by John Askill
‘You don’t notice it when old folk die. They are expected to die suddenly. Babies aren’t, are they?’
As Beverley Allitt was taken away from Grantham Magistrates’ Court, on her way to a cell at Wakefield, the anger of the parents turned on the hospital.
There were demands for a public enquiry into how so many children had been struck down before the police were called in. And there were questions about how Allitt had been allowed to become a nurse.
But it was a wordy statement issued by Mr Martin Gibson, on behalf of the Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, that first infuriated them. Couched in official language, his statement said:
1. The Authority has been co-operating closely with the Lincolnshire Police since calling them in at the end of April to investigate unexpected outcomes in treatment on the Children’s Ward at Grantham and Kesteven General Hospital.
2. Having been informed by the police that a former member of staff, who worked on the Children’s Ward at the time, has been charged with causing the death and mistreatment of a number of child patients, I would like to say how shocked and saddened the staff of the hospital are at this news, and to express our deepest and most heartfelt sympathy to the families of those children involved in this tragic episode.
The families who live locally, of all the children whose treatment has at any time been the subject of the police investigations, were seen privately by senior hospital staff as soon as practicable after it became clear that the initial enquiries involved their child, except where the patients declined the offer of a visit (one other family was seen by a local social worker).
During these conversations the concern and sympathy of all our staff for the families were made clear. It was felt that a public or formal expression of sympathy on the hospital’s part should not be made until it was clearer which children were considered by the police to have been involved.
That stage has now been reached, and a formal letter is going to the families involved, from the Vice-Chairman of the Health Authority, in the absence of the Chairman.
Our responses to specific media questions about the effect of the events on the other staff at the hospital have been represented by some as showing a lack of concern for the families and children involved. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have provided, or ensured that others provide, practical help to all the families where it is needed.
For example, we have arranged for Lincolnshire Social Services to organise offers of long-term care to all the families. In providing help, we have been careful not to add needlessly to the grief and worry of those whose children’s care and treatment were unaffected by these events.
3. We confirm that the arrangements for hospital security have been checked, and both the hospital and the police are satisfied as to their adequacy. There has been no further cause for concern since the police were called in.
4. Parents of the children involved have been seen, and in some cases continue to be seen, by the Health Authority’s staff. If any parents have any anxieties about treatment of their child on the Children’s Ward at the hospital in the months January to April of this year, they should contact the General Manager’s Office at the hospital and arrangements will be made for them to be seen by medical or nursing staff.
5. As criminal proceedings have been started, the matter is sub judice and the authority can make no further comment until the proceedings have been concluded.
When parents gathered the following day at their regular meeting place in the King’s Arms in the centre of Grantham, Mr Gibson’s statement provoked outrage.
As far as some families were concerned the hospital had done nothing to help them in their hours and weeks of need. They hit back in a statement saying: ‘At no time has Grantham Hospital taken any positive action to support the families during the period of the police investigation.’
Chris Taylor declared: ‘The parents have received help from their GPs, health visitors and other specialists – but we have sought that treatment ourselves.’
Mr Gibson responded to the criticism, saying that, if the hospital had failed to provide practical help where it was needed, ‘then we can only apologise, and do so unreservedly’.
The next day families received letters from the South Lincolnshire Health Authority, expressing ‘sincere and heartfelt condolences’ and offering help if required. The Health Authority had asked the local council Social Services Department to coordinate support services for the families.
Peter and Sue Phillips issued another statement saying: ‘We cannot find it in our hearts to blame the hospital or the staff for what has happened.’ They were later to change their minds and announced that they would not use the Grantham Hospital again. At that stage they also called for an enquiry into how Allitt had been allowed to become a nurse, and why she was given the job of caring for sick babies on a one-to-one basis when she was so inexperienced.
They suggested that the Children’s Ward should even be closed down and revamped before being reopened again with a complete new staff. ‘Then,’ declared Sue in a letter to Mr Gibson, ‘you might start getting some credibility back – the credibility the hospital and the rest of the staff deserve.’
Sue Peck, whose daughter Claire had been the last to die, had always disliked Nurse Allitt from the moment she had deliberately snubbed her daughter on the Ward.
When she was finally told that Allitt had been charged, furious Sue snapped: ‘I always thought it would be that bitch. We think it is absolutely disgusting. We now know that a baby had died in February, things had been happening throughout March and April, but the hospital didn’t close down the Ward.
‘We have heard that there were more than twenty incidents on the one ward. If we had known that so many children had died, or suffered cardiac arrests, we would not have taken Claire anywhere near the place. OK, they have charged Beverley Allitt, but we feel the hospital is, in some way, to blame. Why weren’t the police called in until the week after Claire died?
‘If the hospital had acted promptly, then Claire’s death might have been avoided. We want a public enquiry to find out all these answers. In our mind, they allowed Beverley Allitt to get away with it for too long.
‘I am determined she is not going to ruin the rest of our life. She’s taken Claire and we will not be able to forget about that, but she’s not going to ruin the rest of our life.
