Ep. 58: People of Taunton State Hospital ("Jolly Jane" Toppan)

This week's episode examines the life and crimes of "Jolly Jane" Toppan. Find out why Jane is considered the first female serial killer in the U.S. and how she escaped detection for almost 20 years.

The main source for this episode is Pretty Evil New England by Sue Colette. All other sources will be listed at the end of the episode transcript.

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Transcript

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Behind the Walls of the World’s Psychiatric Hospitals! I’m your host, Dr. Sarah Gallup, and I want to start by saying a big thank you to everyone for your patience while I took a couple of weeks off to travel and celebrate my birthday. It was good to get away but also good to get back. The only damper on my celebration was the fact that I came back from my vacation with COVID for the first time. Gah! I’d made it so long without getting it, so I guess I was due.

Anyway, I’m wrapping up the history of Taunton State Hospital today with a true crime story. And I realized while looking into the information for this episode that the podcast “Morbid” just released a two-part series on this person only a few weeks ago. I haven’t listened to their episode yet, but I think I will after I’ve completed mine. So if you’d like to listen to theirs after this one, go ahead.

Since this is a true crime episode, trigger warnings include obvious discussion of murder, but also dependent adult abuse, psychopathic personality traits, sexual sadism, and sexual fetishes. I won’t go into gratuitous detail, but if that doesn’t sound like something you’d like to listen to, then come back for the next episode.

I rely heavily on a section of the book Pretty Evil New England by Sue Colette and A Brief History of the Taunton Lunatic Hospital 1854 to 2016 by Joseph Langlois. All other sources will be listed at the end of the episode transcript.

For now, come on in and get comfortable as we go behind the walls of Taunton State Hospital…

In the years since Taunton Lunatic Asylum opened in 1854, tens of thousands of patients have come and come through the hospital, but perhaps none as notorious as Jane Toppan. This is her story.

Jane was born Honora Kelley, and while Honora is her given name, I’m going to refer to her as Jane just for simplicity’s sake. She was born to Peter and Bridget Kelley on March 31, 1854, the same year the asylum opened (“Jane Toppan”). Life was hard from the start for Jane. She was born to Irish immigrants, and we’ve discussed this quite a bit in previous episodes. Many folks from Ireland who immigrated during the potato famine had their dreams of prosperity shattered upon their arrival in the U.S., when they began experiencing discrimination and poverty. Their cultural and linguistic differences separated them from others and made them the target of asylum admissions. So Irish immigrants were overrepresented at Taunton and at other asylums in Massachusetts.

Jane’s mother Bridget ended up dying from tuberculosis when Jane was still quite young, leaving her to be raised by her father, Peter (“Jane Toppan”). Peter was clearly struggling with some sort of severe mental health issues. He was known as an “eccentric,” which never seemed to be a positive trait for someone to have back then, as well as an abusive alcoholic. He was known around town as “Kelley the Crack” – like Kelley the Crackpot (“Jane Toppan”). He was later said to have sewn his eyelids together while working as a tailor (“Jane Toppan”), although it’s not really known if this is true or just lore from around town. Other sources indicate he was admitted to an insane asylum (Newton).

So this was the troublesome environment that Jane lived in until 1860, when her father surrendered her and her 8-year-old sister Delia to a Boston orphanage (“Jane Toppan”). It should be noted that Jane had at least one older sister, Nellie, who was not sent to the orphanage, although it’s unclear where she lived during this time. There may have been a fourth older sister named Mary, but no birth record exists for her. Regardless, Peter never saw any of his daughters again. 

There isn’t any documentation on what the girls’ time was like at the orphanage, which was known as the Boston Female Asylum (“Jane Toppan”), but according to an article by the Lowell Historical Society, “Mr. Kelley [was] ill-equipped to deal with his youngest daughters and ‘whose habits evidently rendered him an unfit protector for his little girls. Their appearance indicated that they had been rescued from a very miserable home’” (qtd. in “Lowell’s Ties”).

None of the sisters had happy endings to their stories. Jane’s middle sister Delia left the orphanage two years after Jane and engaged in survival sex work until she died from alcoholism in poor living conditions; her oldest sister Nellie was committed to an insane asylum (“Jane Toppan”). As for Jane, two years after her arrival at the orphanage, in 1862, she became an indentured servant to Mrs. Ann C. Toppan of Lowell, Massachusetts (“Jane Toppan”). And I just want to underscore the fact here that Jane is 8 years old at this point when she begins working for this family. If we dared to look at her story through a trauma-informed lens, we’d see that, already in her short life, she’s experienced poverty, death, abandonment, probably abuse and neglect, and now is expected to work in a stranger’s home.

