neighbor, in good

9:23

shape and fine spirits. And

9:25

in the afternoon, dear kind

9:28

doctor Shipman would come by

9:30

on a routine visit, and

9:33

according to doctor Shipman, well

9:36

he'd find them dead, dead

9:38

of old age. He would often write on

9:40

the death certificate, even though doctors

9:43

would normally be more specific. And

9:46

while their friends and relatives were shocked,

9:49

they weren't shocked enough to

9:51

call the police. As

9:53

far as the police were concerned, then there

9:56

was nothing to investigate.

10:02

Sarah Marsland died on the seventh

10:05

of August nineteen seventy eight

10:07

at her home in Hyde, a small

10:09

town near Manchester. Harold Shipman

10:12

was a doctor. He had moved to

10:14

hide in nineteen seventy seven. By

10:17

coincidence, that was about the time my own

10:19

family moved to the area. I was

10:21

four years old. I'm so

10:23

glad I never came any closer to his orbit.

10:27

We can't be absolutely sure that Sarah

10:29

was one of Shipman's victims, because nobody

10:31

even suspected that a crime had been committed

10:34

until more than two decades after

10:36

she had died. But the circumstantial

10:38

evidence is this. Although

10:41

Sarah Marsland seems to have had

10:43

no particular health complaint, Harold

10:45

Shipman came to see her uninvited

10:48

and unannounced. While he

10:50

was there she died. It

10:52

wasn't unusual for Shipman to visit

10:54

patients for no particular reason. He

10:57

did it all the time, and they loved him

10:59

for it. A good old fashioned,

11:01

hard working doctor, they said, someone

11:04

with all the time in the world for his

11:06

patience. But even

11:08

so, it is a striking

11:10

coincidence that some one would drop dead

11:13

just when a doctor happened to be popping in

11:15

for a friendly visit. One

11:18

physician later testified that this was

11:20

the sort of coincidence there might be at

11:22

once in a lifetime experience for a

11:24

family doctor, but for

11:27

Harold Shipman, it seemed to happen

11:29

every few weeks. Nevertheless,

11:32

nobody raised the alarm about Sarah

11:34

Marsland at the time, and why

11:37

would they raise the alarm. She was

11:39

in her eighties and her own doctor

11:41

had declared that she had died of coronary

11:43

thrombosis. The situation

11:46

didn't seem out of the ordinary. A

11:50

few years before Sarah Marsland's

11:52

death, two psychologists, Daniel

11:55

Carneman and Amos Verski, began

11:57

investigating patterns in the way

11:59

we make judgments. One

12:02

pattern that they discovered helps to explain

12:04

why nobody suspected doctor

12:06

Shipman for a very long time.

12:09

That pattern is known as the representativeness

12:12

heuristic, a habit of mind

12:15

that leads us to sort a situation into

12:18

strange or unremarkable,

12:20

depending not on the true likelihood,

12:23

but whether it matches our existing mental

12:25

groupings. For an example

12:28

of the representativeness heuristic, consider

12:30

the following description of a person. He's

12:32

called Jeff. Jeff is forty

12:35

and very good looking. He works out,

12:37

practices yoga, and is a vegetarian.

12:40

When he was a teenager, Jeff was a movie

12:42

buff, and he also took the lead role

12:45

in the school play. He's always

12:47

been extroverted. He's already gone

12:49

through two divorces, and his current

12:51

girlfriend is fifteen years younger

12:53

than him. Which of the following

12:55

do you think is more probable A.

12:58

Jeff is now a Hollywood movie star

13:01

or B Jeff is now an

13:03

accountant. Intuitively,

13:06

Jeff sounds like a movie star,

13:09

but that's not right. There

13:11

are just a few dozen genuine movie

13:13

stars in Hollywood, while there are

13:15

well over a million accountants in

13:18

the United States. Many thousands

13:20

of them will, like Jeff, be good

13:22

looking, twice divorced vegetarians

13:24

with a background in amateur dramatics. The

13:27

representativeness heuristic is a quick

13:30

and easy way for our subconscious

13:32

mind to make decisions. We use it all

13:34

the time without knowing, and it

13:36

often works, but it can

13:39

lead us astray. It

13:42

led the community of Hide astray too.

13:45

In a subtly different way. Harold

13:47

Chipman didn't repeat his early mistake

13:49

of drugging a twenty five year old Elane

13:52

Oswald. He began to target much

13:54

older people, people like the widow

13:56

Sarah Marsland. Although Sarah

13:59

was in decent health, she fits the

14:01

mental template of someone who would

14:03

die from natural causes. My

14:05

point is not that when an elderly person

14:08

dies we should assume it was murder,

14:10

not even when the elderly person dies,

14:13

just as her doctor happens to call

14:15

past unannounced. No.

