VICTIMS OF A CATASTROPHIC IMMORALITY

GRIEVING families of the patients whose lives were cut short in Gosport Hospital blasted the ‘catastrophic and immoral’ failings.

They accused doctors and nurses of abusing the human rights of some of its patients and said ‘shameful and scandalous’ blunders led to the largest national scandal in the NHS and the largest number of deaths under any sort of care.

Families of elderly relatives who were given fatal opiate overdoses said these ‘horrifying, shameful and unforgivable actions’ should be put before a jury at a criminal court. One described what took place as murder.

They demanded to know why a police investigation dismissed them as troublemakers and was hushed up.

Many reacted with anger and disbelief when they learnt that Dr Jane Barton was reportedly holidaying on a Spanish island. There is no suggestion Dr Barton is guilty of murder. Bridget Reeves, granddaughter of 88-year-old Elsie Devine, said hospital management, police, prosecutors and medical watchdogs had questions to answer.

Speaking on behalf of the families, she said: ‘None of us would have allowed our loved ones to be admitted to Gosport War Memorial Hospital had we known there was an ongoing police investigation in 1998.

‘The people of Gosport had the right to know and there would have been outrage if they had known the concerns of the whistleblower. Inexcusable failure of them all is not only shameful, it is scandalous and it is immoral. They have grossly failed their ethical standards by abusing people’s human rights. Our vulnerable relatives who were stripped of their final words to their loved ones, silenced by overdoses, is more than catastrophic.

‘This sort of behaviour going on in our NHS is both chilling and precarious.’

Miss Reeves described the families as ‘victims of crime’ who should have been given an explanation for the high death rates but instead faced a ‘sinister and calculated’ cover-up. The report concluded that the documents seen by the panel did not in fact contain evidence to support collution or conspiracy ratehr a tendency for organisations to act to protect their reputations. ‘Those implicated must now face the rigour of the criminal justice system,’ she said. ‘Accountability must take precedence here. These horrifying, shameful, unforgivable actions need to be disclosed in a criminal court. Only then can we put our loved ones to rest.

‘Hopefully people will wake up now and realise this is the largest national scandal under the NHS and the largest number of deaths under any sort of care.’

Her grandmother weighed just 7st when she died in 1999, after being ‘given enough drugs to lay out a 6ft violent man’.

Miss Reeves’s mother, Ann, said Dr Barton was not the only person she wanted to be held accountable. ‘She had people working with her,’ she said. ‘You can have one or two deaths and make a mistake but you can’t have hundreds.’

Charles Farthing, whose stepfather Brian Cunningham died from an overdose, said: ‘Dr Barton was utterly reckless in her prescribing. She effectively gave the nurses a free licence. Criminal charges must be brought.’ His wife Anne said: ‘These people did not deserve to be put down like a dog. These people lived their lives only for someone at the end to decide to play God’

Joan Lavender, daughter-in-law of Elsie Lavender, said: ‘We say she was murdered.’ Many families said the publication of yesterday’s report was vindication of what they have known for decades.

Pauline Godley said her father Arthur Cousins, 82, had pleaded with her to ask doctors to stop giving him morphine three days before he died in July 2000.

STAN CARBY, 65

FORMER naval officer Stan Carby was just 5 when he was sent to Gosport after a series of mini-strokes.

His family were told that treatment, including physiotherapy, would help him fully recover.

But the next day he suddenly deteriorated and his family found him unresponsive. They then found a tube in his back – a morphine syringe driver.

The doctor told his family they were letting ‘nature take its course’. Mr Carby died 24 hours after admission in April 1999. His daughter Cindy Grant, 44, said: ‘We are hoping criminal charges should be brought.’

JEAN STEVENS, 73

JEAN Stevens, 73, went to Gosport for rehabilitation after suffering a stroke in 1999.

She was ‘bright as a button’, her husband Ernest said, yet she was quickly put on a cocktail of painkillers and sedatives. Within two days, she was dead.

Mr Stevens, now 92, added: ‘They had her on a [drugs] pump straight away and she only opened her eyes once after that, just before she died. Dr Jane Barton had never even seen her until she signed the death certificate.’

Mr Stevens, a Second World War veteran, blames the stroke he suffered in 2012 on the stress of fighting for answers about his wife’s death.

ROBERT WILSON, 74

ROBERT Wilson, 74, was transferred to Gosport for rehabilitation after breaking a shoulder in a fall three weeks earlier in October 1998.

But he was wrongly assessed as a ‘terminal case’ because he was also suffering from liver disease and was put on morphine and diamorphine. He died on October 18, four days after being admitted.

His son Iain recalled: ‘His last words to me were, “Help me son, they are killing me.”’