The Toppan family had a daughter, Elizabeth, with whom Jane seemed to get along (“Jane Toppan”). In order to distance herself from her family and culture of origin, Honora adopted the family’s surname Toppan and began going by Jane or Jennie. I’ll add that some sources say the Toppans actually adopted Jane, while others explicitly state that they did not, so I’m not sure which to believe, but in any case, she lived with and was basically raised by this family.

By all accounts, Jane was smart and a good student. Sources differ, however, about her temperament. Some say she was “normal,” whatever that means, while others say she had a dark side. Given what we know in retrospect, I’m guessing the latter is probably more accurate. Here’s what the Lowell Historical Society notes:

There are stories that in order to hide her Irish heritage since there was still a stigma in the city from being so, a story was created by the Toppan family about the loss of her parents on an ocean crossing from Italy. Jennie was recalled as being a regular gossip, fabricator of untruths, and much more, though she had a charming nature. During interviews with Henry R. Stedman, M.D., she admitted that “she told many tales which we knew to be sheer inventions, among them, a story of her parentage, her alleged father having in reality lived in China for two years before her birth; another, of her horror of the dead which was so great that she sometimes fell senseless at the sight of dead bodies.” [2]. It is Stedman’s belief that “until [Jane] was a woman, she was under good moral and religious influences, home surroundings and discipline and had good associates, but her incorrigible propensities for deceit, falsehood, and trouble making, never absent from the first” [2]. There are other stories about Jennie having a beau who agreed to marry her around her 16th year of age and giving her a ring in the shape of a bird. Soon after, he moved out west to find work and fell in love with his landlady’s daughter and sent the bad news back to Jennie that he was calling off the engagement. Rumors abound that she destroyed the ring and this may have begun Jane’s spiral into darkness.

If this story about the fiancé is true, it’s quite sad and could explain the depression that followed. One source said that she attempted to die by suicide twice after this broken engagement (Newton). The same source also says that Jane tried to predict the future through dream analysis, and to that I say…Freud and Jung did the same thing, and they became famous for it. Haha.

It’s also said that around her 18th birthday, Jane was given $50 by Mrs. Toppan to go make something of herself in the world (“Lowell’s ties”), but Jane wanted to stay with the family instead. Her lies and deceitfulness weren’t accepted by the family, so when she was around 25, it sounds like she was basically kicked out of the home. This had to be hard for someone who had been abandoned by everyone important in her life.

In 1885, when Jane was 31, she began training as a nurse at Cambridge Hospital (“Jane Toppan”), which was said to be a prestigious nursing school. She was known for having a good disposition and positive rapport with patients – so much so that she earned the name “Jolly Jane” (“Lowell’s ties”).

She moved from Cambridge Hospital to Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was dismissed (“Lowell’s ties”). She returned to Cambridge Hospital for a while, but she was ultimately let go there, as well.

And with good reason. Jane had a number of interpersonal problems and extremely problematic behaviors. Her coworkers said they were concerned about Jane due to “her unfounded and absurd [suspicions], tale-bearing, slanderous gossip, and consequent mischief-making, as well as her pleasure in inventing fabulous tales” (qtd. in “Lowell’s ties”). This also extended into her work. She was known to have “misreported information, removed patients to other institutions, prolonged the illness of our favorite patients by reporting symptoms that did not happen” (“Lowell’s ties”).

She was also known to, ummm, have things go missing wherever she worked: “During her term of service at one of the hospitals many articles were missed: sums of money, stationery, aprons, uniforms, etc., and she was suspected of stealing them, but her friends spoke so well of her and she was so adroit that the suspicion went no further, in spite of the evidence against her” (“Lowell’s ties”). 

Just pausing for a moment on the traits that we see thus far. We know Jane has an extensive trauma history, based on her background. She experienced multiple forms of abandonment from an early age. But here we’re seeing that she lies and makes up stories. Now it’s not clear from the documentation we have whether she made up stories for secondary gain or not, but I suspect she probably had incentive to lie at times and probably made up stories just because she likes making up stories. That’s just a hunch, so take that as you will. But we also see theft among her problematic behaviors. Just a note about psychopathy: having many different types of offenses, if you will, can be a sign of psychopathic behavior. Generally that means that someone is able to sorta be creative and switch gears in order to get their needs met. And we see that with Jane.

Of course, most disturbing is what she did to the patients under her care. And this is where I’ll remind you of the trigger warning for dependent adult abuse and the beginning of sexual sadism. This is from the Lowell Historical Society: 

During her residencies, she experimented on patients with morphine and atropine and seeing what happened to the patients. In administering medicines, she was extremely reckless and frequently gave larger doses than had been prescribed. 

