Latest news with #DavisFamily
Daily Mail
26-05-2025
- Daily Mail
The disturbing case of Jane Toppan, the 'jolly' nurse who killed people for a sickening reason
Jane Toppan was one of America's first and most prolific female serial killers, murdering at least 31 victims, snuggling them in bed and getting a twisted sexual thrill while they gave their last breaths. She had become a crutch to the prominent Davis family in 1901 as they were struck by tragedy after tragedy. They had welcomed their longtime friend and adored 'jolly' nurse into their idyllic Cape Cod home. But, one by one, the family members suddenly dropped dead. Something sinister was going on and Toppan was harboring a macabre secret. In just over a month, four had died - succumbing to a seemingly unrelated illnesses. Family matriarch Mary 'Mattie' Davis was first, with her death explained away by her diabetes. Days later, her daughter Genevieve Gordon was dead from apparent heart failure. After losing his wife and one of his daughters, Alden Davis - who made the family fortune running the railroad from Boston to Cape Cod - suffered an apparently fatal stroke. His other daughter Mary Gibbs would also be dead within days due to of 'a broken heart'. But to Gibbs' father-in-law, the sudden wipeout of the entire Davis family was oddly suspicious. Modus operandi: As a nurse, Toppan (killed patients and anyone else who got in her way with lethal doses of morphine Some of Toppan's victims were injected with a fatal dose of morphine while others were poisoned with her special laced bottles of Hunyadi mineral water. In a sick twist, she reveled in toying with her victims' lives by bringing them to and from the brink of death with alternating doses of morphine and atropine. As her victims lay dying, the nurse would curl up in bed with them, getting a twisted sexual kick while they passed away. By the time 'Jolly' Jane was exposed as one of America's first female serial killers, she had claimed the lives of at least 31 people, according to her own confession letter. But many fear the number could truly top 100. 'She really was probably the first woman serial killer,' Diane Ranney, the former assistant director of the Jonathan Bourne Public Library in Massachusetts who has researched the Toppan case for decades, tells 'But it seems odd to me that the fame really never reached her.' Despite her sadistic murder spree, Toppan is a serial killer that few have heard of. Even in the Cape Cod town of Bourne, Ranney says the chilling past is a little known tale among the community. Born Honora Kelly in Boston's south end in 1854 to Irish immigrant parents, Toppan's start in life was turbulent, to say the least. Her mom died when she was only a small child, leaving her and her sister to be raised by her alcoholic father. Her dad sewed his own eyelids shut and abandoned his two daughters at the Boston Female Asylum. Honora was later taken in as an indentured servant by the wealthy Toppan family and her name changed to Jane Toppan. 'I'm probably the only person who's been researching her who feels sorry for her,' Ranney says, adding: 'Everyone else calls her a monster, which in a way she was, but the more I looked into things, the more I thought, she's a very interesting person.' Through her years of research, Ranney says it's 'a question of why she was like she was'. It's a question Toppan gave a curious answer for after she was caught. In her young adulthood, Toppan was jilted at the altar by her fiance. She went on to blame her lover for sending her down her dark and deadly path. Toppan claimed: 'If I had been a married woman I probably would not have killed all these people.' Rejected by her lover, Toppan decided to train at Cambridge Hospital to be a nurse - a vocation that would give her the knowledge of drugs and position of trust that she would later exploit. When Toppan started working as a nurse, she became an instant hit, earning her the nickname Jolly Jane as she would always joke with her patients. 'She had a rather strange way of expressing her love for her patients. She took very, very good care of them… But in the end, she wound up killing them,' Ranney said. It is unclear exactly when the killing spree started. During her time at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Cambridge School of Nursing, many patients mysteriously died in her care. When she then turned to private nursing, providing her rich patients with home visits, there were also several suspicious deaths. But surprisingly, the deaths were always explained away by some illness or another - and no alarm was raised. Several years would pass before anyone suspected the nurse of killing the patients she had doted on with such care. For other victims, Toppan's murders were far more personal. She also murdered her best friend Sarah Connors whose job she wanted to take at a theology school. Toppan also didn't spare her love interest's sister Edna Bannister who she felt was getting in the way of a romance. And she also killed her former landlords Israel and Lovey Dunham. Toppan's luck only ran out when she murdered the Davis family in summer 1901 after they had dared to ask her to finally pay the $500 in overdue rent she owed. Even Toppan went on to admit this may have finally been a step too far, declaring: 'That was the greatest mistake of my life.' Following pressure from Gibbs' father-in-law, Mary was exhumed and a fatal dose of morphine discovered. Toppan's depraved killing spree was a secret no more and in October 1901, the 47-year-old was arrested for murder. Ultimately, she only stood trial for the murder of Gibbs in a case that hit headlines across the U.S. as the media. Victims who lived to tell the tale came forward with their shocking stories. One patient