It would be hard to find a more concise description of a criminal psychopath than this one. The real question, however, had to do with Jane’s responsibility. Stedman and his colleagues had no doubt that Nurse Toppan was—as they stated in their report—a “moral monster.” But was she legally insane? Jane herself insisted that she could not possibly be insane because she knew that she was “doing wrong” and had gone to great lengths to avoid detection. And, indeed—since sanity is generally defined as the ability to distinguish right from wrong—it is exceptionally difficult for even the most egregious serial killers to plead insanity for precisely that reason. However horrific their atrocities, the mere fact that they have taken pains to conceal their crimes and evade capture proves that they know that they have been engaged in wrongdoing.
Stedman and his colleagues recognized that Jane’s intellectual faculties were unaffected by her moral degeneracy—that, in perpetrating her crimes, she had exercised “a cool judgment, sagacious and sound” (to quote from Herman Melville’s memorable description of the psychopathic villain of Billy Budd). And so the conclusion they ultimately reached was somewhat surprising: “Therefore,” they wrote, “we are of the opinion that the prisoner, Jane Toppan, was insane and irresponsible at the time of the homicide with which she is charged, and is so now; that her disease being constitutional, she will never recover; and that if ever at large again she would be a constant menace to the community.”
• • •
Though the shocking details of the report were kept from the public, the gist of it became known in mid-April. As the Barnstable Patriot announced on the 14th, Nurse Toppan had been “officially adjudged insane by the three alienists secured by the State to investigate her mental condition.”
The immediate and general belief was that there would be no trial. “It is expected that the Judge of the Superior Court will be asked by the District Attorney to dispose of Miss Toppan’s case by committing her to an asylum,” the Patriot reported. For the residents of Barnstable, this came as welcome news. For months, people had been grumbling about the fiscal burden of the case. The investigation had already cost taxpayers a considerable sum, and the local newspaper estimated that “if Miss Toppan is tried, the expense to Barnstable County will be in the vicinity of $15,000”—a substantial amount in 1902 dollars.
It was with a mixture of disappointment and relief that the citizens of Barnstable read the story that the Patriot ran on April 28. A trial would be held after all. After consulting with District Attorney Holmes and Fred Bixby, Attorney General Parker had “decided that Miss Toppan will be taken into court at Barnstable and evidence given about the crimes with which she is charged and about her moral and mental condition.” Parker made this decision because he didn’t want to establish a precedent. “If Miss Toppan were committed without the evidence being passed upon by a jury,” he explained, “the same privilege might be demanded by some future defendant which the government might not feel like conceding.”
The good news was that the proceedings were not expected to take long. Fred Bixby told a reporter for the Brockton Enterprise, “The trial of Miss Toppan will be very brief. My client will presumably be found not guilty by reason of insanity and will then be committed to an asylum, either the Worcester Insane Hospital or the Taunton Insane Asylum—and if she goes to either, it will be to pass the remainder of her life.”
28
Her mania, as discovered by the medical commission, has no parallel in the history of extraordinary crimes and criminals in this country. To find an analogous case, one must go to the most degenerate localities of Europe and read the reports of scientists of most revolting passions that incited successions of murders that appeal only to psychologists.
—Boston Globe, JUNE 23, 1902
FOR WEEKS PRECEDING THE START OF NURSE TOPPAN’S trial, the people of Barnstable, it seemed, could talk of little else. Even the trial of the Pocasset fanatic Charles Freeman for the sacrificial murder of his four-year-old daughter hadn’t generated as much excitement. Sight-seers from up and down the Cape came to view the gray, Greek Revival courthouse, its four fluted columns half-concealed by shade trees. Even villagers who had passed by the building all their lives now paused to gaze at the place where the greatest murderess of the age would be brought before a jury during the last week of June 1902.
On the day before the trial, curiosity-seekers by the score poured into Barnstable. By Sunday evening, every vacant room within a mile of the courthouse had been rented out. The Boston Post reported that farmers were “sleeping in their kitchens and letting their own bedchambers.” Even so, there were not nearly enough rooms to accommodate the crush of visitors. Dozens of people were forced to seek quarters in Hyannis, five miles away. Others chose to forgo lodgings at all. One party of women—determined to secure the best seats in the house—arrived from Truro late Sunday afternoon and camped out overnight on the courthouse lawn. To cater to the crowd, a lunch counter was set up in the corridor of the courthouse.
