Hunger strike sham as he ate in secret

IAN Brady’s hunger strike was a sham, the inquest heard.

He was force fed through a tube up his nose for 18 years after he stopped eating in 1999 in a muchpublicised protest at being moved to a different hospital ward.

But, in reality, the hunger strike was intermittent and he secretly took meals and snacks given to him by nurses he trusted.

Brady believed his eating was covert and that staff would not tell managers he was eating normally, psychiatrist Dr Noir Thomas said.

In fact, all staff recorded his food intake and in the last two years of his life Brady tolerated the absence of the tube for up to eight weeks at a time, sometimes removing it himself.

After such periods, however, he insisted on eating nothing for 48 hours, forcing staff to re-insert the tube. This was viewed by medics at the hospital as his way of asserting his authority and they described the tube as ‘a symbol of his need for control’.

The revelations that Brady regularly ate solid food backed up claims heard at a Mental Health Tribunal in 2013 that he regularly made toast and packet soup to which nurses turned a blind eye to save him from embarrassment.

For someone on hunger strike, 5ft 7in Brady was in fairly good condition when he died, the inquest was told.

He weighed nine and a half stone and had a BMI of around 21.

Dr Brian Rodgers, who did a postmortem examination, said: ‘He was not emaciated, I thought he looked in reasonable condition.’