The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1902-06-26
STRANGE CASE OF JANE TOP.
PAN, CONVICTED AT BARN. Ut
= E. & b 3 i
STABLE, MASS. Az J.
HAS KILLED OVER THIRTY
Is Pronounced Degenerate. of the
Worst Type-EmpIoyed Morphine
and Atrophine, Hiding the Effects Of
the Former by Using the Latter.
Took Life That She Might Enjoy the
: Sight of Her Victims Struggles. q

Boston, June 25.-Jane TOppan.
murderess and degenerate, committed
to Taunton insane hospital as the out
come of the trial at Barnstable where
in she was found not guilty of>murder
by reason of insanity, of poisoning
Mrs. Mary D. Gobbs of Calumet, has
killed at least thirty other persons, &C.
cording to her own confession. Her
case is one of extraordinary circum-
stances. A nurse by profession, en-
joying the confidence of an unlimited
acquaintanceship; of seeming lovable
disposition, skilled in the uses of medi-
cines, especially of narcotics, she was
at heart a maniac, whose delight at
times was to see her patients writing
in deaths agony. And her work did
not stop there, for, having bafled
medical skill so that the attending
physician would assign natural cause
OF death, she would seem to recover
her normal mental poise and sorrow
with the living for the loss of a loved
one.
Jane Toppan's crimes were revolt
ing beyond all description, but the de.
tails perhaps will never be known, for
the lips of her counsel are sealed. Her
confession was not made as story of
wholesale murder, but has been drawn
out little by little, from time to time
when her counsel have talked with
her in Barnstable Jail.
She was indicted last spring for the
killing of Mrs. Gibbs, her sister, Mrs.
Harry Morrison of Chicago and her
father, Alden P. Davis of Calumet,
and her, trial, the shortest on record
in this commonwealth was for the
murder of the first named. The case
rested on the testimony of alienists,
who not only pronounced Jane Toppan
to be insane, but to be degenerate
They said her
Impulses Were Irresistible
and compelled her to murder her pa
tients in order that she might enjoy
the sight of their struggles. They told
OF her confession of killing Mrs. Gibbs
by administering morphine and afro
phine, hiding the effect of the former
by use of the latter.
To the alienists, to whom she made
a full confession of the Calumet cases,
she spoke without reserve, describing
deliberately the most indelicate de-
tails, believing that it was knowledge
due to them as physicians In fact,
she discussed the cases as if she were
student in medicine or surgery at a
clinic. She implied to them that it
was to crafty an abnormal passion
that she put patients to death and dur
ing the interval of ebbing life and the
departure of natural heat from r the
body it was her passion also to handle
the bodies of her victims. She said
the paroxyisms of desire were inter-
mittent and there were times when
patients were quietly dying that her
better nature would become uppermost
and that she would try to check ap-
preaching death.
The alienists were forced to study
Jane Toppan as subject They found
that she embodied the worst types of
degeneracy, and with this clear there
was no doubt of her mental condition.
While murder was Jane Toppan's
greatest crime there were many lesser
forms of mental depravity, each in
themselves deplorable. She believed
that she was not of unsound mind.
This is trait of those whose minds
have become unbalanced, but in her
case it was singularity.