14:18

My point is that when something

14:20

fits neatly into our mental story,

14:23

we don't ask questions. We don't

14:25

start to weigh up the probabilities

14:27

of murder versus natural causes.

14:30

If we did, we'd simply ask

14:32

for an autopsy, wouldn't we But

14:34

we don't, and we don't

14:37

because what we see fits naturally

14:39

into the story we expect. So

14:42

the fundamental problem was not only

14:44

did people not realize that Shipman

14:47

was a murderer, they didn't even realize

14:49

that there were any murders taking place. The

14:52

representativeness heuristic reassured

14:55

them, nothing strange is

14:57

happening. Move on, there's

14:59

nothing to see. Cautionary

15:03

tales will be right back. Shipmen

15:12

murdered people with lethal

15:14

doses of morphine, which left

15:16

no obvious trace unless there

15:19

was an autopsy. But why would

15:21

there be one? The representativeness heuristic

15:23

tells us nothing stranger has happened. Shipman

15:26

would sign the death certificate himself

15:28

to certify death from old age or heart

15:30

failure. No need to call

15:33

the ambulance, he'd say, too late,

15:36

no need to call the police. He could deal

15:38

with the necessary paperwork himself again

15:41

and again, Harold Shipman

15:44

murdered people in their own homes,

15:46

and again and again. The friends

15:49

and the family of the victims did

15:51

not realize that a crime had been

15:53

committed. Indeed, many

15:55

people were grateful to Shipmen, glad

15:58

that in their final hours the patients

16:00

had had the close attention of the doctor

16:02

they adored. Not

16:06

everyone felt that way. In nineteen

16:08

ninety four, for example, Alice

16:10

Kitchen died suddenly at the age

16:12

of seventy A few hours after

16:14

seeing her son and appearing to be in good

16:16

health. Doctor Shipman told

16:19

her family that he had called in to visit her,

16:21

that she had clearly suffered a stroke, but

16:23

that she had refused to go to hospital as

16:25

he had suggested. It was a

16:27

cruel lie and an

16:30

arrogant one. Alice Kitchen's

16:32

family decided against making a formal

16:34

complaint, but they were angry.

16:37

They thought Shipman was guilty of negligence.

16:40

In their book about Shipman's crimes, Prescription

16:44

for Murder, the journalists Brian

16:46

Whittle and Jean Richie muse

16:48

on the nature of the murders and the

16:50

people who died. Their

16:52

ages meant that the death would not make any statistician

16:55

raise an eyebrow seventy seventy

16:57

four, sixty nine eighty three,

17:00

all within the range that death comes. The

17:03

deaths would not make any statistician

17:06

raise an eyebrow. It seems

17:08

an uncontroversch or phrase. After

17:10

all, elderly people die all the time,

17:13

don't they. But it's quite wrong.

17:15

The representativeness heuristic is

17:18

soothing us into keeping our eyebrows

17:20

unraised. But statisticians

17:23

don't use the representativeness

17:26

heuristic. They use the data,

17:29

and any statistician given a look

17:31

at the statistics behind Harold Shipman's

17:33

clinical practice would have raised

17:36

more than an eyebrow. They

17:38

would have raised the alarm.

17:44

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter is

17:46

one of the UK's foremost statisticians.

17:49

He's a brilliant communicator of statistical

17:51

ideas and the author of a great book,

17:54

The Art of Statistics. David

17:57

was asked to provide advice to the commissions

17:59

set up after Shipman was jailed, invited

18:02

to answer the obvious question could

18:05

Shipman have been stopped sooner? And

18:08

to David spiegel Alter and the other statisticians

18:10

considering the problem, that answer

18:13

was, of course he

18:15

could have been stopped. All

18:17

you had to do was look at the numbers

18:19

in the right way. Interrogating

18:22

statistics to set our alarm. Bells

18:25

ringing was an idea developed by

18:27

the Allies during the Second World War. At

18:29

Columbia University, New York, the

18:31

great Hungarian mathematician Abraham

18:34

Vald was working on military

18:36

mathematics and he developed what

18:38

he called sequential testing.

18:41

Meanwhile, the young mathematician

18:43

named George Barnard was working

18:45

in London for the fabulously named

18:48

Ministry of Supply. Because

18:50

of the wartime secrecy, Vald

18:52

and Barnard weren't aware of each other's

18:54

work, but they were working on the

18:56

same basic problem, which is this.