An inquest found Robert Wilson died after being prescribed ‘inappropriate’ medication.

BRIAN CUNNINGHAM, 79

FORMER wartime pilot Arthur Cunningham, known to family as Brian, was 79 when he went in to the hospital in September 1998 suffering from bed sores.

He had Parkinson’s Disease, and a combination of medical problems meant he could be cantankerous.

On his first night Mr Cunningham became agitated so staff gave him diamorphine to help calm him. The dose was increased four-fold over the following days – and he died five days later.

An inquest concluded he had been overdosed. His step-son Charles Farthing said yesterday: ‘Barton was utterly reckless in her prescribing.’

DULCIE MIDDLETON, 86

FOLLOWING a stroke in 2001, Dulcie Middleton was sent to Gosport after treatment to prepare for returning home.

Here she was denied food and water and given unnecessary drugs – so understandably her daughter Marjorie Bulbeck asked her to be moved to a different hospital. But by then the damage had been done, and Mrs Middleton died at the age of 8 .

Her daughter Mrs Bulbeck, 75, has since received an apology from the NHS about her mother’s treatment at Gosport, which she sums up as ‘lack of food, lack of water, lack of care’. ‘She was given drugs I know she did not need,’ she added.

‘Not only shameful, it is immoral’

ELSIE DEVINE, 88

ELSIE Devine was 88 and weighed seven stone when she died in November 1999, after being ‘given enough drugs to lay out a 6ft violent man’, according to her family.

She had been admitted to Gosport a month earlier, recuperating after a urinary tract infection.

A coroner’s jury concluded that she had been given inappropriate medication at the hospital.

After the report into the deaths at the hospital was published yesterday, Mrs Devine’s granddaughter Bridget Reeves said there had been an ‘inexcusable failure’.

She added: ‘This sort of behaviour going on in our NHS is chilling. Those implicated must now face the full rigour of the criminal justice system.’

GLADYS RICHARDS, 91

GLADYS Richards was admitted to Gosport in August 1998 for rehabilitation after a hip operation.

But her family became extremely concerned that very strong painkiller and sedative doses were being given to her even though she wasn’t in pain. Mrs Richards died days later, aged 91.

Her daughter Gillian Mackenzie, now 85, reported the matter to police and the coroner, but no charges resulted. She launched a campaign and in 2013 was granted an inquest into her mother’s death that recorded a narrative verdict.

GEOFFREY PACKMAN, 67

GEOFFREY Packman died aged 6 in September 1999, nine days after being transferred to Dr Jane Barton’s care at Gosport’s Dryad ward.

At the 2009 inquest, which concluded that ‘inappropriate’ opiates were implicated in his death, his family’s lawyer challenged Dr Barton on why she had referred to Dryad ward as ‘the end of the line for patients’.

She said patient notes often referred unrealistically to a need for rehabilitation. ‘We were not a rehabilitation ward,’ she added.

Mr Packman’s daughter Vicky said her father was ‘in good spirits’ when he was admitted but ‘three days later was away with the fairies’.

ENID SPURGEON, 92

ENID Spurgeon was 92 when she was sent to Gosport for rehabilitation after fracturing her hip in March 1999 but from the moment she was admitted her family had serious concerns for her welfare.

Nephew Carl Jewell said his aunt developed an infection in her wound because it hadn’t been kept clean, and when he went to visit her shortly afterwards he found her completely drugged and unresponsive.

Soon afterwards staff told him she had come round ‘but a few hours later, in the early hours, the hospital called me and told me she had died – I was shocked’.

SHEILA GREGORY, 91

SHEILA Gregory was 91 when she was admitted to Gosport on September 3, 1999, suffering with various chronic illnesses. She died on November 22.

Consultant geriatrician Dr Richard Reid told the inquests the levels of strong painkillers prescribed for Mrs Gregory were ‘inappropriate because she was not terminally ill’. But the jury decided the prescription had not contributed to her death, which was put down to heart failure.

After the inquest, her granddaughter Pauline Gregory said: ‘I think the verdict is incorrect. I think something untoward happened to my nan.’

ALICE WILKIE, 81

ALICE Wilkie, an 81-year-old dementia sufferer, was admitted to Gosport in August 1998 for ‘rehabilitation and replacement’ after treatment for a urinary tract infection at another hospital.

But she began to decline within days of arriving. The General Medical Council heard in 2009 that Dr Jane Barton told her ‘it won’t be long now’ before prescribing a large dose of painkillers.

Mrs Wilkie died within 24 hours of being given powerful opiates she had never had before.

Her daughter Marilyn Jackson told the GMC hearing her mother had been given the painkillers without the family’s consent.