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She was convinced she wouldn't leave alive... that someone was out to get her
EIGHTY-year-old Doris Ludlum was already very ill when she was admitted to ward 36 at Leeds General Infirmary.
She suffered from a heart complaint and had been at Chapel Allerton Hospital in Leeds for a month when she suffered a fall and broke her hip on June 12 2002.
Born in Bentley, Doncaster, into a close-knit mining community she worked in the mills before joining the Women's Land Army during the Second World War.
Known to many by her middle name Jean, she always loved children, meeting her husband Walter, now 92, when she was working at a children's home in Southport. They married in 1951 and spent much of their 50 years together in Pudsey, Leeds. Both enjoyed walking and dancing.
She trained after the war as a nursery school teacher and spent many years fostering children for Barnardo's while continuing to tutor in English.
In her spare time she was a keen artist and was a member of Farsley Arts Club. She liked to capture the landscapes she saw when walking in Scotland or around the Leeds Liverpool Canal.
But her last few years were hit by poor health. She had a pacemaker fitted and was beginning to suffer from confusion and it was becoming clear she could no longer be cared for at home.
Colin Norris dealt with her on many occasions after her admission to the infirmary, coming to know her well although he told the jury he had no recollection of any of his victims as individuals.
In her confusion, she often pulled out medical equipment and told her family she was convinced she would not survive her time there.
In the early hours of June 25, Norris gave her an unnecessary dose of the powerful painkiller diamorphine using an old prescription written when she was in pain following her operation. The amount was also significantly higher than it should have been.
This left her drowsy and before he went off shift at 7.45am, he gave her a massive overdose of insulin which dramatically reduced her blood sugar level. Forty minutes later she was discovered in a coma and she died two days later of heart failure.
She had many underlying problems and as a result her hypoglycaemic attack was not investigated. But her collapse was sufficiently unusual that doctors recalled her case immediately when suspicions were aroused over the case of another patient, Ethel Hall. Her daughter Wendy Elvidge said staff had always seemed too busy on the ward to speak about her mother's treatment. "We just assumed she was getting the best of care and that was the best place for her.
"She was convinced that someone was out to get her.
"We thought she was saying this because she was so ill but she was convinced she was not going to get out of the hospital alive."
Her other daughter, Elizabeth Hodgson, said she appeared to be recovering after her operation but then the call came she had taken a turn for the worse.
"I went in to see her and she was just saying one word. I thought it was Walter my dad's name but it turned out it was "water" she was asking for." Their mother was moved to another ward where she
died.
They did have some concerns about the treatment of their mother, but nevertheless the police inquiry came as a shock.
"Obviously we knew about Harold Shipman and Beverley Allitt but you don't think it's going to happen to you," said Mrs Elvidge. "It is only now through the trial we have been hearing about the high dose of morphine she was given and the lax attitude there appears to have been about the drug records and security.
"It also seems that because these patients were elderly their deaths were just put down to strokes or heart diseases without proper checks being made if that was correct, as if it did not matter somehow.
"But no hospital can legislate for nutcases suddenly doing something like this when they have no previous criminal record."
Family and friends had noticed she was getting slightly more frail and forgetful in previous months but until then she had remained active.
Her only son John had even joked with her at her 90th birthday a few months earlier that she would get a 100th birthday telegram from the Queen.
She was taken to ward 36 at Leeds General Infirmary and it was here she became nurse Colin Norris's first victim. She survived a huge overdose of insulin but remained very ill and died the following January.
Mr Wilby said it was several months later when police contacted him to say they were investigating her collapse.
He was now convinced something untoward had happened to his mother and the other patients.
He had hoped she would come to live with his family at their Oxfordshire home as she became more frail but her collapse blighted her final months. She needed intensive nursing and had never really recovered her faculties.
"It's that kind of thing which makes me, not angry, but sad. It's very difficult to come to terms with," he said.
"As a result of someone's actions her last few months were taken away from her.
"The difficult thing looking back is that we had my mother's funeral and you start grieving and you come to terms with it but because we've had the trial hanging over us since 2003, we've not been able to do that properly."
Born in Kirkstall, Leeds, two weeks before the sinking of the Titanic, Mrs Wilby married her husband Norman in 1943 at Burley Methodist Church after they had met at Price Tailors in Kirkstall, which later became United Drapers and John Colliers. Son John was born the following year.
She worked as a secretary there and and later at Leeds City Council and the probation service. She retired in 1975.
She lived in Rawdon for 60 years. Her husband was a Labour councillor for 30 years, at one time chairman of Aireborough Urban District Council.
"He was chairman in Coronation Year which meant they had to go round unveiling a lot of plaques and official duties like that," said Mr Wilby.
They were a close couple and his sudden death in 1988 hit her hard but she joined a bereavement group in Ilkley, a book club and was a member of the Humanist Society.
She liked to travel by bus for coffee at Bettys in Ilkley or go shopping in Leeds. Her family took her for trips to Bolton Abbey, where she enjoyed walking in the woods, or Harrogate.
She had recovered from a heart attack in 1993 and continued to live at home. She was becoming more forgetful and had taken to keeping a daily diary in case something slipped her mind.
Her son found her somewhat confused and frightened after surgery at the infirmary and noted there appeared to be a shortage of staff on the ward – several times she fell out of bed and when she pressed an alarm to go to the toilet it went unanswered. "We were concerned and I think at the time a bit angry at one or two of the things that happened to mum in hospital about her general care," he said.
Perhaps these extra demands were the reason Norris attacked her. Her son, who gave evidence in his trial, found him offhand and unhelpful.
"His whole attitude was to just turn his back and walk away when I was speaking to him. I misunderstood when he was talking about her going to Chapel Allerton thinking this was a nursing home which she would not want, rather than another hospital where she could recuperate, but he didn't bother to explain."
On the night of May 17, Norris gave her the powerful painkiller morphine – even though she had not complained of pain. She became drowsy and shortly before his nightshift ended he gave her a huge overdose of insulin.
Ninety minutes later she was found semi-conscious, suffering a sudden hypoglycaemic attack.
She did go to Chapel Allerton Hospital where her family found staff much more helpful.
Later she went to live in a nursing home in Ilkley before dying at Airedale Hospital, near Keighley, on January 30 2003 from an infection. Her son said: "I can look back on my father's life, what he achieved and what kind of man he was, with very pleasant memories and a feeling of pride, but with my mother, who was an equally decent person, it's been very difficult to start to think of her in those sort of terms – I can't get beyond the last few months of her life.
"She went downhill from being a woman who was starting to become forgetful but was
still fairly mobile and living with a reasonable amount of dignity to not being able to move.
"It feels as if I never really laid her to rest.
"The distressing part is that she could have died in peace; she could have had two or three more years or gone on to 100."
Nurse who hated old killed four women in hospital
Public inquiry must be held says son of Norris victim
I can't grieve properly for mother
She was convinced she wouldn't leave alive
Patient collapsed... just as the accused predicted
Hatred of elderly turned carer into new Shipman
Did another rogue nurse inspire plot to steal fatal drugs?
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