Jan Bondeson (born 17 December 1962) is a Swedish-British rheumatologist, scientist and author, working as a senior lecturer and consultant rheumatologist at the Cardiff University School of Medicine. He has also written non-fiction on topics such as medical anomalies and unsolved murders. In 2003 he told an interviewer, "I've always had a profound interest in history, especially the history of medicine, and a bit of a fancy for the macabre and odd." Bondeson is the biographer of a predecessor of Jack the Ripper, the London Monster, who stabbed 50 women in the buttocks, of Edward "the Boy" Jones, who stalked Queen Victoria and stole her underwear, and Greyfriars Bobby, a Scottish terrier who supposedly spent 14 years guarding his master's grave.
Career
Bondeson attended medical school at Lund University, Sweden, and qualified in 1988. He became a specialist in rheumatology and internal medicine, and defended his PhD thesis in 1996. He was awarded several scholarships to continue his scientific career at the renowned Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology in London. He became a pioneer of the experimental use of adenoviral gene transfer to study intracellular signalling, and investigate the regulation of important cytokines and matrix metalloproteinases. In 2000, he was promoted to become senior lecturer and consultant rheumatologist at Cardiff University, doing a mixture of clinical work, teaching and research. Here, his research has concentrated on the role of synovial macrophages in osteoarthritis, and regulation of degradative enzymes in this disease. Bondeson has more than a hundred publications in refereed scientific journals, and continuing research grant support from Arthritis Research UK.
Writing
Bondeson has also written a series of books in the areas of the history of medicine and zoology, and some studies about curious historical episodes. His Cabinet of Medical Curiosities was published in 1997. Buried Alive, a historical study of the signs of death and the risk of being prematurely buried by mistake, was supported by a scholarship from the Wellcome Trust. The London Monster tells of a series of stabbings of London women between 1788 and 1790. The Great Pretenders (2003) is a study of historical cases of disputed identity, such as the Lost Dauphin of France, Kaspar Hauser and the Tichborne Claimant. Queen Victoria's Stalker (2010) concerns Edward "the Boy" Jones, a weird teenager who became obsessed with the youthful Queen Victoria and broke into Buckingham Palace to stalk her. After stealing the Queen's underclothes and spying on her in her dressing room, he was captured by government agents and forced to serve in the Royal Navy for more than five years without charge or trial.
In 2011, Bondeson published Amazing Dogs, a cabinet of canine curiosities exemplifying the cultural history of dogs. The most newsworthy chapter deals with German fascination with allegedly super-intelligent dogs: the so-called 'New Animal Psychology' movement believed that if they were trained to communicate using a sign language, they could become the intellectual equals of their owners. Remarkably, these beliefs were shared by some of the Nazis, who made experiments to create superdogs loyal to the Nazi Herrenvolk. The same year, Bondeson published Greyfriars Bobby, the Most Faithful Dog in the World, a thorough biography of Greyfriars Bobby, a Scottish Skye Terrier who supposedly kept vigil over his master's grave for 14 years. Original sources and newly discovered illustrations are employed to reinterpret the story of Greyfriars Bobby and describe the pan-European myth of the "Dog on the Master's Grave" and the many other graveyard or cemetery dogs at large in Victorian times. In 2012, he published Those Amazing Newfoundland Dogs, a full-length cultural history of the Newfoundland breed, with a profusion of old illustrations.