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For poison, it must be pointed out, is the most intimate form of murder; one can be stabbed or shot by an enemy, but the bane-draught is usually poured by an intimate, posing as a friend.
—HENRY MORTON ROBINSON, Science Catches the Criminal
THE ARRIVAL OF JANUARY 1, 1900, WAS GREETED WITH none of the hoopla or apocalyptic hysteria that surrounded New Year’s Day a century later. On the contrary, little significance was attached to the event. The New York Times ran more than a dozen front-page stories that Monday morning, on everything from the fighting in the Philippines to the case of a New Jersey man who was “driven nearly insane” when a cricket crawled into his left ear. Nowhere, however, does the paper take any special note of the date. For most Americans, 1900 represented the last year of the nineteenth century, not the first year of the twentieth—an end, not a beginning.
Jane Toppan’s case was somewhat different. For her, January 1900 did, in fact, bring the promise of something new, something she’d been waiting for—the opportunity to lead a different kind of life.
That opportunity presented itself when Mrs. Myra Connors—described in contemporary newspaper accounts as one of Jane’s “intimate friends”—fell ill during the last week of January. A forty-year-old widow, Mrs. Connors had been employed for many years as the matron of the refectory of St. John’s Theological School in Cambridge. Her only surviving photograph shows a prim, severe-looking woman in pince-nez eyeglasses, who might have served as the model for the mythic Mrs. Grundy. Exactly how the two women first met is unknown, though they had been friends for several years before Jane Toppan decided to kill her.
The day after Mrs. Connors was stricken, she called for her physician, Dr. Herbert H. McIntire, who diagnosed her condition as “localized peritonitis” and prescribed powdered opium and arrowroot poultices. A week later, on February 7, Jane Toppan showed up to help care for her old friend. Almost immediately, the patient—who had been “progressing favorably,” according to Dr. McIntire’s subsequent testimony—took a violent turn for the worse. On the morning of February 11, she died in great agony, suffering such terrible convulsions that her left arm was bent nearly double.
Though Dr. McIntire was baffled by the symptoms—which, as he would later state, resembled the effects of strychnine poisoning—he didn’t seriously suspect foul play. He knew nothing, of course, about the long and growing list of patients who had succumbed to Nurse Toppan’s ministrations. Nor was he aware that—along with her usual sadistic motivations—Jane Toppan had other reasons for wishing her old friend out of the way.
Though Jane had borne a particularly bitter grudge against Elizabeth Brigham, her foster sister was not the only person she envied. Another was Myra Connors. For some time, she had secretly coveted Myra’s job at the Theological School.
Exactly why is unclear. By early 1900, her homicidal impulses were growing stronger by the day. It is possible that she was trying to stop herself from spiraling totally out of control by quitting the nursing profession. Like other people in the grip of irresistible drives, compulsive killers sometimes try to restrain their behavior by removing themselves from temptation.
On the other hand—given the nature of Myra Connors’s position as dining hall matron—the opposite may also be the case. For a confirmed poisoner like Jane, the thought of overseeing the daily food intake of dozens of unwary theology students might have seemed like a dream come true: a classic case of setting the wolf to watch the sheep.
And then, of course, there were the perks of the position, which included a spacious apartment in Burnham Hall, complete with a private maid to do her housework and wait on her at mealtimes.
No sooner had Myra Connors been laid in the ground than Jane approached the dean of the Theological School, Dr. Hodges. She explained that, before getting sick, Myra had been making plans for a sabbatical and—intending to recommend Jane as a temporary replacement—had instructed her in all the duties of the matron.
With no one else to assume the position, Hodges offered it to Jane. With her usual cunning, she professed some reluctance, and asked for a little time to consider the offer. A few days later, she informed the dean that, despite her reservations about abandoning nursing, she had decided to accept the job. She felt she owed it to poor Myra. Privately, Jane exulted in the success of her scheme. Everything had worked out just as she’d planned. And killing her old friend with strychnine—a method Jane occasionally used when she sought some variety from her usual MO—had provided her with almost as much pleasure as the murder of her foster sister, six months earlier.
Her sense of contentment didn’t last long, however. Questions about Jane’s competence began to arise almost immediately. She was accused of poorly superintending the dining hall and suspected of various financial irregularities. When the school broke for summer vacation, she took a job at the mess hall at the newly established biology institute at Woods Hole. The following fall, she resumed her job as matron of the Theological School. By early November, however, so many complaints had been lodged against her that Dean Hodges could no longer ignore them. When several employees under her direct supervision accused her of failing to pay their salaries, she was finally asked to resign.
Her dismissal was a devastating blow. Like other psychopathic personalities, Jane Toppan was certainly capable of feeling pity—but only for herself. After being discharged by Dean Hodges, she returned to her apartment in Burnham Hall to pack her belongings.
Then, this middle-aged spinster who had murdered dozens of people without feeling anything besides sexual arousal, threw herself on her bed and blubbered like a baby.