And just a quick side note here: most people are probably familiar with morphine, which is a strong narcotic for pain relief with sedative effects. Atropine has basically the opposite effect; it’s sort of a stimulant that can kick-start a slowed heart. So Jane was experimenting with slowing down her patients’ central nervous system with morphine, bringing them to the edge of death, and then injecting them with atropine to kick start them again and bring them back. She’d do this back and forth. That, obviously, is really sick, and she did it because, as she later admitted, she got a sexual thrill from it. Back to the previous quote:

Even at that time she was often to say that there was no use in keeping old people alive (a favorite sentiment with her since). She was also fond of asking about poisonous drugs and their antidotes… she was at that time, and has often since been, suspected of the opium habit, because of her strange conduct” [3]. There were also rumors that she’d poison patients, and if she was willing, bring them back from the point of death time and again. There was even one victim who lived that recalled Jane climbed into bed with her as she lay dying, before being interrupted by another nurse walking through. Due to her questionable conduct including dosing patients incorrectly and mishandling opiates, she was eventually discharged from both hospitals without ever graduating from their training programs. (“Lowell’s Ties”).

It's interesting that she was suspected of having an addiction of opium, and frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she did. Not only was it a common form of medication, but we know that Jane had a traumatic background – it would make sense for her to turn to some form of substance to cope. When I work with people today who have history of opiate addiction, especially heroin, I notice that many of their core issues are related to attachment problems and abandonment. And I’ve had many heroin addicts say that shooting up feels like a warm hug, so it’s almost like the substance replaces a missing attachment figure. Since this was also Jane’s primary loss, it would make sense that she would be drawn to a substance that would fill that void.

There were rumors that Jane was dismissed from Cambridge Hospital and Massachusetts General because there had been too many suspicious deaths of patients who had died during her care. But she was likeable enough that no one looked further into those deaths. Other reports indicate that she may have been dismissed because she left her ward without permission (Langlois 125). Whatever the case, though, she left the nursing school just shy of actually earning her certificate. So she had all the training she needed but not the credentials.

After she was let go from Cambridge Hospital, Jane entered into private nursing (“Lowell’s ties”). And this is terrifying because there was less oversight, so she would essentially be left to her own devices. Because she was a skilled nurse, Jane was recommended to different families around Massachusetts by various doctors. She would go into their home and care for someone and, even though things around the house started to go missing and money wasn’t returned, families trusted her as a competent and kind nurse (“Lowell’s ties”).

Jane’s first confirmed kill happened in 1895. She had been living on Wendell Street in Cambridge with an elderly couple named Israel and Lovey Dunham (McReynolds). Just a moment of recognition for how cute the name Lovey is. Don’t get too attached to her, though. Jane decided that Israel Dunham was too “feeble and fussy,” so she poisoned him. Since he was an older gentleman, it was believed that he had simply suffered a heart attack, and Jane continued living in the Dunham home after his death (McReynolds). Two years later, though, in 1897, 87-year-old Lovey Dunham suddenly died. She was older, so the death wasn’t looked into. Jane would later confess that Mrs. Dunham had gotten “old and cranky,” so she poisoned her, too (Coletta).

Something had happened over the years to worsen her relationship with her foster sister, Elizabeth. Although they were reported to have gotten along when they were children, somewhere along the way, Jane developed a hatred for her – jealousy, perhaps, because Elizabeth was married to a man who Jane wanted. Or perhaps because Mrs. Toppan had excluded Jane from her will when she died. Either way, Jane was resentful toward Elizabeth.

So in 1899, Elizabeth came to visit Jane at the vacation home of her new employers, the Davises (Langlois 125). The book Pretty Evil New England by Sue Coletta describes from Jane’s perspective what happened next:

Mrs. [Elizabeth] Brigham came down to visit me at Cataumet on Buzzards Bay, where I was spending the Summer of 1899 in one of the Davis cottages. That gave me a good chance to have my revenge on her.

On August 26, the day after Elizabeth arrived on the Cape, Jane suggested a picnic on the beach might lift her foster sister’s spirits. For several weeks Elizabeth had been suffering with a mild but persistent case of melancholia (known today as depression).

Weaved picnic basket in hand, Jane escorted Elizabeth down to Scotch House Cove, where the two women spent several hours chatting away the day while munching on cold corned beef and taffy. Salted ocean breezes swept its fingers through their hair as they basked in the summer sun. But deep within Jane a volcano of resentment was about to erupt.

She was really the first of my victims that I actually hated and poisoned with a vindictive purpose. So I let her die slowly, with griping tortures. I fixed mineral water so it would do that and then added the morphia to it.

All that sun drained Elizabeth of energy, so she retired early to her upstairs bedroom. The following morning, Jane called Elizabeth down for breakfast. When she didn’t respond, Jane rushed to the home of her landlord, Alden Davis, and asked if he could summon the doctor because “her sister had taken sick.” Jane then telegrammed O. A. in Lowell, informing him that his wife was in grave condition.

