Paul Begg, one of the world’s leading names in Jack the Ripper studies and Richard Jones were the first people to view the files on Thomas Cutbush when they were opened to the public in November 2008.
Cutbush is not one of the better known Jack the Ripper Suspects. He is of interest to Jack the Ripper historians for several reason. Firstly, his uncle, Thomas Cutbush, was in fact a high ranking police officer in the Metropolitan Police. Secondly, because of various newspaper articles and official police reports we know that there were most certainly suspicions in the early 1890’s that Thomas Hayne Cutbush was Jack the Ripper.
Richard and Paul discuss his viability as a suspect and ponder the facts about Thomas Cutbush that were not known until these files were opened in 2008.
The files do show that he was an extremely violent person and was frequently threatening to knife people, rip up the wardens and also to hang people. There is, for example, of him walking up to another patient and punching him hard in the face without ny provocation at all. One of the last references tells how, when his mother and aunt came to visit him on one occasion, his mother leant forward to kiss him goodbye and Thomas Cutbush proceeded to bite her face.
The files also show that Cutbush died in 1903 of a kidney ailment. Up until this point we had known that Cutbush went to the asylum, but nobody really knew what became of him after that.
Cutbush is one of the suspects who we cover on our Jack the Ripper Tour along with several other contemporary suspects whose names were circulating at the time of the murders and who were thought to be likely contenders for the mantle of the world’s most famous serial killer.