18:59

Let's say you have a process which produces

19:02

a random output. Say rolling

19:04

a die, you are a one, then

19:07

a four, and another one,

19:09

A two, one, five,

19:13

three, one, six,

19:16

on you go. You can keep

19:18

rolling as many times as you like. So

19:21

at what point do you say, Hey,

19:23

there's something strange about this dye.

19:26

I'm rolling too many wands. You

19:29

can use the same idea to check products

19:32

coming off the production line. You don't

19:34

want to stop the conveyor belt just because

19:36

of a single faulty product, but

19:38

neither do you want to keep the production line rolling

19:41

forever if there is a steady stream

19:43

of problems. Rold

19:45

and Barnard would have been particularly focused

19:48

on the manufacture of ammunition and other

19:50

armaments, but the maths can be applied

19:53

more widely. Sample some cookies

19:55

to check whether they have enough chocolate chips

19:57

in them, or check the strength

19:59

of condoms by inflating them to

20:01

see if they stand up to the strain. Any

20:04

product will have a failure rate.

20:07

But at what point do you say, hang

20:09

on a minute, something's wrong.

20:13

David Spiegelholter and his colleagues told

20:15

the Shipman Inquiry that looking for

20:17

suspicious patterns in medical records

20:20

was fundamentally similar to looking

20:22

for suspicious patterns in dice rolls,

20:25

or cookies or condoms. You

20:27

might want to make some adjustments for the mix

20:29

of cases. A doctor serving

20:31

a retirement community is going to have a very

20:33

different case mix from a doctor working

20:36

on a military base, but the principle

20:38

is the same. Track deaths

20:41

over time among each doctor's patients,

20:43

just as you might track faulty cookies or

20:46

faulty condoms. Spiegelholter

20:48

and his colleagues concluded that the

20:51

kind of analysis developed by Vold

20:53

and by Barnard could have flagged

20:55

Harold Shipman for close attention as

20:58

early as nineteen eighty four,

21:00

fourteen years before he was eventually

21:03

arrested. More than a hundred

21:05

murders could have been prevented, and

21:08

that's just statistical method.

21:11

Other ways to slice the data also raise

21:13

questions. For example, there

21:15

were a couple of years in which Shipman went

21:17

quiet, perhaps fearing that other

21:19

doctors in the clinic would notice what was

21:22

happening. When he left to set up

21:24

shop as a lone practitioner for the

21:26

murders began again with

21:28

hindsight. All this is clear

21:30

in the data. Even clearer

21:33

is the fact that so many of Shipman's patients

21:35

died in the early afternoon, a

21:38

convenient time for Shipman's home visits.

21:41

The pattern, says Professor Spiegelhalter,

21:44

requires no subtle statistical

21:46

analysis. It is what statisticians

21:49

call interocular. Draw

21:52

a graph and it hits

21:54

you between the eyes. Not

22:01

all statistical anomalies result from

22:03

foul play, of course, David Spiegelhalter

22:06

told me about one doctor who had a truly

22:08

extraordinary number of deaths on his watch,

22:11

even more than Harold Shipman. But there

22:13

was an innocent explanation. While

22:16

Shipman's patients had often died suddenly,

22:19

this doctor had been treating terminally

22:21

ill patients. He had gone to great

22:23

lengths to ensure they were able to die at

22:25

home rather than spending their

22:28

final hours or days in hospital.

22:30

As a result, the doctor ended up

22:32

signing a large number of death certificates.

22:35

But statistical analysis isn't designed

22:38

to prove guilt. It's designed

22:40

to focus attention. Close

22:43

inspection of this doctor's work revealed

22:46

a person who upheld the highest

22:48

standards of the medical profession. Close

22:51

inspection of Harold Shipman's practice

22:53

would have revealed the appalling truth.

22:56

A forensic analysis of his medical record

22:58

keeping, for example, would have shown

23:00

him back dating entries to invent

23:02

medical problems after the fact, and

23:05

a single autopsy of one of the patients

23:08

would have revealed the lethal doses

23:10

of morphine. All

23:12

it would have taken was someone to

23:14

pay attention, and a simple

23:16

analysis of the numbers would

23:18

have shown them which doctor to pay attention

23:21

to. But given

23:23

just how simple this statistical exercise

23:25

would have been, given how

23:28

many lives it would have saved, and given

23:30

the fact that we didn't actually do it,

23:33

I have a question, what else

23:35

are we missing? Cautionary

23:40

tales will return in a minute.