Alarmed, O. A. took the first available train to Cape Cod. By the time he arrived the next morning, Monday, August 28, Elizabeth had fallen into a coma. She died in the early morning hours of August 29. The doctor said Elizabeth had suffered a stroke of apoplexy (cerebral hemorrhage or stroke).

But Jane knew better.

I held her in my arms and watched with delight as she gasped her life out.

As O. A. packed up his wife’s belongings, he only found five dollars in her pocketbook, which was odd since he and Elizabeth agreed that she should take “no less than fifty dollars” for her trip. When he asked Jane about the missing money, she feigned innocence. As far as she knew, Elizabeth arrived with only a few dollars. If money went missing, Jane assured him, she didn’t know anything about it.

Taking Jane at her word, O. A. continued to pack Elizabeth’s belongings when Jane rested a soothing hand on his forearm. Just before slipping into a coma, she said, Elizabeth expressed the desire to leave Jane her gold watch and chain. Touched by his wife’s kind gesture, O. A. fulfilled Elizabeth’s final wish.

Over the next several years, Jane seemed to live above her means and, though no one really questioned her about it, they wondered where her money suddenly came from (Colette). But Jane had a nasty habit of borrowing money from her employers, the Davises, and not returning it. She was so likeable, though, that they let it slide. And let it slide. And let it…well, until they couldn’t let it slide anymore.

On June 25, 1901, Mattie Davis, the matriarch of the Davis family, had had enough. She was ready to confront Jane and insist on her repaying her debts. Massachusetts was in the middle of a heat wave, though, so travel would be difficult. And she was late for the train, so her husband Alden ran to the depot to stop the train before it could leave. In her attempt to move quickly, Mattie tripped and fell, face-first, in front of all the passengers. Her husband rushed to her aid and passengers asked her if she was all right. “Nothing hurt but my dignity,” she responded. It was so hot that day, so I’m sure Mattie fanned herself on the train ride to Boston, where she’d stop by and see Jane at her new residence.

Jane had been living with Mr. and Mrs. Beedle, who already had a live-in housekeeper. Jane decided that that job should actually be hers, so she laced the housekeeper’s water with just enough strychnine to make her sick – not actually harm her. So when Mrs. Beedle found her housekeeper passed out on her bed in the middle of the day, Jane suggested that perhaps she had been drinking on the job, and the housekeeper was fired on the spot (Coletta).

That brings us back to June 25, the hot day when Mattie Davis arrived at the Beedles’ home to confront Jane about her non-payment. When she showed up unannounced, Mattie must have looked hot and exhausted from her trip, so Jane offered her a glass of mineral water. This is where everyone should be saying, “Nooooo, don’t take it!” But, of course, she did, and, of course, it was laced with strychnine. Mattie barely made it out the door before she collapsed from the poisoning. For Jane, though, this was convenient. The combination of Mattie’s poor health due to diabetes, her fall that morning, and the extreme heat would make anyone collapse suddenly. Right?

With Mr. Beedle’s help, Jane was able to get Mrs. Davis into bed. She sneakily grabbed one of her needles and, when no one was looking, gave Mrs. Davis another dose of morphine. She then sent a telegraph to Alden Davis, saying that his wife had arrived ill at the home. She also telegraphed their daughter Genevieve, whom Mattie was planning to visit after collecting her money from Jane.

Genevieve arrived the next day and found her mother in a darkened room that Jane was keeping cool by hanging ice sheets. Genevieve insisted that they call a doctor, but many people had fled the city because of the heat, so finding a doctor would be more difficult than they had anticipated. They finally reached Dr. John T. G. Nichols, who arrived and seemed impressed by the good care Jane was giving Mrs. Davis.

But, of course, Jane was not giving Mrs. Davis good care. Once again, she was alternating shots of morphine and atropine. She did this for a week before administering a fatal dose on July 4, 1901.

Between the extreme heat wave (about 9,500 people on the east coast died from the heat) and Mattie Davis’s poor health, no one suspected anything unnatural about her death. Genevieve was so grateful for Jane’s health that she asked if Jane would accompany her and her mother’s body to the cemetery, where she would be buried.

Jane then went to live with Alden Davis, who was deep in mourning, and Genevieve, who was spending time with her father.

Jane, ever the peach, continued borrowing large sums of money from the Davises. And then one night she had an idea: 

I had borrowed a good deal of money of [Alden] Davis and his daughters and had given them my notes. The thought occurred to me: If I should burn up this house, all those papers would be destroyed. One night I kindled up some papers in a closet near the fireplace so it might appear the chimney had caught fire. When the smoke began to fill the halls, [Alden] Davis rushed out of his room in his night clothes and started to put out the flames.

