Can we do evil without being evil? Many were shocked at how ordinary nurse and serial killer Lucy Letby seemed — but others say this is the very nature of human wickedness.
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The nurse who became UK's worst child killer
Can we do evil without being evil? Many were shocked at how ordinary nurse and serial killer Lucy Letby seemed - but others say this is the very nature of human wickedness.
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On 3 August 2015, a mother arrived at a hospital in ChesterA city in northwest England. to visit her newborn twins. She heard a scream and found a nurse in her early thirties standing over the incubatorA box-like structure with a controlled environments which helps babies who are born early to live while their organs are developing. of one of her babies. The child had blood around his mouth.
The nurse reassured her that it was nothing. But five hours later, the boy was dead. He had lost a quarter of his blood and had symptoms that doctors could not explain.
As the mother contemplated a world shattered by untold grief, the same nurse bathed her dead son and wrapped him in a gown. As she tended to the tiny, broken body, she seemed oddly cheerful - even happy.
That is the detail that has stuck in the mind of the parents of so many of the victims of Lucy Letby, the nurse who murdered seven newborns and may have harmed up to 30 more.1 The way she smiled as she tended to the children she killed.
Yesterday she was sentenced to a whole-life prison sentence. But her trial left one question unanswered: why did this ordinary woman, with an ordinary upbringing, commit such horrifying crimes?
It has left many reflecting on the nature of evil. Some suggest that she is an example of what philosopher Hannah ArendtA Jewish German political philosopher who escaped a concentration camp and fled to America. She wrote extensively about Nazism. called "the banality of evil".
Arendt was talking about Adolf EichmannThe senior Nazi in charge of organising the deportation of Jews to extermination camps during World War Two. He was convicted of crimes against humanity and hanged in 1961., one of the most important organisers of the HolocaustThe murder of six million Jewish people in Europe by Nazi Germany. Members of other minority groups were also killed. . Arendt argued that Eichmann seemed ordinary, even dull - certainly far from evil. But it was his dullness that allowed him to do such evil things. It meant he just did whatever he was told.
Letby was the same: someone who seemed entirely average, and so would never have been suspected of killing the most vulnerable people under her care.
But others say evil is not just in what we do: it is in who we are. American thinker Judith ShklarA 20th Century American philosopher and political theorist. suggested that the most important moral value is the rejection of cruelty.
The picture painted of Letby in her trial is one that reeks of cruelty. The court heard that she used to spend hours looking at the Facebook profiles of her victims' parents, drinking in their grief. She did this even on Christmas Day. Shklar thought we should recognise this taste for cruelty as the true form of evil.
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<h5 class="wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper" id="question"><strong>Can we do evil without being evil?</strong></h5>
Yes: Letby does not seem evil. She was not overflowing with hatred and bile. There have been suggestions she was trying to impress a doctor she was in love with. She was an ordinary person who did terrible things.
No: What we find horrifying about Letby is her cruelty. She still seems to feel nothing about the babies she killed or the families whose lives she broke. In that cruelty, we see the very depths of evil.
Or... Whether or not Letby is evil, it is important not to become too disillusioned and start seeing evil everywhere in human beings. Most people are neither unusually cruel nor entirely evil.
Chester - A city in northwest England.
Incubator - A box-like structure with a controlled environments which helps babies who are born early to live while their organs are developing.
Hannah Arendt - A Jewish German political philosopher who escaped a concentration camp and fled to America. She wrote extensively about Nazism.
Adolf Eichmann - The senior Nazi in charge of organising the deportation of Jews to extermination camps during World War Two. He was convicted of crimes against humanity and hanged in 1961.
Holocaust - The murder of six million Jewish people in Europe by Nazi Germany. Members of other minority groups were also killed.
Judith Shklar - A 20th Century American philosopher and political theorist.
The nurse who became UK’s worst child killer
Sentenced: Lucy Letby is only the fourth woman in the UK to receive a whole-life jail term. Glossary
Chester - A city in northwest England.
Incubator - A box-like structure with a controlled environments which helps babies who are born early to live while their organs are developing.
Hannah Arendt - A Jewish German political philosopher who escaped a concentration camp and fled to America. She wrote extensively about Nazism.
Adolf Eichmann - The senior Nazi in charge of organising the deportation of Jews to extermination camps during World War Two. He was convicted of crimes against humanity and hanged in 1961.
Holocaust - The murder of six million Jewish people in Europe by Nazi Germany. Members of other minority groups were also killed.
Judith Shklar - A 20th Century American philosopher and political theorist.