23:45

The health authorities in the UK believe

23:48

they now have statistical alarm bells

23:50

that would ring if another Harold Shipman

23:53

comes along. But what

23:55

other stories are hiding in plain

23:57

sight? In twenty

23:59

fourteen, and Case and

24:01

Angus Deaton were spending the summer

24:04

together in a cabin in Montana.

24:07

Case and Deaton are married. Both

24:09

are respected economists, and

24:11

they had both become deeply interested

24:14

in the growing problem of suicide

24:16

among middle aged white Americans.

24:19

To put that problem into context, they

24:21

decided to compare suicide to the

24:24

more traditional forms of death, such

24:26

as heart disease and cancer. We

24:29

went to the Centers for Disease Control,

24:31

downloaded the numbers, and made

24:33

the calculations. They write in their

24:36

new book, Deaths of Despair and

24:38

the Future of Capitalism. To our

24:40

astonishment, it was not only

24:42

suicide that was rising among middle

24:44

aged whites. It was all

24:46

deaths. Not by much.

24:49

But death rates are supposed to fall year

24:51

on year, so even a pause was

24:54

news, let alone an increase. We

24:57

thought we must have hit a wrong key. Constantly

25:00

falling death rates were one of the best and best

25:02

established features of the twentieth century.

25:05

The finding was right there in the data,

25:08

but nobody, it seems, had thought to

25:10

look. We thought we must

25:12

be wrong, because someone would know

25:15

about it. But they weren't wrong. They

25:17

were just ignored. The New

25:19

England Journal of Medicine didn't want to publish

25:21

the results. The Journal of the American

25:24

Medical Association rejected us so

25:26

quickly we thought it was an auto reply

25:28

because we'd used the wrong email address.

25:33

Case and Dton broadened and

25:35

deepened their scrutiny of the numbers. Suicide

25:38

was up, so was chronic liver

25:40

disease a sign of alcoholism. Even

25:43

more dramatically, deaths from poisoning

25:45

were up. Poisoning sounds melodramatic,

25:48

like the cause of death in an Agatha

25:50

Christie story, but it usually

25:53

means a fatal overdose of alcohol

25:55

or drugs, often opioids

25:57

such as morphine or fentanyl.

26:00

Once a rare problem, drug

26:03

overdoses have overtaken lung cancer

26:05

as a cause of death for forty five to

26:07

fifty four year old white America. And it

26:10

all happened so quickly

26:13

from barely being an issue in the late nineteen

26:15

nineties to making a major dent

26:17

in the mortality data just fifteen

26:20

years later. It is

26:22

an ironic reversal of

26:24

Harold Shipman's murderous career.

26:27

Shipmen killed vulnerable people

26:30

with opioid overdoses. In

26:32

the US, doctors have simply been

26:34

supplying ever more powerful opioids

26:37

to vulnerable people. Misery,

26:40

pain or sheer accident have

26:42

done the rest. Put these

26:44

three courses of death together, suicide,

26:47

accidental overdoses, and livid disease,

26:50

and you have a category that Case and Dton

26:53

named deaths of despair.

26:56

The toll dwarfs anything that

26:58

one murderer could achieve. Case

27:01

and Dton found there were one hundred

27:03

and fifty eight thousand deaths

27:05

of despair in twenty seventeen.

27:08

That is a similar scale to the first

27:10

wave of COVID nineteen deaths in

27:12

the US. It was a

27:15

catastrophe, and it

27:17

was a catastrophe that should have been plainly

27:19

visible in the statistics. Yet

27:22

somehow nobody had taken

27:24

the effort to look. On

27:30

the twenty fourth of June nineteen

27:33

ninety eight, Kathleen Grundy,

27:35

the former Mayoress of Hyde,

27:37

died suddenly at

27:40

the age of eighty one. It

27:42

was a surprise. She had been fit

27:44

and socially active. On the same

27:46

day, a will arrived at

27:49

a firm of local attorneys with

27:51

a covering letter. The will purported

27:54

to be that of Kathleen Grundy.

27:56

It declared her intention to leave her

27:58

house to her dear family, doctor

28:01

Harold Shipman, but

28:04

the attorney had never had any dealings

28:06

with Kathleen Grundy and the signatures

28:09

looked odd. A few days later,

28:11

a mysterious letter from someone called

28:13

Smith told the attorney that

28:16

missus Grundy had died. Puzzled,

28:19

the attorney contacted Kathleen Grundy's

28:21

daughter, who was an attorney herself

28:24

and well versed in the ins

28:26

and outs of making a will. Already

28:30

stunned by her mother's death, she was even

28:32

more astonished to find herself and her

28:34

children abruptly disinherited.