‘I wish I could tell her that.
‘I wish I knew why it had all happened.’
Husband David said: ‘We feel that something should have been done a lot sooner by the hospital. Claire was the last of four children to die, and her death was the most preventable.’
Beverley Allitt was remanded in custody to await her next court appearance and trial.
But the police began to wonder if she would live long enough to stand trial. Allitt was given a cell to herself where everything was coloured green – the walls, the toilet, the washbasin, even a green-painted bed. She was kept apart from the other prisoners for her own protection, in the same way that child sex offenders are segregated.
She had been there less than a week when she fell, injuring her hand and wrist in the prison gymnasium. She was taken to the prison hospital where her wrist was heavily strapped; it was decided to keep her there instead of returning her to her cell.
The next day rumours reached Grantham that Allitt had taken a suspected overdose of Paracetamol. The prison governor told reporters that it wasn’t true, that Allitt was being kept in the hospital for her own safety. ‘When someone is facing charges like this, we do not want to take any chances. There is always the possibility they may try to take their own life,’ he said. In Grantham, Allitt’s solicitor, Mr Kendall, dismissed the rumour, insisting that ‘it’s simply not true’.
Friends and relatives remained convinced that Allitt was not the killer that the police alleged. In the village of Corby Glen, everyone seemed united in the view that Beverley, whom they had watched grow up among them, was innoce
nt of the dreadful crimes she was accused of committing.
Her devoted parents, Lillian and Richard, remained loyal to their daughter, refusing to believe for one moment that she was capable of killing anyone, let alone four children at the hospital. They made the 180-mile round trip to visit her in prison every Saturday, bearing their own ordeal ‘with remarkable fortitude’.
Allitt’s grandmother, grey-haired pensioner Dorothy Burrows, who shared the family’s conviction that Beverley was innocent, said: ‘Richard and Lillian are suffering as much as the parents who have lost children. I cannot conceive she would ever harm a child, and Richard and Lillian feel the same way.
‘Bev is a dedicated nurse; there’s something wrong somewhere. I think the police have made a mistake. Bev has written to me from prison, and she keeps saying to me and to other people, that we haven’t got to worry. She says they are good to her in prison and she’s not on her own all the time. She’s taken up embroidery. It hardly seems fair, locking Bev up when she has done nothing.
‘Nobody can say whether it is true or not; we will have to wait for the outcome of the trial. We’ve never had anything like this in our family before, and in my mind Beverley’s innocent.’
Allitt’s closest childhood friend, Rachel Smith, will never forget seeing her face on the front page of every national newspaper. ‘I’ll always remember seeing her on TV, being led into court; then I went into the local shop and there was Bev’s face on all the front pages. It was a horrible picture, it made her look really bad, and I really felt for Bev.
‘When I saw some of our old school friends later they knew I’d been closer to Bev than anyone, and they were asking me: “Did she do it?” “What did I think?” All I could say was that I didn’t know.’
The police called twice, wanting to know if Rachel had ever doubted her friend’s honesty, or could tell them anything that might help their case against Allitt. ‘The police asked what Bev was like, but there’s nothing I could say to criticise her. She was always a nice girl. It affected me deeply when she was in court. I didn’t believe she’d done it, and I won’t believe it until she’s convicted, and even then I don’t know whether I will.
‘I’d just like to see Bev, sit down with her and talk about it. Her life has always revolved around kids. I could never imagine her harming them. To do that you’d have to have no feelings at all.’
The people of Corby Glen, who still trusted her as a friend and respected her parents, remained loyal in the face of everything. The village was a law-abiding community, a place where the locals knew right from wrong, but there was a feeling, nonetheless, that the police had got it hopelessly wrong. Allitt’s parents, Richard and Lillian, were comforted by the support of their neighbours.
Jeremy Marshall-Roberts, managing director of the wine company where Allitt had worked on her last day of freedom, felt the police had given way to pressure from the parents of the children. He was in no doubt that a ghastly mistake had been made. ‘Even now I’d happily let Bev come and babysit at our house, and quite a few families feel that way in Corby Glen.’
The Rector of Corby Glen, the Rev. Ron Amis, had only moved to the village a few weeks earlier, but he was impressed by the loyalty of his parishioners. There was no backbiting or nastiness; instead, there was a common desire to protect her family.
He’d seen the anguish of Allitt’s parents for himself. They were good people, but the burden and the worry had devastated their life. ‘They are trying to cope, trying to keep going, but if you want to see what brokenness is then it’s there with them.’
As for the allegations, the Rector knew where the village stood. ‘If you went door to door you’d get the same reaction from people – they don’t believe it’s true.’
Steve Biggs, who had been the only real love of Allitt’s life, found it impossible to comprehend. The police had questioned him several times, told him about the unexpected deaths at the hospital and shared their suspicions, but he’d still been shocked when he heard that his former fiancée had been charged with killing the children.