I danced with delight in my room – but when [Alden Davis] began to call for help, I ran out and aided him to throw water on the fire so as to avoid suspicion. I was hoping all the while that the house would burn up, but it didn’t. (Colette)

Okay, pause. We know that Jane is a psychopath by this point, right? But this scene is a really good example of how a psychopath can switch gears quickly to get their needs met and not care about the destruction that it may cause. This is a very dangerous person. And she is becoming more and more unhinged. She would actually go on to cause three small fires in the Davis home in just a few weeks.

So now that Alden Davis and his daughter Genevieve are in grieving and have survived the arson attempt, Jane decides that Genevieve’s gotta go:

Poor thing, she was grieving herself to death over her sickly child. So life wasn’t worth living anyway. I was sorry, though, for the poor, unfortunate child…I love the little one very much…I thought with [Genevieve] out of the way I could be a mother to her child and get [her husband] to marry me. (Colette)

And to that I say: GIRL. GIIIIIRL. This is not how we make friends or get husbands. Ya can’t just kill everyone whose job or husband you want. It’s not okay.

And so Jane follows Genevieve to the bathroom and tells her she needs some water and hands her a glass of water, with morphia in it, of course. So later, Genevieve’s sister Minnie comes running in to find Jane and says there’s something wrong with Genevieve. And do you know what this crazy woman says? “Well, a few days ago, I heard Genevieve threatening to commit suicide! Maybe she poisoned herself!” So once again, Jane sends a telegram to Genevieve’s husband, saying his wife is very ill and come right away and blah blah blah. And, just like she did with her mother, Genevieve got worse and got better and got worse and got better until she finally died on July 31, 1901. Remember that Mattie Davis had only died a couple weeks earlier, on July 4th. So…she’s moving quickly.

I thought the plan was to marry Genevieve’s husband, but after she died, apparently Jane decided she wanted to marry Alden Davis:

At first after his wife’s death I thought [Alden] would marry me, but I had found out he wouldn’t, but might leave me some of his property in his will. He went to Boston one hot day, and when he came back he was pretty tired and almost prostrated. I saw my chance then, for I could say, if anyone suggested that he was poisoned, that he got the drug in Boston and committed suicide out of grief for his wife. (Colette)

Again. GIRL.

So Jane came to Alden when he was relaxing on a sofa with a glass of water. He tried to shoo her away, but she insisted that he needed something to drink. He probably just did it to get rid of her.

On August 5, 1901, a friend of the family stopped by to offer consolation, following the deaths of Mattie and Genevieve. Instead, he saw Jane’s sad face. “There’s been more trouble, terrible trouble,” she said. “During the night, Mr. Davis died. When he failed to come down for breakfast this morning, I went up and found him. The doctor has just left. He tells me it was a cerebral hemorrhage.” (Colette)

Now, surprisingly, everyone around town was like, “Yep, that tracks. He was grieving,” so they didn’t think anything of it.

That left only Minnie Gibbs, the youngest and last surviving member of the Davis family. Her father-in-law tried to talk her into returning to Pocasset with her sons and wait for her husband to return from sea. Instead, Minnie insisted there was too much to do around the house, since three members of her family had just died. And after all, she’d have Jane with her.

I’m sure you can guess what happens next. By mid-August, Minnie’s father-in-law received an urgent message: Minnie is ill, you need to come quickly.

By the time he arrived, Minnie was comatose and gasping for air. Jane rushed into the room and shoved a needle into Minnie’s arm. “The doctor has ordered Mrs. Gibbs to be kept absolutely quiet. I must ask you to leave immediately.” She explained that Minnie had gone shopping for the day but when she returned she hadn’t felt well. Don’t worry, Jane said, I’ll take good care of her.

Minnie’s father in law came back the next day, and Minnie looked “death struck.” He called for their family doctor, Dr. Latter, who described her condition as “funny.” They called another doctor, Dr. Hudnut of Boston, who couldn’t give a reason for Minnie’s condition. Both doctors seemed confused about why this otherwise-healthy woman would be so sick.

And then, on August 13, 1901, Minnie died. In the movie version of this story that I’m imagining, Minnie’s father-in-law, who was an old sea captain, is staring down at the body of his daughter-in-law, kinda lost in thought, when he says, “I think there should be an autopsy.”

Jane tried to resist, pointing to all the reasons the doctors had given for everyone’s naturally-explainable deaths. But four members of the family had died in 41 days. Could that really have been a coincidence? Was the family cursed?