28:36

There had been no family argument,

28:39

no sign that had changed in the will was

28:41

imminent, and the new will

28:44

was odd. Why

28:46

send it to an unknown firm of attorneys,

28:49

Why was it riddled with typos when

28:51

her mother was a trained typist, and

28:54

why did it show no knowledge of the

28:56

fact that Kathleen Grundy owned

28:58

a second house in Hyde and a holiday

29:01

cottage too. Kathleen

29:03

Grundy's daughter called the police.

29:07

It didn't take long for the police to discover

29:09

that the will was a forgery, that the

29:11

cover letter had been typed on Harold

29:13

Shipman's typewriter, and that

29:16

missus Grundy's medical records had

29:18

been altered after her death.

29:21

If Shipman hadn't made such

29:24

crass misjudgments, who

29:26

knows, he might never have

29:28

been caught. As

29:30

it was. Harold Shipman was arrested.

29:33

Faced with the need to conduct autopsy

29:35

examinations, the police

29:38

began the terrible task of

29:41

digging up the bodies all over

29:43

the town of Hyde. The slow

29:45

process of uncovering Shipman's

29:48

awful crimes had begun.

29:52

In the aftermath, some local people

29:55

blamed themselves for not having spoken

29:57

up sooner. John Shaw,

29:59

the gentle taxi driver who spent his

30:02

days driving elderly ladies around,

30:04

knew them well enough to attend funerals

30:06

when they passed away, but

30:09

were simply too many funerals.

30:12

Shaw told the journalists Brian Whittle

30:14

and Jean Ritchie. I noticed that

30:16

all those who were dying went to the same doctor,

30:19

doctor Shipman. Eventually,

30:22

john Shaw went to the police to

30:24

discover that they were already investigating

30:27

the death of Kathleen Grundy.

30:29

Could he have spoken up earlier, perhaps

30:32

a year or two, But the police

30:35

admitted that he might well have been ignored

30:37

if he had. After all, he

30:40

was just a taxi driver, and Harold

30:42

Shipman was a respected doctor. Other

30:46

people had also been growing concerned.

30:48

There was Debbie Massey, a funeral director

30:50

who was responsible for burying or cremating

30:53

many of Shipman's victims. There

30:55

was Linda Reynolds, another local

30:57

doctor. Massey and Reynolds raised

31:00

the alarm in March of nineteen ninety

31:02

eight. Perhaps they could have spoken

31:04

up in February or January. Perhaps

31:07

the police could have been more vigorous in responding.

31:09

But it's important to recognize we're

31:12

talking about a matter of weeks or months

31:14

at best. If instead

31:17

we had collected the simplest

31:19

of data sets, if we had run

31:22

the most basic analysis of that data,

31:25

we would never have needed to depend on people

31:27

risking the scorn of the police and the

31:29

enmity of Harold Shipman to stop

31:32

him. The statisticians,

31:35

with their production line mathematics

31:37

designed to inspect condoms and

31:39

chocolate chip cookies, might

31:41

have stopped his murder Spree more

31:43

than a decade earlier. Essential

32:10

sources on Shipman's crimes are

32:13

The Shipman Inquiry and Brian

32:15

Whittle and Jeane Rich's book Prescription

32:18

for Murder, David Spiegelhalter's

32:21

excellent book The Art of Statistics

32:23

covers the Shipman case, and

32:25

my own book The Data Detective makes

32:28

a plea for taking the numbers seriously.

32:32

Other sources are at Tim Harford

32:35

dot com.

32:37

Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim

32:40

Harford with Andrew Wright. It's

32:42

produced by Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust.

32:45

The sound design and original music

32:47

is the work of Pascal Wise. Julia

32:50

Barton edited the scripts.

32:52

Starring in this series of Cautionary

32:54

Tales Helena Bonham Carter and

32:56

Jeffrey Wright, alongside Nazzar

32:59

Alderazzi, Ed Gohan, Melanie

33:01

Gutteridge, Rachel Hanshaw, copenaholbrook

33:05

Smith, Greg Lockett, Messiamunroe

33:08

and rufless Right. This

33:10

show wouldn't have been possible without the work

33:13

of Mia La Belle, Jacob Weisberg,

33:15

Heather Fane, John Schnarz, Carli

33:18

mcgiori, Eric Sandler, Emily

33:20

Rostick, Maggie Taylor, An

33:22

Yellow Lakhan and Maya Kanig.

33:26

Cautionary Tales is a production

33:29

of Pushkin Industries. If

33:31

you like the show, please remember to rate,

33:34

share and review.