the times | Saturday December 18 2021 29
News
An “exceptionally cruel” father who
smothered his infant children to death
and killed a new girlfriend six years
later has been sentenced to at least 40
years in prison for their murders.
Jordan Monaghan, 30, had revelled
in the sympathy he received after the
“tragic” deaths of Ruby, who was 24
days old, and Logan, 21 months, whom
he killed eight months apart in 2013.
The “controlling” gambling addict
from Blackburn, Lancashire, promised
to undergo genetic testing to establish
what may have caused them to die as he
posed for photographs in the local press
with Laura Gray, 28, the children’s
grieving mother, who had no idea of her
expanding into new product areas.
She said of her classmates at RCA: “It
felt like there were a lot of disrupters
who had their own vision rather than
following the herd. Nearly everyone I
studied with has started their own busi-
ness and they’ve been successful.
“The MA I took wasn’t business fo-
cused at all. It was much more about
finding your own unique viewpoint in
design and pushing the vision to its ex-
treme, which led to lots of innovation.”
Laura Salisbury was torn between a
career in medicine and art before
following her passion for textiles at
RCA. She has invented a knitted jump-
er for stroke sufferers that uses beads to
stimulate certain arm muscles.
She said that her company, Knit-
Regen, was creating its own size chart
by body scanning stroke survivors.“Standard fashion sizes don’t necessari-
ly represent bodies after strokes, for ex-
ample if someone has a dropped shoul-
der,” she said. “The beads deliver small
forces to activate the muscle, or sup-
press an overactive muscle — it has the
potential to be more precise than elec-
trical stimulation and safer.”
She is working with the Medicines
and Healthcare Products Regulations
Agency and hopes to launch the jump-
ers in 2023.
The study shows that Oxford Uni-
versity was the institution with the
greatest income from intellectual prop-
erty, with £213 million in the past five
years, followed by the Institute of
Cancer Research with £208 million and
Sheffield University at £64 million.
Creative courses provide the next
entrepreneurs, leading article, page 41Art students have a reputation for seek-
ing freedom and creativity rather than
engaging in the cut and thrust of hard-
nosed business.
Reputations can be misleading, how-
ever. The universities with the most
graduate start-ups are the arts institu-
tions not Oxbridge or business schools.
Rather than starving in a garret,
graduates of the Royal College of Art
(RCA) have been carving out spin-offs
and setting up more of their own com-
panies than those of any other univers-
ity. The University of the Arts London
and the Conservatoire for Dance and
Drama are in the top ten list of
start-ups, which contains
no Russell Group uni-
versities.
Graduates of
RCA have created
fashion compa-
nies and patented
knitwear that
helps physiother-
apy for stroke vic-
tims, devices for
visually impaired
people to use writ-
ten documents and
even technology to re-
duce methane emissions
from cattle.
They have been inspired by mentor-
ships with leading designers such as
Orla Kiely and received practical ad-
vice from marketing experts.
Tide, a business financial platform,
analysed data from the Higher Educa-
tion Statistics Agency to determine
which universities had produced the
most graduate start-ups since 2015.
Portrait of
the artists as
fiery young
entrepreneurs
RCA was followed by Kingston Uni-
versity, then Falmouth University,
which offers mainly creative courses.
Start-ups at Kingston benefit from a
partnership with Santander. Those at
Falmouth are supported by the
“launchpad” programme that helps
students bring their ideas to market.
RCA has its own centre for entrepre-
neurship and commercialisation.
InnovationRCA has invested about
£21 million in 79 companies that have
raised more than £80 million and are
valued at more than £200 million.
Nadia Danhash, its director, said: “Arts
and science are both vital. It’s insane to
have this division between them.
“It’s not surprising that arts universi-
ties are top of the list — creative people
like using their designs to solve prob-
lems. RCA was set up in 1837 as a school
of design by the government worried
that manufacturing was losing out to
France and Germany. Those studying
fashion, jewellery and architecture
want to set up their own prac-
tices.”
