During the search for Jack the Ripper members of the public wrote to the newspapers and the police with their theories.  On 3 October 1888 the Daily Telegraph published a letter from X of St Albans who reported that a lunatic, considered dangerous to women, had escaped from Leavesden asylum the previous year. His name was MacDonald. He was said to have been a doctor who practised in India and returned to England when his money ran out. He was six feet two inches tall and had a habit of shouting incessantly. He had been sleeping in the woods. The next day a lady called Mary Heard wrote to the City Police saying that the killer was this escaped lunatic.

As the Ripper was a madman said to possess anatomical knowledge, an insane surgeon is high on any suspect list. The chairman of the Leavesden Asylum committee responded to X’s letter with a statement from the medical superintendent that the escaped patient was quiet and harmless and had not shown any homicidal tendency. Nothing more was known until I obtained the asylum records and put together a short biography for my book on the Ripper suspects.

Donald John MacDonald was born in Madras on 3 April 1850. He received a decree in medicine and surgery from the University of Aberdeen in 1874. Two years later he was appointed surgeon to her Majesty’s Indian Service in Bengal. He was admitted to Leavesden on 12 April 1886 and escaped on 16 September 1887, whilst out walking. The asylum papers indicate that he talked to himself, shouted a lot, and used foul language. He also believed that he was going to marry a great lady and thought that everyone was against him.

Whilst it would be interesting to know where MacDonald went after his escape there is no evidence that he was in Whitechapel murdering women in the autumn of 1888.