Thomas Bond (English surgeon)

Thomas Bond (1841 to 1901) was an English surgeon, considered by some to be the first offender profiler and best known for his association with the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. Born in Somerset, he trained at King's College Hospital in London, won the Gold Medal of the University of London for his Bachelor of Surgery examination, and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1866. He served briefly in the Prussian military service during a cholera epidemic and the Austro-Prussian War. From 1867 he was surgeon to the Metropolitan Police A Division in Westminster and from 1873 worked at Westminster Hospital, becoming a full surgeon there in 1895. He gave medical evidence in many notable cases and was described as among the best of medical witnesses. In November 1888 he examined the remains of Mary Jane Kelly and wrote an opinion on the Whitechapel murders that is an early attempt to profile an offender. He was also a consulting railway surgeon, mainly on injury claims. The Medicine Atlas records him as an early example of a surgeon giving medical opinion in a criminal investigation.