Three programmes are
offered. One helps
high-growth start-
ups with funding
and the knowledge
to run a business,
linking graduates
with psychologists,
marketing and HR
experts so they can
learn how to build a
leadership team. The
second is a creative
brands “accelerator”
helping smaller enterprises.
The third is a scale-up pro-
gramme that helps initiatives grow fast.
For the first it takes a minority stake,
which is ploughed back into helping
other businesses, while the second and
third are free for graduates.
Emma Shipley, whose eponymous
company creates homewear stocked in
Harrods and Liberty, employs eight
people full time and is on the verge ofp
ontains
uni-oft-
nd
o re-
missionsinspired by mentor-p
tices.”
Thre
offere
high
up
an
to
li
w
m
ex
lea
lead
secon
bbbbrands
hhhhelping sm
The third is
gramme that helpsinCreative students are
taking on the world of
business by setting up
their own companies,
Nicola Woolcock writes
Emma Shipley said that her classmates were disrupters. Some even created technology to reduce methane emissions‘Controlling’ father killed his infant children and girlfriend
partner’s crimes. Monaghan was
arrested in 2018 after new information
came to light. The following year he
killed Evie Adams, 23, his new girl-
friend, while on police bail.
He was found guilty at Preston crown
court yesterday of three counts of
murder and two counts of attempted
murder of another child, who cannot be
named for legal reasons. The jury was
told that he carried out the murders
because he could not face rejection by
his partners.
Mr Justice Goose told Monaghan he
was “an exceptionally selfish, control-
ling and cruel man” as he jailed him for
life with a minimum of 40 years. The
judge said he had no doubt that Gray, “a
good mother, would not have remained
with you if she had known the truth”.Gray was heard weeping in the public
gallery as the jury delivered the verdicts
after 26 hours of deliberation. In a state-
ment read in court, she said: “All I ever
wanted to be was to be a mum and give
my children the love and opportunities
I never had growing up.
“When the children were born they
consumed my world. I loved every
single day I had with them. Jordan was
their daddy, he was one of the two
people who was meant to love and pro-
tect them the most in the whole world.
Instead he did the opposite.”
The trial was told that Monaghan
smothered Ruby on New Year’s Day in
2013 at the family home in Blackburn.
He had offered to do the 2am feed for
the first time. Gray, who was asleep,
awoke to Monaghan shouting: “Youneed to get down. I don’t think Ruby is
breathing.” The baby never regained
consciousness.
A post-mortem examination con-
cluded that Ruby had died from acutebronchopneumonia. But the patholo-
gist was “mistaken”, the trial was told.
Monaghan killed Logan eight
months later. Gray had said she was
leaving him that morning after discov-
ering that he had built up £2,000 ingambling debts. Later that day Mona-
ghan took Logan to a swimming pool
and fatally smothered him in a cubicle.
The second death brought the couple
back together. But by 2018, Monaghan
had begun seeing Adams, who had suf-
fered “chronic” abuse as a child.
Phone records show that he joined a
WhatsApp group called “UK Tablets”
and was asking for “pregabs”, short for
pregabalin, an anti-anxiety medica-
tion, tramadol and diazepam. Mona-
ghan killed Adams with a cocktail of the
drugs and faked a suicide note.
Detective Chief Inspector Pauline
Stables, of Lancashire police, said that
Monaghan had “probably obtained
quite a lot of positive attention” after his
children died and appeared to be “an at-
tention seeker” and “very controlling”.Charlotte Wace
Northern Correspondent
Jordan Monaghan
killed his children
to avoid rejectionUniversities with start-ups
1 Royal College of Art, London, 1,655
graduate start-ups since 2014/15
2 Kingston University, London 1,630
3 Falmouth University, Cornwall 1,135
4 Bedfordshire University 870
5 Central Lancashire University 851
6 University of the Arts London 783
7 Solent University, Southampton
780
8 Conservatoire for Dance and
Drama, London 641
9 Manchester Metropolitan
University 608
10 Lincoln University, East Midlands
594