‘The police told me they thought Bev had been copying a nurse in America who’d been convicted of killing a child. They also said she may have been suffering from Munchausen Syndrome. That’s possible because Bev always loved to be the centre of attention, but even so I was stunned by the news that she’d been accused.
‘I’ve seen the violent side of Bev’s nature, very few people have ever seen that, but even I don’t think she’s capable of doing something as awful as this. She treated me badly, but I can’t think she would go and kill four children. I don’t know whether it’s because I still feel a little bit for Bev, but it just doesn’t make sense.’
At Pauline’s grocery store, where Allitt had worked part-time as a girl, Pauline herself was sure it was all a mistake. The police had been to see her, like many people in the village, ‘but there’s nobody who’ll say a bad word about Bev here.’
Dawn Greetham, who had been in the Girl Guides with Allitt and been proud to be her pal at school, was at the factory where she worked as a machinist when BBC Radio One broadcast news of the nurse’s appearance in court.
‘One of my workmates heard Bev’s name, and honestly I couldn’t believe it. People who know Bev can’t imagine she would ever do something like this.’
Amid the trauma there were, just occasionally, moments of amusement. Allitt loved bananas but the prison had banned them, seeming to take the view that they were almost as much of a threat as keys and files in cakes. They decided that prisoners could make mind-blowing booze out of the skins which contained high levels of potassium. Mr Kendall did his best to help and, whenever she left the gaol for routine remand hearings, he made sure there was a bunch of her favourite fruit on hand.
The court hearings were emotional events for the parents who found themselves drawn to the court, desperate not to miss the sight of Allitt in handcuffs. She was a focus of their hatred. It was almost as if seeing her would help them understand what had happened.
But there was no look of remorse on Allitt’s face, no sign that she was sorry for what had happened to their children, even if she was innocent of the charges. Instead she smiled openly each time she arrived at court, enraging the watching families.
Creswen O’Brien, whose baby son Christopher had been among the survivors, couldn’t control her anger and ran at the police van, screaming at Allitt: ‘How can you come to court with a bleeding smile on your face? You tried to kill my son.’ Creswen became so furious that she added a few expletives right in front of the watching policemen and she was warned to behave herself.
By the time of Allitt’s next appearance, Creswen had already decided that she was guilty. ‘There are times when the anger inside us is almost unbearable and those are the times you’d like to be able to get at her.’
Solicitor Mr Kendall felt Allitt smiled ‘out of nervousness’, but understood how it upset the parents. It had been suggested she should go to court covered by a blanket, but Kendall said: ‘Beverley says she is not guilty, and she has got nothing to hide.’
The parents reacted in different ways, many deciding that, in their minds, Allitt was already guilty, even though she still had not been committed for trial by the magistrates.
Chris Taylor, whose son Liam had been the first to die, had even driven to Allitt’s home on several occasions before she had been charged. He said: ‘What I would have done if I had found her there doesn’t bear thinking about.’ He added: ‘I just hope she gets everything she deserves. She should be locked up and never allowed out. She’s done much more than Myra Hindley.’
The church-loving parents of handicapped Timothy Hardwick took a gentler, Christian view. Before their son’s death, Robert and Helen had both been in favour of hanging murderers, but the tragedy altered their opinion. ‘We now think it’s wrong to take a life for a life. You have to find it in your heart to forgive.’
Sue and David Peck had lost their only child, but were now
preparing for the arrival of a new baby. The pregnancy had been a blessing, coming as it had as the police started their investigations. It had helped the couple cope with the aftermath of daughter Claire’s death on Ward Four. Baby Jennifer Danielle was born safely at Kings Mill Hospital, Mansfield, on 29 February.
16. The ‘Smoking’ Syringe
While the parents were busy passing sentence, Supt Clifton and his team were still hard at it in the Incident Room.
He had amassed medical evidence that all pointed to Allitt; the DPP was confident the case was a strong one. But he hoped that, even now, he might yet find somebody who had seen Allitt with the ‘smoking syringe’.
He turned his attentions to the events in the Jobson house where Allitt had gone to live for four months after he had first questioned her. He was particularly keen to know more about schoolboy Jonathan Jobson’s mysterious collapse at the Sunday market.
There was new information, too, from the hospital where a full internal enquiry was under way. It was to reveal the name of yet another youngster who might have been a victim on Ward Four.
Seven-year-old Michael Davidson, who lived a mile or so from the hospital in Tamar Court, Grantham, had been just six when he was admitted to hospital with a .22 pellet wound in his stomach.
He had been shot accidentally as he played with his older brother’s air rifle which neither of them realised was loaded. Luckily, the pellet missed all his vital organs and lodged underneath his liver. Michael underwent an operation and was recovering when he suffered a sudden and unexpected cardiac arrest.
Police had at first discounted him from the enquiry, believing he had hyperventilated as he was being given an injection of antibiotics by a woman doctor. The injection had seemed innocent enough because it had been given by a doctor and Allitt had not been in the room. But then the doctor told the enquiry she was no longer sure about her first diagnosis; she also revealed that the contents of the syringe had been prepared by Nurse Allitt.
