Thomas Mason
On the 28 April 1895 the Chicago Sunday Times published a story in which it claimed the medium Robert Lees had received a psychic impression of the Whitechapel murderer. Seventeen murders later the police asked for his assistance. Throughout the night Lees followed a psychic trail which ended at the house of an eminent Physician. The story goes on to say that the police questioned the doctor and his wife, eliciting the admission that the doctor suffered from occasional losses of memory, and had on one occasion regained it to find his shirt bloodstained. Proof of his guilt as Jack the Ripper was found in the house and he was committed to an asylum in Islington under the name Thomas Mason 124. Author Stephen Knight identifies Thomas Mason with Gull though misdates Mason's death as 1896. The real Thomas Mason was a 71 year old retired bookbinder from Islington, who was born in 1817, and who had no connection with Gull, or Jack the Ripper, and was never incarcerated in an asylum. He died in 1902 from bronchitis.
