The Marlboro democrat. [volume] (Bennettsville, S.C.) 1882-1908, 1904-11-04
SHE SEES GHOSTS.
Jane Toppan, Who Poisoned Thirty
One Victims, Herself Haunted
BY VISIONS OF aHosTLY FORMS.

BY VISIONS OF GH0sTLY FORMS
She Has Conc Mad and Screams IL
Terror at Every Bowl Of Soup
or Cup of Tea offered,
Fearing Poison.
Jane Tocpan, the poisoner of thirty.
one people by her own confession,
during her career as professional
nurse, the most cruel woman murder.
er known in modern criminal history,
is now suffering for her sins by ter.
rible punishment at natures own
hands or Gods, in the State insane
asylum at Taunton, Mass, where she
Is kept. Her punishment Is exquis-
itely more torturing and crueller than
death or the grave. She imagines
that the dead victims have risen from
their tombs and are trying to poison
her. AS the nurses bring q bowl Of
cruel or cup of tea to her In her mar
row cell she screams out:
Its poisoned!p
She pushes 1t away and covers her
face with her hands to hide the sight
Of the bony fingers OF her dead patients
clutching at her, q, d to shut out the
vision of their deaf tyh's heads lowering
over her.
1t is as If the ghosts OF all whom
she killed had burst loose from their
ccflins and come forth to torture her
to death.
Fr.m che plump, good looking,
happy woman who entered the asylum
two years a,go, chucklin" over her
own cleverness IN 'fooirnk the doc
TORS" as she calle,l it. into calling her
insane, she has b. .3eome q raving ma
MAC, and mere lkeleton.
When Jane JlJppan was committed
here IN June, 1902, many people
IS -ght that the electric chair had
+. robbed Of its rightful victim,
.eGaaii .eeGTaaic co 13tat no form Of xecut!un
known tcs ~ could be to: turesome
enough. "a inhuman woman.
Som. SO far as to Call 1T
a travesty On justice to allow such q
tigress in human form to escape legal
execution.
But now the wisdom of the insanity
experts and OF the courts has Its fair
right to consideration.
Nature, through God, in It's own
way, Is working punishment more
terrible than m diavial torture could
nave devised upon this woman; who
dar,d to violate one Of the great Ten
Commandments: ts; II
THOU shalt not killr'
4 Day and night she is living over
the crimes she committed.
4 Sometimes the wing in which she is
c9nhned Is aroused @ at nlshtt nlstfs hs n gfs e ;g i
1t is Jane Toppan in her cell imag-
lining that some one Is setting fire to
the bed on which she is sleeping.
-Four times she set fire to houses
where she was living-at Professor
Wilson's. in Cambridge, In the hope
that the shock and excitement would
kill weak, sickiy Mrs. Wilson. But
this plot failed. Again at the Dakin
cottage, at Cataumet. on Cape Cod,
she started blaze in closet to de.
stroy aged Mr.. and Mrs. Alden 2.
Davis. This attempt also failed, so
she poisoned both Of them few weeks
later. On two other occasions she is
known to have set fires to see her vic
Tins roast.
Now she Is haunted by the fear that
others are trying by burn her alive.
Week by week Jane Toppan Is
growing weaker as her crazed mind is
racked by torments.
Within the last week the physicians
at the asylum have c me to think she
cannot live the year out
Nearly every day or night she
breaks out with some new phantom of
| fear.
One night she alarmed the patients
and attendants in the moth wing
with frantic cries Of
Help, help-doctor-they're poi
soning me-"
When nurse reached her cell Jane
Toppan was dashirg round the small
room with padded walls, fighting ofl
sCme imaginary aSSailantS.
'See," she moaned to the nurse,
see how Minnie Gibbs has put NOR
pha into my arm," and she barred
her ann to the shoulder The blood
was dripping from 1t where she had
scratched 1T with her own finger nails
in ner wild desire to dig out the i'm.
/ aginary pois on.
Jane Toppln killed Minnie Gibbs
by injecting morphia and strophia
byperderm;cally into her arm when
her patient was too weak to swallow
poison in liquid form.
DR.. Stedman, the famous alienist,
who still contiLu5s to study Jane
Toppan's case, tells Of her physical
C lapse this year by starving herself
and bee ming reduced almost to a
skeleton through fear of being poison
ed through her food:
She had bee me very abusive to the
nurses, defyirg their authority and
melting patients to DO the same, go
ing so far as to shout to a melancho'c
whom the nurse was trying to fee not
to cat the food as it was poison. Her
physical condition had fallen OIL
greatly. She had lost fifty pounds in
weight in a few months In consc
qucnce of her refusal Of food because
Of false belief in regard TO It, Owing
to her weak condition she was remov
ed to the IL Urinary.
BY February, 1904, she was greatly
emaciated, having lost oyer eighty
pounds, or abel half her normal
weight, and was so weak that 70 Geo
feeding with the tuoe was resorted tt
for several days, since which time she
has eaten temporarily, but just enougl
tn avoid bainp fpd AGAIN Tho artiti