IN: Harold Frederick Shipman (14 January 1946 - 13 January 2004) was a British general practitioner and one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history. On 31 January 2000, a jury found Shipman guilty of fifteen murders for killing patients under his care. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with the recommendation that he never be released. The Shipman Inquiry, a two-year-long investigation of all deaths certified by Shipman, which was chaired by Dame Janet Smith, examined Shipman's crimes.

Shipman hanged himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison at 06:20 on 13 January 2004, on the eve of his 58th birthday, and was pronounced dead at 08:10. A Prison Service statement indicated that Shipman had hanged himself from the window bars of his cell using bed sheets. Some of the victims' families said they felt cheated, as his suicide meant they would never have the satisfaction of Shipman's confession nor answers as to why he committed his crimes. The Home Secretary David Blunkett noted that celebration was tempting, saying: "You wake up and you receive a call telling you Shipman has topped himself and you think, is it too early to open a bottle? And then you discover that everybody's very upset that he's done it." His death divided national newspapers, with the Daily Mirror branding him a "cold coward" and condemning the Prison Service for allowing his suicide to happen. The Sun, however, ran a celebratory front-page headline; "Ship Ship hooray!" The Independent called for the inquiry into Shipman's suicide to look more widely at the state of Britain's prisons as well as the welfare of inmates. In The Guardian, an article by Sir David Ramsbotham (former Chief Inspector of Prisons) suggested that whole life sentencing be replaced by indefinite sentencing as these would at least give prisoners the hope of eventual release and reduce the risk of their ending their own lives by suicide as well as making their management easier for prison officials. Shipman's motive for suicide was never established, although he had reportedly told his probation officer that he was considering suicide to assure his wife's financial security after he was stripped of his National Health Service (NHS) pension. Primrose Shipman received a full NHS pension, to which she would not have been entitled had Shipman lived past age 60. Additionally, there was evidence that his wife, who had consistently protested Shipman's innocence despite the overwhelming evidence, had begun to suspect his guilt. Shipman had refused to take part in courses leading toward a full confession of his crimes, leading to temporary removal of privileges, including the opportunity to telephone his wife. During this period, according to Shipman's cellmate, he received a letter from Primrose exhorting him to "tell me everything, no matter what". A 2005 inquiry found that Shipman's suicide "could not have been predicted or prevented", but that procedures should nonetheless be re-examined.

what did he do leading up to his death?

OUT: he had reportedly told his probation officer that he was considering suicide

IN: Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (27 (or 25) February 1861 - 30 March 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect and esotericist. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published philosophical works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy; other influences include Goethean science and Rosicrucianism. In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality.

Steiner's father, Johann(es) Steiner (1829 - 1910), left a position as a gamekeeper in the service of Count Hoyos in Geras, northeast Lower Austria to marry one of the Hoyos family's housemaids, Franziska Blie (1834 Horn - 1918, Horn), a marriage for which the Count had refused his permission. Johann became a telegraph operator on the Southern Austrian Railway, and at the time of Rudolf's birth was stationed in Kraljevec in the Murakoz region of the Austrian Empire (present-day Donji Kraljevec in the Medimurje region of northernmost Croatia). In the first two years of Rudolf's life, the family moved twice, first to Modling, near Vienna, and then, through the promotion of his father to stationmaster, to Pottschach, located in the foothills of the eastern Austrian Alps in Lower Austria. Steiner entered the village school; following a disagreement between his father and the schoolmaster, he was briefly educated at home. In 1869, when Steiner was eight years old, the family moved to the village of Neudorfl and in October 1872 Steiner proceeded from the village school there to the realschule in Wiener Neustadt. In 1879, the family moved to Inzersdorf to enable Steiner to attend the Vienna Institute of Technology, where he studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany, biology, literature, and philosophy on an academic scholarship from 1879 to 1883, at the end of which time he withdrew from the institute without graduating. In 1882, one of Steiner's teachers, Karl Julius Schroer, suggested Steiner's name to Joseph Kurschner, chief editor of a new edition of Goethe's works, who asked Steiner to become the edition's natural science editor, a truly astonishing opportunity for a young student without any form of academic credentials or previous publications. Before attending the Vienna Institute of Technology, Steiner had studied Kant, Fichte and Schelling.

What was his childhood like?

OUT:
In the first two years of Rudolf's life, the family moved twice,