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UK Asylum Releases Ripper Suspect's Notes
Victorian madman's 117-year-old medical records offer new clues
By Rob Quinn
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Posted Nov 19, 08 7:19 AM CST
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(Newser)
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A British institution for the criminally insane has released the medical records of a madman long suspected of being Jack the Ripper, the Independent reports. The documents contain no conclusive proof, but offer enough to keep Thomas Cutbush on the suspect list. The "very insane" young man threatened to get a knife and "rip up" staff, the records state. The descriptions of Cutbush match some eyewitness accounts of the Ripper.
Cutbush went insane around the time the Ripper killings first began. He obsessively pored over medical textbooks and took to wandering the streets, once returning home covered in blood. Cutbush was first publicly named as a suspect by a tabloid newspaper in 1894. The paper speculated that his guilt had been covered up because of strings pulled by his uncle, a police superintendent who shot himself several years after Cutbush had been committed.