Jane Toppan was a female American serial killer, known as “Jolly Jane”, who, in 1901, confessed to 33 murders. She told police her goal was “to have killed more people – helpless people – than any other man or woman who ever lived”. Toppan falls into the category of killers known as “Angels of Death” – usually killers in the medical profession who kill their patients, and is also believed to be the first to have the title.
Not much is known about Toppan’s early life, but we do know that she was the daughter of Irish immigrants, who named her Honora Kelley. Her mother died of tuberculosis when she was very young and her father was an abusive, eccentric alcoholic. When Toppan was six, her father took her and her 8-year-old sister, Delia Josephine, to the Boston Female Asylum, which at the time was an orphanage. The girls never saw their father again. Documentation from the asylum states that the girls were “rescued from a very miserable home.” No records exist from Toppan’s time in the asylum, but when she was 7 years old, she was placed in the home of Mrs. Ann C. Toppan to work there as an indentured servant. She was never actually adopted by the Toppan’s, but she took their surname, and eventually became known as Jane. Jane claimed never to have gotten along with the Toppans’ daughter, Elizabeth.
In 1885 Jane Toppan began working at Cambridge Hospital, training to be a nurse. She was popular, and had many friends, unlike in her earlier years and often became very close with her patients, who were usually elderly, and very ill. She chose her favourites and, believed she was helping them, as they were going to die soon anyway. She used patients in experiments using morphine and atropine, altering dosages and prescriptions to see what happened. She spent much time faking charts and medicating patients to drift in and out of consciousness. She even admitted to getting into bed with them, however, it is not known if any sexual activity occurred during this time. When Toppan was questioned after her arrested, she did admit to getting a sexual thrill from patients being close to death, reviving, and then dying. Toppan administered mixtures of drugs to her “favourite” patients, lying with them and holding them as they died – an uncommon act for female serial killers, who usually murder for material gain, not sexual satisfaction.
In 1889, she moved to Massachusetts General Hospital where she claimed several more victims until she was fired in 1900. She went back to Cambridge Hospital but was fired for prescribing opiates recklessly. She began working as a private nurse, where she was often suspect of petty theft.
In 1895, Toppan’s poisoning spree began. She killed her landlords, and 4 years later, used strychnine to kill foster sister Elizabeth, whom she had never liked. In 1901, Jane moved in with the Davis family in Cataumet to take care of Alden Davis after the death of his wife...whom Jane had killed. Within weeks, Alden and 2 of his daughters were dead. She moved back to her hometown and entered a relationship with the husband of Elizabeth, the foster sister she had murdered. She killed his sister and poisoned him so she could “prove herself” by caring for him whilst he was sick. She once poisoned herself to evade suspicion, although this didn’t work, and she was removed from the home.
Members of the Davis family ordered a toxicology screen on Alden Davis’ younger daughter, which proved she had been poisoned. Local police started to follow Toppan. On October 29, 1901, she was arrested for their murder. By the following year, she had confessed to 33 murders, and in June was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to the Taunton Insane Hospital. During her stay here, she told reporters that if she had been married, with a happy family, she would never have started killing.
