Jolly Jane(History’s interesting women)

Jolly Jane(History’s interesting women)

Jolly Jane was born in 1857 Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents were irish immigrants. She lost her mother to tuberculosis at a very young age. Soon after her father went crazy from grief and started drinking. He was rumored to have sown his eyelids shut from insanity. In 1863, he  took his two daughters to Boston Female Asylum. Jane never got adopted but had benefactors from whom she got the name Toppan.

She excelled in school work and was accepted to train  as nurse at Cambridge. She paid special attention to autopsies and was obsessed with them. Some of her colleagues and teacher were quite disturbed by this. She was later dismissed from the school but had enough qualifications to be hired as a nurse. In those days nurses were referred to as “Angels of Mercy”.

Jane  worked  as a private nurse in different places for a while. On July 4,1901 she accompanied her old friend Mrs.Mattie Davis, who died recently to Cataumet Massachusetts for burial. Soon after Alden Davis hired her as the family nurse. This came at a great time because the eldest daughter Annie Gordon was sick. Tragically Annie died on July 29. The sadness of the Davis family doesn't end there. Mr. Davis suffered from a stroke and died after a few days.

Due to the tragic deaths of the family members, the last remaining daughter of the Davis, Mary Gibbs came to arrange the memorials. But several days later she also died too. Gibb’s husband was shocked and suspicious of the family being wiped out. He demanded an autopsy to be performed on his wife’s remains.

The autopsy confirmed that his wife had been poisoned by morphine and atropine. All eyes were now on Jane. She had tried to prevent the autopsy and had taken care of all the family members. Suspicions were at an all time high and Jane fled  Boston.

She was finally arrested in New Hampshire, 1901. She finally confessed to killing the Davis clan but also eleven other victims. Which she later on changed to thirty one victims. She had also managed to kill her foster sister before her arrest. As the authorities followed her footsteps, they suspected  that she had over thirty one victims but were unable to prove it. Jane had sexual thrills from her patients being near death and coming back to life. She would slow down their heart beat by atropine and bring them back with morphine. During this process she would lie with them in bed and hold them close as they died. This is considered uncommon for female serial killers. Jane is one of the top 10 female serial killers that were caught. Most believe she pleaded insanity in order to be released at some point during her sentence.

The most interesting thing about Jolly Jane is that she would have been caught sooner if only the authorities didn't think a mere female was capable of such atrocities. Her early childhood history shows that she was unstable and had tried to commit suicide on several occasions. She had also shown signs of being a sociopath. We can learn from this to ever underestimate a person and their capabilities.

Sources
-Criminal Podcast
-http://murderpedia.org/female.T/t/toppan-jane.htm
-http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/