Now I haven’t mentioned it to this point, but if you have listened to episode 53, which is the true crime episode about Charles Freeman from Danvers State Hospital, then you’ve heard of the Davis family before. Just to jog your memory, Charles Freeman was part of a cult, and he stabbed his daughter to death in 1879, believing that the voice of God had commanded him to do so. Now, interestingly, the leaders of this cult were the members of the Alden Davis family. You might also remember that it was Alden Davis’s 16-year-old daughter Minnie who confessed what had happened to a police officer who had shown up. Remember? He was trying to hit on her, and she starts crying and tells this terrible tale, and he’s like, oh great, now I have to work? That’s this same family. So maybe they were cursed.

Anyway, four deaths in one family was finally too much. Minnie’s husband returned from sea, and he and his father insisted on an autopsy being performed, but she had already been buried. “When your wife was dying,” the older sea captain said, “she couldn’t talk, but she tried to. And she acted scared every time Jane came near her.”

At Minnie’s funeral, many people stopped by to praise Jane for being there for the family, through so much death and loss. But the minute the funeral was over, she high-tailed it outta town.

The old sea captain found himself talking to Dr. Latter, the family physician, after the funeral about the strange death of his daughter-in-law. The doctor couldn’t say anything bad about Jane and the care she gave the family. The captain said, “But that last day I was at the house – when [Minnie] seemed unconscious – watching Nurse Toppan give her the injection gave me the shivers, I’m frank to say.” Dr. Latter stared at the man. “I didn’t order an injection.”

By the time the captain had requested an inquiry into the deaths of the Davis family, Dr. Latter himself had died from natural causes, so he couldn’t testify to the fact that he never ordered an injection.

The captain instead reached out to two friends to help him prove that Jane was somehow involved: Dr. Leonard Wood and his brother Edward S. Wood, who was a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical. Surely they would be able to help prove what no one else could.

The doctors agreed that Mattie and Alden’s deaths were not particularly unusual because of their age and health status, but the deaths of Genevieve and Minnie were particularly odd. But why kill the whole family? The only motive they could come up with was money. Each of the Davises had had money go missing from their pocketbooks around the time of their deaths. That had to explain it, right?

Jane had returned to Cataumet to her childhood home that was now occupied by her foster sister Elizabeth’s widower, Oramel. You might remember that once upon a time, Jane had hoped that she would be able to marry Oramel after Elizabeth died. Here she was again, hoping to capitalize on that dream. But darn it all, his sister Edna came to visit and ruined her fantasy! But Edna was not a well woman. So you know what that means…

On August 26, 1901, a couple weeks after Minnie’s death, General Whitney of the Massachusetts District Police showed up at Jane’s home and questioned her about the deaths of the Davis family members. Without showing any distress, Jane answered all of his questions matter-of-factly, even when her answers didn’t quite add up.

And by the time General Whitney left the house and ended his questioning of Jane, Edna was already almost dead in the room next door – poisoned just as everyone else had been. She died the next day, August 27, 1901. But again, this death made sense. Edna wasn’t well, so Jane relaxed.

Meanwhile, the police had ordered the Davis family to be exhumed. Their bodies were taken and full autopsies performed on each of them. Then they had to wait for the toxicology reports to come back. 

In the meantime, the state police had assigned a plainclothes detective, John S. Patterson, to follow Jane wherever she went to ensure that no other people would be killed while waiting for their investigation to continue. He rented a room near her residence and everywhere she went, he followed.

He would have his work cut out for him. Jane was already working on getting Oramel to fall madly in love with her:

The plan instantly came to me to give [Oramel] a little poison – a morphia tablet in his tea, just enough to make him sick, and then I could hover over him, nurse him, and win back his love. I was succeeding when a detective [Patterson] came to the house one day. After he left, a change came over Mr. Brigham. He struggled up from his bed, weak as he was from the morphia and the Hunyadi water I had been giving him.

            He ordered me away, saying, “I want you to leave this house at once.”

I have since learned that the detective said to Mr. Brigham: “Be careful of that woman or she will poison you.” Then it flashed upon him how three members of his home had died in my care within a year or two. I was frantic. Everything was lost, I thought – my lover, my future home I had counted on, fortune – and worst of all, I was discovered!

So she did what we might have expected her to do: she dosed herself with poison. When Oramel discovered her, he rang for the doctor. “I want to die!” she said and refused to tell Oramel what she had taken. The doctor called for a private nurse to take care of Jane. 

The next morning, September 30, 1901, Jane appeared to be feeling better and was back to her jolly self, so the nurse left her alone while she went to eat breakfast. But when the nurse returned, Jane could no longer swallow, her jaw sagged, her nose was pinched closed. She looked near death. The doctor immediately intervened and gave her two doses of apomorphine, which induced vomiting.

Jane seemed angry that she had survived a second suicide attempt. “I’m tired of life,” she said. “I know that people are talking about me. I just want to die.” Oramel didn’t fall for the histrionics. He kicked her out.

Jane admitted herself to the Lowell General Hospital for “rest and treatment,” and guess who feigned ill just to get a room next to hers? Detective Patterson.

