Paranoid schizophrenic?

[Harry D]

If the Ripper had been clinically insane, and had been sent to an asylum (bringing an end to the murders), there's a good chance he would've confessed to them one way or another as his condition worsened. I'm prepared to accept the asylums were probably full of inmates proclaiming to be Jack the Ripper, but for argument's sake, let's say he did just that. Would something like this have been included in his medical report? Even if it was an oblique reference to the murders?

[Errata]

If the Ripper had been clinically insane, and had been sent to an asylum (bringing an end to the murders), there's a good chance he would've confessed to them one way or another as his condition worsened. I'm prepared to accept the asylums were probably full of inmates proclaiming to be Jack the Ripper, but for argument's sake, let's say he did just that. Would something like this have been included in his medical report? Even if it was an oblique reference to the murders?

Maybe, and yes.

Maybe he would have confessed. A lot would depend on what was wrong with with him. It is entirely possible that his memories of the murders were so devoid of any emotional context and detail that they would have blended seamlessly in his own mind with newspapers stories and conversations. The brain is the Wild West. There is law and order there, but we don't understand it, and it often as not doesn't resemble what we believe the order should be.

But if he confessed, if he said their names, if he talked about hurting or killing people, even in a manic state in front of a doctor, Then yes. t would be in his file. If he did it front of some other employee of the hospital, and that employee (orderly, janitor whatever) believed it, they would report it to a doctor and the doctor would decide whether or not to interview the patient about if he thought it was likely that the statement was true.

But doctors did not see patients with the kind of regularity we assume now. There was no therapy, they was no treatment, there was no cure. One institutionalized the focus was on keeping these people safe and harmless. Only serious changes in condition or expression would warrant a doctor's involvement. And those changes would have to be noticed first, and we are generally talking about warehouses for the mentally ill.

Odds aren't good a confession made it into a file, despite the fact that it should, and would in different circumstances.