described Toppan plying her with a mystery drink and then clambering on top of her, kissing and caressing her while she lay suffering in a hospital bed. At the time, the woman passed the bizarre encounter off as a dream - only learning how close she came to being another victim when Toppan was arrested. While suspected of 11 murders, a bombshell confession letter published in the New York Journal revealed Toppan's actual death toll was at least 31. In the shocking declaration, she boasted that her goal was 'to have killed more people - helpless people - than any other man or woman who lived'. She also described being driven by an 'uncontrollable passion' for death, writing that: 'No voice has as much melody in it as the one crying for life; no eyes as bright as those about to become fixed and glassy; no face so beautiful as the one pulseless and cold.' Ranney says there is no indication that Toppan deliberately chose a career in nursing to give her the opportunity to kill. She explained: 'I don't think it started out like that. I think she may have accidentally killed someone without realizing… she may have just decided, 'oh, look what I can do. Wow, that really gave me a thrill.' But I don't think she became a nurse for that reason,' she says. 'I think part of it was a sense that she was powerful.' More than a century on, however, questions remain as to whether it was really Toppan who penned the shocking confession letter. Ranney isn't so sure. She said: 'I've always wondered whether it really was [her]. It did not strike me that it was her writing… just the way it's written. I don't think she would have been quite so blunt about things. It just seems to me that her nature was to be more secretive. 'But then again, by that time, she may have decided that she was just going to confess because it brought her more notoriety.' Toppan was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was sent to the Massachusetts psychiatric hospital in Taunton. She lived there until her death in 1938. Somewhat ironically, Toppan would often refuse to eat and drink at the facility - paranoid that someone was trying to poison her.
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
MS celebrates Jefferson Davis' birthday as a state holiday. What to know on Memorial Day
Mississippi honors Confederate President Jefferson Davis today. The Magnolia State isn't the only one to honor him with a state holiday or local celebration, but it is the only one to combine it with Memorial Day. It's the third of three Confederate holidays on the state calendar, starting with a celebration of Robert E. Lee and Martin Luther King Jr. in February and Confederate Memorial Day in April. Here's what you need to know about when and why Mississippi celebrates Confederate holidays and what other states still honor them. Davis was born in Kentucky on June 3, 1808, but Mississippi pairs it with Memorial Day on the last Monday in May. The president of the Confederacy spent most of his life in the Magnolia State and served it in both houses of the U.S. Congress. The Davis family moved to the Mississippi Territory in 1812. In 1824, he graduated from West Point, the U.S. Military Academy and served in the U.S. Army, according to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Davis settled near family near Vicksburg, planted cotton and owned slaves in Warren County. In 1845, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and resigned in less than a year to fight with the Mississippi Rifles in the Mexican War. In 1847, he was wounded and later was appointed to fill a seat in the U.S. Senate. In 1851, he resigned to run for governor of Mississippi but did not win. He campaigned for Franklin Pierce and served as the president's secretary of war. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1857. He resigned and announced Mississippi was seceding from the Union four years later. By October of 1861, he was president of the Confederate States of America. After Lee surrendered, Davis and his family ran but were later captured. He was held on treason charges for two years. The federal government dropped charges against him in 1869. By 1877, he moved to Beauvoir in Biloxi and died in New Orleans in 1889. The Biloxi building now serves as a presidential library. It's open daily and offers tours. The organization that maintains it will celebrate his 217th birthday on Saturday, May 31, with a showing of Shirley Temple's "The Littlest Rebel" and a Mississippi Rifles Honor Salute. Admission is $15 per person, and movie tickets cost another $2. Alabama also has a state holiday for Confederate President Jefferson Davis on the first Monday in June. In Florida, it's a local observance, according to but not an official state holiday that offices and schools or businesses would close for. Sitting with history: Mississippi senator uses Jefferson Davis' desk in US Congress today Yes. There were multiple bills to remove Lee's birthday and Confederate Memorial Day from the state calendar in the most recent regular session of the Mississippi Legislature. None were successful. Two U.S. states honor Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on the federal holiday for Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day is always scheduled to take place on the third Monday in January. President Ronald Regan signed the bill creating the holiday into federal law in 1983. It was first observed in 1986. King was born on Jan. 15, 1929. When the federal holiday was adopted in the 1980s, Mississippi and Alabama lawmakers opted to add it to an existing holiday honoring Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Many states in the South initially adopted this approach. Most, including Lee's home state of Virginia, have since dropped celebrating Lee, who was born on Jan. 19, 1807. Mississippi celebrated Confederate Memorial Day on Monday, April 28, this year. Only four states still honor the Civil War dead with a day off for public workers, though others still treat it as a holiday. The Magnolia State takes it a step further and celebrates April as Confederate Heritage Month. Confederate Memorial Day was created in Georgia on April 26, 1866. It honored the deaths of Confederate soldiers on the first anniversary of the day that Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee to Union Gen. William Sherman at Bennett Place, North Carolina. Many in the Confederacy felt that negotiation marked the end of the Civil War. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant two weeks earlier at Appomattox Court House, but Johnston stayed in the field with almost 90,000 soldiers. The holiday spread to the other Confederate states. Some changed their celebration dates to something more locally significant. In Alabama and Florida, it's on the fourth Monday in April. Alabama treats it as an official holiday. Texas celebrates it as a state holiday on Jan. 19. North and South Carolina celebrate on May 10, but state offices close only in South Carolina. June 3 is when Kentucky and Tennessee honor the dead from the Civil War, and Tennessee calls it Confederate Decoration Day. No. Mississippi does not honor Juneteenth, though it is a federal holiday. Juneteenth is a federal holiday that honors June 19, 1865, when enslaved people in Texas were set free. The order for the state came about two and a half years after the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation. Many state holidays in Mississippi sync up with federal holidays, but not all of them, according to the list from the Department of Finance and Administration. Wednesday, Jan. 1: New Year's Day. Monday, Jan. 20: Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert E. Lee. Monday, Feb. 17: Washington's Birthday. Monday, April 28: Confederate Memorial Day. Monday, May 26: National Memorial Day and Jefferson Davis' birthday. Friday, July 4: Independence Day. Monday, Sept. 1: Labor Day. Tuesday, Nov. 11: Veterans Day or Armistice Day. Thursday, Nov. 27: Thanksgiving Day. Thursday, Dec. 25: Christmas Day. Here are the federal holidays in 2025, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management: Wednesday, Jan. 1: New Year's Day. Monday, Jan. 20: Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. and Inauguration Day. Monday, Feb. 17: Washington's Birthday. Monday, May 26: Memorial Day. Thursday, June 19: Juneteenth National Independence Day. Friday, July 4: Independence Day. Monday, Sept. 1: Labor Day. Monday, Oct. 13: Columbus Day. Tuesday, Nov. 11: Veterans Day. Thursday, Nov. 27: Thanksgiving Day. Thursday, Dec. 25: Christmas Day. Bonnie Bolden is the Deep South Connect reporter for Mississippi with Gannett/USA Today. Email her at bbolden@ This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Mississippi honors Confederate president on Memorial Day. What to know
Daily Mail
26-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
She murdered 31 and snuggled victims as they died for sexual kicks - the 'jolly' killer you've never heard of
Jane Toppan had become a crutch to the prominent Davis family as they were struck by tragedy after tragedy. It was summer and the wealthy railroad dynasty had welcomed their longtime friend and adored 'jolly' nurse into their idyllic Cape Cod home. But, one by one, the family members suddenly dropped dead. In just over a month, four had died - succumbing to a seemingly unrelated myriad of illnesses. Family matriarch Mary 'Mattie' Davis was first, with her death explained away by her diabetes. Days later, her daughter Genevieve Gordon was dead from apparent heart failure. After losing his wife and one of his daughters, Alden Davis - who made the family fortune running the railroad from Boston to Cape Cod - suffered an apparently fatal stroke. His other daughter Mary Gibbs would be dead within days - seemingly of a broken heart. But to Gibbs' father-in-law, the sudden wipeout of the entire Davis family was oddly suspicious. Something sinister was going on. Toppan, the popular Boston nurse and Davis family friend who had cared for each of the four victims, was harboring a macabre secret. As a nurse, Toppan (pictured) killed patients and anyone else who got in her way with lethal doses of morphine For years, Toppan was known by the affectionate nickname 'Jolly' Jane due to her warm and jovial bedside manner. But, in reality, she was an 'Angel of Death' - killing patients and anyone else who got in her way with lethal doses of morphine. Some were injected with a fatal dose of the drug while others were poisoned with Toppan's special laced bottles of Hunyadi mineral water. In a sick twist, Toppan reveled in toying with her victims' lives by bringing them to and from the brink of death with alternating doses of morphine and atropine. As her helpless victims lay dying, the 'jolly' nurse would curl up in bed with them - getting a twisted sexual thrill while they gave their last breaths. By the time 'Jolly' Jane Toppan was exposed as one of America's first female serial killers, she had claimed the lives of at least 31 victims, according to her own remorseless confession letter. But many fear the number could truly top 100. 'She really was probably the first woman serial killer,' Diane Ranney, the former assistant director of the Jonathan Bourne Public Library in Massachusetts who has researched the Toppan case for decades, tells '[But] it seems odd to me that the fame really never reached her.' Despite her sadistic murder spree, Toppan is a serial killer that few have heard of. Even in the Cape Cod town of Bourne - where many of the murders took place - Ranney says the chilling past is a little known tale among the community. 