After she discharged from the hospital, Jane went to Amherst, NH, to visit friends, and Detective Patterson traveled alongside her, unbeknownst to her.

On October 27, 1901, the toxicology report came back: Minnie’s body had traces of morphine, and all four bodies had high levels of arsenic in the intestines. They had been poisoned.

The district attorney went right away to get an arrest warrant for Jane Toppan for the murder of Minnie Gibbs, since there was the most evidence in her death.

Two days later, on October 29, 1901, General Whitney arrived in Amherst, NH, along with two police officers. After picking up Detective Patterson, the four arrived, warrant in hand, and arrested Jane Toppan for the murder of Minnie Gibbs.

Her response? “I wouldn’t kill a chicken, and if there is any justice in Massachusetts, they will let me go.” She asked why she would be arrested before she had a chance to give her side of things. I can imagine the response from General Whitney: “Lady, we had autopsies done on the whole Davis family. You’re coming with me.” Jane would later admit that she had planned on poisoning the friends she had been rooming with, if she’d stayed long enough. 

Jane was taken to a jail in Nashua and kept on suicide watch. On her extradition back to Massachusetts, she confessed to General Whitney where and when she had purchased the poisons. He passed her along to Detective Simeon Letteney on another leg of the journey, where she laughed and recounted the story of her arrest.

When they arrived in Cataumet, half the town had arrived to see the already-notorious accused murderess.

Before long, Jane was confessing to murders all the way back to her nursing residency days:

My first victims were hospital patients. I experimented on them with what doctors would call a “scientific interest.” I can’t repeat the names of those cases – because I never knew them. They went by numbers in the hospital wards anyway. That was when I was at the Cambridge Hospital. Perhaps it was a dozen people I experimented on in this way. (Colette)

She said she would later rely on doctors’ diagnosis of heart problems after the deaths of her victims because poisoning often looked like heart disease, diabetes, etc.

Jane had court on November 8, 1901, for the murder of Minnie Gibbs. She pleaded Not Guilty.

On December 6, 1901, she had court for the murders of Genevieve Gordon, Alden Davis, and Mattie Davis. Once again, she pleaded Not Guilty.

By January 1902, the judge believed there were more deaths than just the Davis family. The victim count rose to eleven: Elizabeth Brigham, her foster sister; Sarah “Myra” Connors; Mary McNear, who ran the theological school and whose housekeeping job Jane had coveted; Israel and Lovey Dunham, her former landlords; Edna Bannister (Oramel Brigham’s sister), and Florence Calkins (Oramel’s housekeeper), along with the Davis family.

In court Jane insisted that she was innocent but in private meetings with her defense attorney, she told everything: “I know I am not a safe person to be at large,” she said. “It would be better if I were locked up where I could do no one any harm. No one can tell when I am liable to have another paroxysm [a sudden attack or violent expression – in Jane’s case an uncontrollable desire to murder[. I do not know myself, until it comes.” Her attorney tried to argue that she must be insane:

Insane, how can I be insane? When I killed those people, I knew I was doing wrong. I was perfectly conscious that I was not doing right. I never at any time failed to realize what I was doing. Now, how can a person be insane who knows what she is doing and is conscious of the fact that she isn’t doing right? Insanity is a complete lack of mental responsibility, isn’t it?

Her attorney responded, “Yes, that is correct. But you have no remorse, have you?”

No, I have absolutely no remorse…I have never felt sorry for what I have done. Even when I poisoned my dearest friends, as the Davises were, I did not feel any regret afterward. I do not feel any remorse now. I have though it over, and I cannot detect the slightest bit of sorrow for what I have done…There is one thing that makes me think my mind is not right. I have great difficulty in remembering things. My memory is good at times, but on other occasions I cannot recall what I have said or done.

Yes, clearly the only thing wrong with her is her occasionally faulty memory. Now, I actually agree with Jane here. Often after a mass murder, I hear people say, “You have to be mentally ill to do something like that.” I disagree. Hate is all that is required. Anyone is capable of horrific murders – we shouldn’t blame mental illness. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again that people with severe mental illness are statistically more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of violence.

Anyway, back to Jane…she went on to describe the pleasure she took in killing people and the sexual gratification she received from it. She called it an “exultation” she experienced while she “kissed and caressed her helpless and insensible patients as they drew nearer and nearer to death.” She took an hour to outline each one of her murders. 

