TL;DR: This month, I’m introducing you to five female trailblazers in crime. Today, meet Jane Toppan, an “angel of death” credited with being America’s first female serial killer.
Betsy Ross. Harriett Tubman. Susan B. Anthony. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Kamala Harris. These are all women worthy of recognition during Women’s History Month, because of their trailblazing efforts that helped shape America.
But if you want to learn about them, you’re in the wrong place.
This March, in honor of Women’s History Day/Week/Month, I’m going to introduce you to another kind of trailblazing woman: The criminal kind. Because women can do anything they put their minds to—just like men!
First on my list: Jane Toppan.
Jane Toppan: America’s First Female Serial Killer
In 1901, Jane Toppan, a 26-year-old Boston nurse, admitted to administering lethal doses of morphine to 31 patients. Though she was suspected of killing upwards of 70 more, the hospitals she worked for didn’t want to risk scandal by exhuming the bodies of others who died mysteriously under her care.
Her Backstory
As is required of serial killers, Jane Toppan (born Honora, aka Nora, Kelley) had a tumultuous childhood: Her mother died of TB when Honora was just an infant, and her alcoholic father surrendered her and her sister to an orphanage before trying to sew his eyelids shut and getting shipped off to an insane asylum. One of her sisters became a prostitute, while their older sister (who avoided paternal abandonment) joined her father in the loony bin.
Eventually, Honora was taken in (some sources say she was adopted; others say she was in their servitude) by the Toppan family and changed her name to Jane Toppan. Some sources say she was mistreated and became increasingly jealous of her foster sister; others say she was completely “normal” until her fiance left her, when she went a little cray-cray and tried to kill herself. In any case, she eventually wound up as a student nurse at Cambridge Hospital.
Her Weapon of Choice: Prescriptions & Poisons
While being trained as a nurse, Jane was well-liked and earned the moniker “Jolly Jane.” Little did her peers know, but she enjoyed experimenting on old, sick patients by altering their drug dosages to see what happened to them. She also freaked people out with her fascination for autopsies. After being fired from several hospitals and having to forge her own nursing certificate, Jane became a private nurse, a move that really kick-started her career as an angel of death.
In addition to messing with patients’ drugs, she was also a poison aficionado. Among others, she poisoned the wife of one of her patients so she could move in with the family, many of whom eventually suffered the same fate. She even poisoned herself—just a little!—to garner sympathy from men she dated.
Why she did that crazy shit
- Enjoyed watching the “inner workings of their souls through (her victims’) eyes” as they died.
- Reportedly derived a sexual thrill from being around patients who nearly died, came back to life, and then died again—and even fondled them as she watched.
- When testifying at her trial, she told the jury her life’s ambition was to kill more helpless people “than any other man or woman who ever lived.”
How Karma Got Her
- Although Jane insisted at trial that she was not batshit crazy, a jury saw right through that charade, finding her not guilty by reason of obvious insanity.
- She was committed to life in an insane asylum (as they were called back then), where attendants later recalled that she would beckon them into her room, saying “Get some morphine, dearie, and we’ll go out in the ward. You and I will have a lot of fun seeing them die.”
- She later died an anticlimactic death of old age at 84.
“Get some morphine, dearie, and we’ll go out in the ward. You and I will have a lot of fun seeing them die.”
Jane Toppan
Sources: Jane Toppan (Wikipedia); Who is America’s First Serial Killer? (Serial Killer Calendar); Jane Toppan (Murderpedia)
Be sure to come back for part two for an electrifying story of jealousy and murder!
Cover Photo by Donovan Reeves on Unsplash
