At the age of 28, unmarried and lowly paid Peggy must have wondered what the future held for her son who she had christened Ian Duncan Stewart.

It was not a good time to be the mother of an illegitimate child.

Society, in general, frowned on those who gave birth to children born out of wedlock.

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To make matters worse the baby's father - a Glasgow newspaper reporter - had died three months earlier.

Even if he had chosen to do so, there was no one to help Peggy support the baby.

Despite the social consequences of being an unmarried mum she decided to do her best to keep her child.

Undeterred Peggy found a single room in a tenement in the Gorbals but only earned £3 a week (£200 today) and had little support from her family.

At the age of four months, she was forced to give her son into the care of Mary and John Sloan, a respectable and hard-working local couple with three children.

The baby even took their family name and became known as Ian Sloan.

Peggy however continued to visit him throughout his childhood and gave the Sloans money towards his upkeep.

Ian Sloan called his foster parents mum and dad and their own kids looked on him as a brother.

Around the age of ten, the Sloans including Ian were re-housed in a shiny new council house in Templeland Road in Pollok.

At Camden Street Primary School in the Gorbals, he was considered by his teachers to be bright.

At the age of eleven, Ian passed his entrance exams to Shawlands Academy, which then operated a selection procedure for more able pupils.

However 1951 at the age of 13 he began to show his first signs of criminality.

The teenager appeared with several other boys at Glasgow Sheriff Court after stealing food from bakers’ shops and breaking into houses.

Since their families were of good character, they were admonished and warned never to appear before the court again.

Ian Sloan left Shawlands Academy aged 15 in 1953 and took a job as an apprentice at Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan.

Nine months later, he began working as a butcher's messenger boy.

Sloan had a girlfriend but their relationship ended when he threatened her with a knife after she went out with another boy.

In 1954 he appeared again at Glasgow Sheriff Court, this time on nine charges of housebreaking and theft.

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By then Peggy had moved to Manchester and married an Irish fruit merchant named Patrick Brady.

Her son was placed on probation, on the condition that he move out of Glasgow live with his mother.

Patrick got him a job as a fruit porter at Smithfield Market, and he took Patrick's surname.

He was now Ian Brady.

Within a year of moving to Manchester, Brady was caught stealing lead and was sentenced to two years in a borstal.

Released in November 1957, Brady returned to Manchester, where he took on a number of labouring jobs over the years.

In January 1959, he obtained a clerical position at Millwards, a chemical distribution company based in Gorton in Manchester where he formed a relationship with an 18-year-old typist Myra Hindley.

The duo who would become infamous the world over as the Moors Murderers were now officially an item.

As their relationship developed Brady took Hindley to Glasgow several times to show her his old haunts, including on one occasion an excursion down the River Clyde on the Waverley paddle steamer.

When she moved with her grandmother to Hattersley, Cheshire, he moved in beside her.

As the relationship between them developed so did Brady's obsession with Nazism, violence, rape and murder.

During a two year period between June 1963 and October 1965 Brady was involved in the murders of five young people.

In May 1966 Brady, then 28, was found guilty, along with Hindley, of murdering 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey and 17-year-old Edward Evans.

Brady was also convicted of the murder of 12-year-old John Kilbride. He received three life sentences to run concurrently and only escaped the hangman's noose because the death penalty was abolished just months earlier.

The evidence seen and heard at the Chester Crown Court chilled the hearts of those who sat through the trial.

It included pictures of Lesley Ann Downey, naked, bound and gagged, and a tape recording of her begging for help as she was repeatedly tortured and sexually assaulted by Brady and Hindley.

The little girl had fallen into the clutches of the sick pair on Boxing Day 1964 after they snatched her from a fairground.

They recorded Lesley at their home in Hattersley and her cries reduced even the judge and police officers to tears.

Lesley Ann and John, who was murdered in November 1963, were later found buried in unmarked graves on the desolate Saddleworth Moors, near Oldham.

The trial judge described Brady and Hindley before sentencing as "two sadistic killers of the utmost depravity"

Both later confessed in 1987 to the murders of Pauline Reade,16, and Keith Bennett,12.

The evil couple were taken separately to Saddleworth Moor that year to assist in the search for the graves.

Both children lived in the same area as the pair and had disappeared about the same time as their other victims.

Pauline's body was found in the party dress she was wearing when she set off from her home in Gorton, Manchester, to attend a youth club dance. Her throat had been cut with such force that it had broken the vertebrae.

However there was no sign of Keith Bennett's remains.

Although Brady and Hindley had confessed it was decided that nothing would be gained by a second trial as both were already serving life sentences.

In March 2000 new psychiatric reports said Brady remained a psychopath who showed no remorse for his crimes or empathy for his victims.

Hindley made several appeals against her life sentence, claiming she was a reformed woman and no longer a danger to society, but was never released.

She died in 2002, aged 60 from a heart attack, after serving 36 years in prison.

Detectives from Greater Manchester Police launched Operation Maida, in 2003, to try to find Keith's remains.

Brady refused to help when detectives visited him at Ashworth Hospital in Liverpool where he was being held.

Despite his appalling crimes Peggy remained loyal to her son.

She visited him in Ashworth - well in her eighties - even sending him shirts and sweaters at Christmas.

When Peggy was dying in 2002, Brady was allowed out, under heavy guard, to be at her bedside for an hour.

The last years of his life were spent at Ashworth where he died in 2017, aged 79.

Before his death he had asked that his ashes be scattered in his home city.

But Glasgow City Council said it would refuse any such request.

To this day Keith Bennett's remains have still to be found.

Last month ( February) Home Secretary Priti Patel announced new legislation that would allow police to seize any evidence that could reveal the location of a murder victim's remains.

Greater Manchester Police have been refused permission to examine documents contained in two combination-locked briefcases left by Brady after his death in 2017 and held by his lawyer.

They may contain information which could lead detectives to Keith's body.

Miss Patel met Keith's younger brother Alan, now 64, last month (February) to discuss the plans.

She said at the time:“I can only imagine the years of pain and turmoil that the Bennett family have faced following Keith’s tragic murder – no family should have to suffer the heartache of not knowing where their loved ones are buried."

So was Ian Brady mad, bad or both?

Speaking after his death Brian Masters, best known for his biographies of serial killers, said of Brady:"He was a psychopath — totally beyond human moral understanding.

"Throughout his life he never understood the emotional impact of his actions.

"Brady did not care about the heartache of the families and their need for closure.

"He only cared about himself."