Beverley Allitt, the 'Angel of Death' , has become one of Britain’s most notorious female serial killers. It's made even more shocking by the fact that while she went on a killing spree that claimed four young lives and attempted the murder of nine other victims, she befriended the parents of her victims with her caring and solicitous manner.

Allitt exhibited some worrying tendencies early on, growing up as one of four children, including the wearing of dressings and casts over wounds that she would use to draw attention to herself, without actually allowing these injuries to be examined. Becoming overweight as an adolescent, she became increasingly attention-seeking, often showing aggression towards others. She spent considerable time in hospitals seeking medical attention for a string of physical ailments, which culminated in the removal of her perfectly healthy appendix. This was slow to heal, as she insisted on interfering with the surgical scar. She was also known to self-harm, and had to resort to 'doctor-hopping', as medical practitioners became familiar with her attention-seeking behaviours.

Allitt’s behaviour in adolescence appeared to be typical of Munchausen’s syndrome and, when this behaviour failed to elicit the desired reactions in others, she began to harm her young patients in order to satisfy her desire to be noticed.

She went on to train as a nurse and was suspected of odd behaviour, such as smearing faeces on walls in a nursing home where she trained. Her absentee level was also exceptionally high, the result of a string of illnesses. Her boyfriend at that time said later that she was aggressive, manipulative and deceptive, claiming false pregnancy as well as rape.

Despite her history of poor attendance and successive failure of her nursing examinations, she was taken on a temporary six-month contract at the chronically understaffed Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in Lincolnshire in 1991, where she began work in Children’s Ward 4. When she started, there were only two trained nurses on the dayshift and one for nights, which might explain how her violent behaviour went undetected for as long as it did.