As her attorney stood up to leave, Jane said, “But that’s not all.” She then told the story of how she killed Minnie Gibbs before counting the number of total victims on her fingers. At least 31 men and women, she said. “I might say I feel hilarious,” she said, “but perhaps that expresses it too strongly…I do not know the feeling of fear, and I do not know the feeling of remorse, although I understand perfectly what these words mean. But I cannot sense them at all. I do not seem to be able to realize the awfulness of the things I have done, though I realize very well what those awful things are…I try to picture it by saying, ‘I have poisoned Minnie, my dear friend. I have poisoned Genevieve. I have poisoned Alden and Mattie, but I seem incapable to realize the awfulness of it. Why don’t I feel sorry and grieve over it? I don’t know. I seem to have a sort of paralysis over thought and reason.”

And that, my friends, is how the mind of a psychopath works. They know what regret and remorse are; they just don’t experience it. Jane would later say she killed upward of 100 people, though the accuracy of that is unknown. She would also later state that she wanted to be known for killing more people than any other man or woman. 

“Jolly Jane” Toppan was convicted Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity for the murders and sent to Taunton State Hospital. Although she was firm in her belief that she was not insane, she said, “I’ve made up my mind to being sent to an insane asylum. But I have hopes of getting out in 10 or 15 years – when doctors will say I am cured of insanity.”

Fortunately, she was wrong. Jane remained at Taunton State Hospital for the rest of her life. She was diagnosed with dementia praecox, paranoid type (Langlois 127). According to Joseph Langlois: 

During the next year of her hospitalization it was noted that she rarely slept, appeared pleased when other patients were in trouble and would become embroiled in the disputes of others. She would do work about the ward such as making beds. She would exercise by walking briskly from one end of the ward to the other. She accepted a position in the sewing room; however, her work attendance was often interrupted by threats of suicide, which would later be called jokes. By 1903, she became unkempt, verbally abusive, oppositional, and would press other patients into being resistive. She expressed the belief that the staff were planning to poison her. She began to throw her food and water. She would place feces under her bed. It was believed by staff that she was having hallucinatory experiences. She would alternate between threats of suicide and threats of murder. At one point, she stated, “I would kill you all, if I could” and “If I get out, I will murder 31 more.” She threatened to poison staff and voices the wish to kill the older patients. She was frequently in seclusion and when agitated would throw her chamber pot and bedding over the transom onto the ward. She would break dishes and assault nurses. By 1906, she weighed only 62 pounds; however, by the next year she was at 125 pounds. The most common form of intervention was seclusion. She was placed in seclusion repeatedly from 1914 to 1920. From August 1920 to October of that year, she was locked in her room 56 times, for a total of 482 hours.

When interviewed in 1925, she was described as a cooperative but unstable elderly woman who was clapping her hands and jumping about in her bed. She stated she was always happy when she killed an Englishman. She stated that she was sent to this country by the Irish Parliament to kill Englishmen. She went on to say that the English are also fighting with the planet Jupiter. She went on to say quite incorrectly that she has three brothers and a million sisters. She reported that she caused the sinking of the Titanic. A somewhat comical event occurred when a letter was received by the superintendent requesting Ms. Toppan’s brain with him replying in a somewhat comical fashion that it was still in use. (Langlois 127-128)

Jane Toppan died at Taunton State Hospital on August 17, 1938. She was 84 years old and had remained at Taunton for 36 years.

And that is the very disturbing tale of “Jolly Jane” Toppan the angel of mercy. I encourage you to check out the book that I referenced throughout most of this episode, Pretty Evil New England by Sue Colette. There are other stories about other women who kill, so if that’s of interest to you, give it a read. I got a copy on Kindle, but it’s also on Amazon.

And with that story I’ll wrap up the history of Taunton State Hospital in Massachusetts. We’ll be starting a new hospital series next week, and I’m really excited for this one, so stay tuned.

As always, be sure to rate and review wherever you’re listening, but super extra bonus points if that’s on Apple Podcasts. Thank you to everyone who has joined the Facebook group and Instagram page – that means so much to me! I promise I haven’t forgotten about the Patreon page, which is still under construction. Feel free to check out what we have there, and hopefully there will be more soon!

But most of all, remember the words of Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” Until next time…

Coletta, Sue. Pretty Evil New England. Lanham, MD: The Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc, 2020.

“Jane Toppan.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Toppan

Langlois, Joseph. A Brief History of the Taunton Lunatic Hospital 1854 to 2016. Otherwords Press, 2020.

“Lowell’s Ties to ‘Jolly’ Jane, Massachusetts’ Female Serial Killer.” Lowell Historical Society, 29 Oct. 2022. https://www.lowellhistoricalsociety.org/lowells-ties-to-jolly-jane-massachusetts-female-serial-killer/

McReynolds, Marcus. “The Crimes Committed by Jolly Jane.” Robert J. DeBry & Associates, 5 June 2023. https://robertdebry.com/jollyjanelifeandcrimes/

Newton, Michael. “Jane Toppan.” Murderpedia. https://murderpedia.org/female.T/t/toppan-jane.htm