PART THREE
BUZZARDS BAY
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It has commonly been claimed that nowhere in the world would you find a State with a population more generally enlightened, orderly, and humane than in Massachusetts. Yet [it] is in Massachusetts that this monstrous deed has been committed. It is in Massachusetts, whose common schools have been the first and foremost in our country, that this act of barbarism and bloody superstition has appeared. Massachusetts has had deeds of black wickedness, deeds of atrocious cruelty and crime; but never, I think, in all its history . . . has it had a deed quite parallel to this in cold, deliberative, unnatural horror.
—FROM A SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVEREND WILLIAM J. POTTER ON THE POCASSET TRAGEDY, SUNDAY, MAY 11, 1879
THE SUMMER COTTAGE IN WHICH JANE TOPPAN KILLED her foster sister, Elizabeth, was located in Cataumet, a picturesque little village at the extreme western end of the Cape Cod peninsula on the shores of Buzzards Bay.
The cottage belonged to a man named Alden Davis, Cataumet’s most prominent—and notoriously eccentric—citizen. The son of a stonecutter, Davis grew up in Sandown, New Hampshire, where he learned his father’s craft. In early manhood, he moved to New Orleans and saw action during the Civil War as a lieutenant in the Confederate Army. Not long after Lee’s surrender, he returned to New England, settling in a suburb of Boston, where he continued to ply his trade.
Though Davis did well enough at his stonecutting business to support his family in comfort, he had larger ambitions. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, Bostonians looking to summer on the Cape were forced to endure the rigors of stagecoach travel—a mode of transportation so slow and uncomfortable as to discourage all but the most determined vacationer. All that changed on July 18, 1872, when the first train linking the city to Woods Hole made its maiden, round-trip journey. Foreseeing the tourist boom that the new railroad line was sure to create, Davis moved his wife and children to the seaside hamlet of Cataumet.
Before long, he had become a leading figure in the community. He bought up real estate and constructed a hotel called the Jachin House—a rambling wood-frame building with a wide wraparound porch where (according to the recollections of one old-timer) “guests could sit rocking on summer evenings, enjoying the cool breezes that swept in from nearby Buzzards Bay.” To draw tourists to the area, he catered
large, festive clambakes on his property, and chartered trains from the city to bring in the crowds.
Besides his activities as a land developer and hotelier, Davis applied himself to a variety of enterprises. He worked tirelessly to make sure that the little village got its own post office and railroad station and took on the duties of both postmaster and station agent. He also ran a general store across from Depot Square and continued to practice his skills as a marble worker. Even today, his handiwork can be seen in the little cemetery in Cataumet, where—as one local historian notes—“many of the stones were engraved by Mr. Davis.”
Thanks in large part to his efforts, Cataumet became a popular watering place for vacationing city dwellers by the late 1800s. In spite of all he accomplished, however, Davis was by no means a universally admired figure. On the contrary. According to many of their neighbors, the Davis family never really managed to fit in. They “held aloof from other residents and kept by themselves,” as one contemporary reported. Davis himself quickly gained a reputation as a decidedly “peculiar” personality, prone to violent outbursts and erratic, even unbalanced, behavior.
That reputation was solidified as a result of his role in the infamous Freeman affair—a case that stunned late-nineteenth-century New England, which hadn’t witnessed a more appalling episode of religious fanaticism since the Salem witch persecutions of the 1690s.
In a town composed mostly of Methodists, the Davis family held unorthodox beliefs. Davis’s wife, Mary—or “Mattie,” as she was called—was a Christian Scientist. Davis himself belonged to the Second Advent Church, a millenialist sect that had been gathering adherents in New England.
One of Davis’s fellow Adventists was a man named Charles Freeman, a local farmer who lived in the neighboring town of Pocasset with his wife, Hattie, and two young daughters—six-year-old Bessie Mildred and four-year-old Edith, her father’s favorite. A man of “upright life and conduct” (as the newspapers would later report), Freeman was much admired—even revered—by his fellow believers for the fervency of his convictions. He had frequently spoken of the need to prove his faith through sacrifice, and declared that “he had given his whole family to God.” None of his associates doubted his sincerity—though they could hardly have guessed at the dreadful fixation that was growing stronger in him by the day.
During the latter half of April 1879, Freeman became obsessed by the notion that God required an ultimate test of his faith. He was perfectly willing to offer himself in sacrifice. After two weeks of prayer, however, he decided that God was demanding something even more extreme: the life of one of his children. He shared this revelation with his wife, who did all she could to dissuade him—but to no avail. On the evening of April 30, 1879, Freeman tucked his daughters into the bed they shared and kissed them good night. “They never seemed so dear to me as then,” he would later testify. He then retired to his own bed and quickly fell asleep.
At about half-past two in the morning, he awoke with a start, shook his wife’s arm, and told her that the time had come. “The Lord has appeared to me,” he said. “I know who the victim must be—my pet, my idol, my baby Edith.”
Weeping, her teeth chattering in horror, Hattie made one final plea. Her husband, however, would not be deterred. “The Lord has said it is necesary,” he declared.
In the end, it was she who relented. “If it is the Lord’s will, I am ready for it,” she said at last. Her words seemed to lift a terrible burden from his heart.
Singing praises to the Lord, he rose from bed, rapidly dressed, then repaired to the shed, where he got a large sheath knife. He then returned to the house, lighted an oil lamp, and stepped inside his daughters’ bedroom. Bessie, the older child, awoke at his entrance. Freeman instructed her to go into the other room and get into bed with her mother.
He then placed the lamp on a chair, pulled down the bedclothes covering Edith, and lowered himself to his knees. Silently, he prayed that Edith not awake, and that God might stay his hand at the last moment, as Abraham’s had been stayed. Getting to his feet, he stood over the body of his four-year-old child and raised the knife high above his head.
At that instant, Edith opened her eyes and gazed up at her father. The look on her face did not stay Freeman’s hand. Nor did divine intervention. He drove the blade deep into her side.
“Oh, Papa,” she gasped. A moment later, she was dead.
Climbing into bed beside his child’s corpse, Freeman took her into his arms as though lulling her to sleep and remained there until daybreak. For the first two hours—as he would later state—he suffered “a good deal of agony of mind.” Eventually, however, a great feeling of peace, even exultation, came over him. He had been tested and found worthy. He had done God’s will.
The following day, several dozen of Freeman’s neighbors were summoned to his home, where—according to his message—they would be vouchsafed a great revelation. Among the invitees were the town constable, the selectmen, and the Methodist minister. In the end, about twenty-five people, nearly all of them Adventists, showed up at his home at the appointed time.
The group crowded into the parlor, where Freeman proceeded to deliver a rambling, hour-long harangue, interrupted by stretches of silence and bouts of weeping. He spoke of the imminent coming of Christ, as foretold in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, and of the overwhelming conviction that had taken possession of his soul during the preceding fortnight. Then—with his sobbing wife beside him—he led them into the adjoining bedroom, where a little form lay draped beneath a stained sheet. Reaching down, he drew back the covering and revealed to his neighbors the glorious sacrifice that he had made at God’s behest.
As his fellow church-members looked on in confusion, Freeman assured them that they need have no concern for the child. In three days, Edith would rise again. Her resurrection would be a sign that the Son of Man had come!
Shaken by the sight of the butchered child—but inspired by the rapturous intensity of Freeman’s belief—the crowd soon dispersed to their homes.
In a town the size of Pocasset, it didn’t take long for word of the atrocity to reach the ears of the constable. By the following day, Freeman was under arrest. Eventually, he would be declared insane and consigned to the asylum at Danvers.
Contrary to his expectations, his slaughtered child did not return to life. Three days after her murder—on the morning of her promised resurrection—the dead girl disappeared forever into the sod of Pocasset cemetery. A plaque on her coffin read: Little Edie—lived only 57 months. She shall surely rise again—Johnvi. 39.
The horrific crime provoked a burst of communal indignation. At least one of Freeman’s neighbors, however, remained staunchly loyal to him. That man was Alden Davis, who chose the occasion of Edith’s funeral to declare his allegiance to his fellow Adventist. Before the child’s tiny casket had been lowered into the ground, Davis stood beside the newly dug grave and proclaimed her father’s goodness to the assembled crowd of mourners. “There never lived a purer man than Charles Freeman,” he declared.
His defense of the filicide so outraged the community that, for a while, Davis himself became a figure nearly as detested as Freeman. Stories about his own dangerous fanaticism began to circulate. According to gossip, Davis had declared that—since Edith had been buried before her resurrection could take place—it might be necessary to sacrifice another child, perhaps one of his own. Neighbors reported that his older daughter, Mary—or “Minnie,” as everyone called her—had been seen wandering in tears through Cataumet, “afraid that her father was going to kill her.”
Whether these rumors had any basis in fact is impossible to say, though it is certain that many of Davis’s townsmen never doubted their truth. And his sympathetic support for the maniacal Freeman was never entirely forgotten. Indeed, even twenty years later, when the unspeakable happened, there were those in Cataumet who believed that it was the long-delayed fulfillment of a terrible curse that Alden Davis had brought down upon himself, his w
ife, and his children.
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Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers—of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts.
—EDGAR ALLAN POE, “THE TELL-TALE HEART”
IN SPITE OF HIS INVOLVEMENT WITH THE “POCASSET Horror” (as the Freeman affair came to be known), Alden Davis retained the respect, if not the affection, of his townsmen. As the decades passed, he became a venerable figure in the community—a white-haired, white-bearded gentleman whose neighbors conferred upon him the ultimate New England honorific. “Captain Davis,” they called him—though the mariner’s life had never been among his many occupations.
Thanks partly to Davis’s enterprising spirit, Cataumet and its environs had become a popular seaside resort. President Grover Cleveland himself had a home on Buzzards Bay, and Joseph Jefferson—the most famous American actor of his day, who delighted audiences for forty years with his comic portrayal of Rip Van Winkle—summered nearby.
By 1901, however, Davis himself had retired from the tourist business. In March of that year, he turned sixty-five. He and his wife had grown too old for innkeeping. Their daughters, Genevieve and Minnie, were grown women with families of their own. The Jachin House—with its wide veranda open to the ocean breezes—no longer took in guests. Now, it served solely as the family home. There were several small cottages on the property, however, that the Davises continued to rent out to summer visitors.
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