'People don't know about it… for some reason, it's one of those well-hidden secrets,' she says. Born Honora Kelly in Boston's south end in 1854 to Irish immigrant parents, Toppan's start in life was turbulent to say the least. Her mom died when she was only a small child, leaving her and her sister to be raised by her alcoholic father. In a bizarre twist, her dad - in the throes of mental health issues - sewed his own eyelids shut and abandoned his two daughters at the Boston Female Asylum. Honora was later taken in as an indentured servant by the wealthy Toppan family and her name changed to Jane Toppan. 'I'm probably the only person who's been researching her who feels sorry for her,' Ranney says. 'Everyone else calls her a monster, which in a way she was, but the more I looked into things, the more I thought, she's a very interesting person.' Through her years of research, Ranney says it's 'a question of why she was like she was'. It's a question Toppan gave a curious answer for after she was caught. In her young adulthood, Toppan was jilted at the altar by her fiancé. She went on to blame her lover - and being unmarried - for sending her down her dark and deadly path. 'If I had been a married woman I probably would not have killed all these people,' she infamously claimed. Rejected by her lover, Toppan decided to train at Cambridge Hospital to be a nurse - a vocation that would give her the knowledge of drugs and position of trust that she would later exploit. When Toppan started working as a nurse, she became an instant hit, earning her the nickname Jolly Jane as she would always joke with her patients. 'She had a rather strange way of expressing her love for her patients. She took very, very good care of them… But in the end, she wound up killing them,' Ranney says. It is unclear exactly when the killing spree started. During her time at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Cambridge School of Nursing, many patients mysteriously died in her care. When she then turned to private nursing, providing her rich patients with home visits, there were also curious spates of fatalities. But surprisingly, the deaths were always explained away by some illness or another - and no alarm was raised. Several years would pass before anyone suspected the nurse of killing the patients she had doted on with such care. For other victims, Toppan's murders were far more personal. There was her foster sister Elizabeth Brigham who she had grown up with. Her best friend Sarah Connors whose job she wanted to take at a theology school. Her love interest's sister Edna Bannister who she felt was getting in the way of a romance. And her former landlords Israel and Lovey Dunham. Toppan's luck only ran out when she murdered the Davis family in summer 1901 after they had dared to ask her to finally pay the $500 in overdue rent she owed. Even Toppan went on to admit this may have finally been a step too far, declaring: 'That was the greatest mistake of my life.' Following pressure from Gibbs' father-in-law, her body was exhumed and a fatal dose of morphine discovered. Toppan's depraved killing spree was a secret no more. In October 1901, the 47-year-old was arrested for murder. Ultimately, she only stood trial for the murder of Gibbs in a case that hit headlines across the US as the media and public poured over the story of a perverse female serial killer who got a sexual kick out of killing. Victims who lived to tell the tale came forward with their shocking stories. One patient described Toppan plying her with a mystery drink and then clambering on top of her, kissing and caressing her while she lay suffering in a hospital bed. At the time, the woman passed the bizarre encounter off as a dream - only learning how close she came to being another victim when Toppan was arrested. While suspected of 11 murders, a bombshell confession letter published in the New York Journal revealed Toppan's actual death toll was at least 31. In the shocking declaration, Toppan boasted that her depraved goal was 'to have killed more people - helpless people - than any other man or woman who lived'. She also described being driven by an 'uncontrollable passion' for death, writing that: 'No voice has as much melody in it as the one crying for life; no eyes as bright as those about to become fixed and glassy; no face so beautiful as the one pulseless and cold.' Ranney says there is no indication that Toppan deliberately chose a career in nursing to give her the opportunity to kill. 'I don't think it started out like that. I think she may have accidentally killed someone without realizing… she may have just decided, 'oh, look what I can do. Wow, that really gave me a thrill.' But I don't think she became a nurse for that reason,' she says. 'I think part of it was a sense that she was powerful.' More than a century on, however, questions remain as to whether it was really Toppan who penned the shocking confession letter. Ranney isn't so sure. 'I've always wondered whether it really was [her],' she says. 'It did not strike me that it was her writing… just the way it's written. I don't think she would have been quite so blunt about things. It just seems to me that her nature was to be more secretive.' She adds: 'But then again, by that time, she may have decided that she was just going to confess because it brought her more notoriety.' Toppan was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was sent to the Massachusetts psychiatric hospital in Taunton. She lived there until her death in 1938. Somewhat ironically, Toppan would often refuse to eat and drink at the facility - paranoid that someone was trying to poison her.
