BRITAIN’S WORST SERIAL KILLERS

THE Burke and Hare killings were serial murders perpetrated in Edinburgh from November 1827 to October, 1828.

The killings were attributed to Irish immigrants William Burke and William Hare, who sold the corpses of their 17 victims to provide material for dissection. MARY ANN COTTON 21 kills MARY Ann Cotton was England’s first recorded serial killer – convicted of murdering her children and up to 21 people, mainly by arsenic poisoning.

Three husbands, a lover, a friend, her mother, and fifteen children died from “stomach fevers”.

She was hanged in 1873. BRUCE George Peter Lee – born Peter Dinsdale – was one of Britain’s most prolific killers.

On January 1981, he pleaded not guilty at Leeds Crown Court to 26 counts of murder, but guilty to 26 counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and to 11 counts of arson. DR JOHN BODKIN ADAMS More than 160 DR ADAMS was an Irish-born British GP and fraudster.

Between 1946 and 1956, more than 160 of his patients died in suspicious circumstances. Of those, 132 left him money or items in their will.

He was never convicted, and died aged 84 in 1983. HAROLD Shipman was one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history with 218 murders blamed on him.

On January 31, 2000, a jury found Shipman guilty of 15 murders and was given life. He died aged 57 on January 13, 2004, after hanging himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison.