Who is the only doctor in the history of British medicine to be found guilty of murdering his patients?

The Shipman Inquiry (which began in September 2000 and lasted until 2002), chaired by Dame Janet Smith, investigated all deaths certified by Dr. Shipman. About 80% of his victims were women. His youngest victim was Peter Lewis, a 41-year-old man. Much of Britain's legal structure concerning health care and medicine was reviewed and modified as a direct and indirect result of Shipman's murders and the specific findings of the Shipman Inquiry. To date, Harold F. Shipman is the only British doctor found guilty of murdering his patients. He is one of the most prolific serial killers ever to be recorded in human history.

British serial killer Shipman worked in England as a medical doctor (GP); he killed over 200 of his patients before he was arrested in 1998. Born in England in January 1946, Shipman attended Leeds School of Medicine and began working as a physician in 1970. Between 1970 and his arrest in 1998, he killed at least 215 and possibly as many as 260 individuals. He injected his patients with lethal doses of painkillers (diamorphine).

On January 31, 2000, a jury found Shipman guilty of 15 murders. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and his judge recommended that he never be released. His life sentence was confirmed by the British Home Secretary in 2002. He died by his own hands by committing suicide. He hanged himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire on January 13, 2004.