That the impending trial had provoked such intense fascination was only to be expected. Though the details of the alienists’ report had not been made public, enough information had leaked out to the public to make it clear that Jane Toppan was a monster whose crimes had no precedent—at least in this country. To find parallels to her atrocities, the Boston Globe suggested, one would have to turn to scientific accounts of European serial killers—degenerate foreigners whose “revolting passions” incited them to commit “successions of murders.” In America, there were no analogous cases at all—with one possible exception. “The nearest approach to it,” the Post noted, “is that of Jesse Pomeroy”—the notorious “Boston Boy-Fiend,” whose mutilation murders of young children, perpetrated in the early 1870s, had terrorized the city.
Despite the Post’s insistence that such “revolting” matters could “appeal only to psychologists,” these tantalizing hints about the appalling nature of Jane’s crimes were guaranteed to inflame the prurient interest of the God-fearing, law-abiding folk of New England. Those who flocked to Barnstable to have their morbid curiosity fully gratified, however, were doomed to disappointment. “So horrible is the plain, unvarnished description of Miss Toppan’s homicidal mania,” declared the Post, “that it is doubtful if only the most general terms can be used to indicate its character to the jurors.”
Nevertheless, the journey to Barnstable was clearly worth the trouble for many people. Even if the juicy details of Jane’s atrocities were to be withheld from them, they would still get something deliciously titillating from the trip—a first-hand glimpse of one of the most depraved murderers the country had ever produced.
• • •
The village was astir early on June 23, a warm, sparkling Monday. The sun had barely risen when spectators began swarming into town. Within a few hours, the lawn that stretched between the jail and courthouse was packed. The jurors began arriving around 7:00 A.M., some by carriage, others on the morning train from Provincetown.
A second train—this one from Boston—steamed into the Barnstable depot at around 9:40 A.M. Most of the court officials were on board, along with nearly all the witnesses, including Harry Gordon, Professor Wood, Mrs. Beulah Jacobs, Oramel Brigham, State Detective Whitney, and the three alienists, Drs. Stedman, Jelly, and Quinby.
The iron doors of the courthouse swung open at precisely nine o’clock. Within minutes the gallery was filled to capacity—the floor being reserved for the fifty-five prospective jurymen and nearly thirty-five witnesses. Shortly before 10:00, the two judges who were to hear the case—Charles U. Bell and Henry K. Braley—entered. Following the roll call of the jurors, Rev. Mr. Spence of the Unitarian church offered a prayer. Attorney General Parker then asked that Assistant District Attorney General of Fall River be appointed to assist him. The request was promptly granted by the court.
Then, straining forward in their seats for a better view, the spectators fixed their eyes on the doorway to watch Jane Toppan make h
er entrance.
• • •
Prisoners were normally awakened at 6 A.M., but Jane was allowed to sleep late on the morning of the trial. The day was bound to be long and stressful, and the kind-hearted matron, Mrs. Cash, persuaded her husband to grant Jane an extra hour of rest.
When Mrs. Cash showed up with the breakfast tray, Jane seemed her usual composed, carefree—and ravenous—self. The hearty meals she had been devouring for the past eight months—combined with an almost complete lack of physical activity—had produced the inevitable result. Always plump, she now bordered on the obese, having gained nearly fifty pounds since her last appearance in public.
As Mrs. Cash seated herself on the chair beside the prisoner’s cot, Jane dug into the heaping plateful of eggs and hashed potatoes, making cheery small talk between mouthfuls. The coming events of the day seemed the last thing on her mind.
Indeed, for the past few weeks, Jane had seemed much less preoccupied with her looming trial than with her current literary undertaking. For months, she had been working on a book. It was not—as might have been expected—an autobiography or jailhouse memoir, but rather a love story. Since girlhood, Jane had been an avid reader of the cloyingly sentimental fiction of the day—books with titles like A Noble Heart and When Love Commands. She had long aspired to become a writer of popular romance herself. Even on her long watches during her student-nursing days, she had often stolen off to a remote corner of the hospital and worked on her writing. At Cataumet, she was often seen “scribbling” in a notebook (as Captain Paul Gibbs told reporters).
With so much time on her hands, Jane had set about writing in earnest, and in recent weeks, her novel seemed to be all she could think about. Just the previous afternoon, when James Stuart Murphy had come by her cell to prepare her for the trial, he had found it difficult to get Jane to focus on the business at hand. All she wanted to discuss was the title of her book. She was debating among three possibilities and wanted to know which he thought was most “catchy”—Maude’s Misery, Fair Fettered Florence, or Sweet Blue Eyes. When Murphy had grown impatient and reminded her that there were more important matters at the moment, she had huffily replied that he, of all people, should take an interest in the book, since she planned to pay his fees with the profits. It was, after all, destined to be a bestseller.
Now, as Jane finished cleaning her plate, she informed Mrs. Cash that, after much consideration, she had definitely decided on Sweet Blue Eyes. The jailer’s kindly wife agreed that it was the best of the three titles. Having settled the matter to her satisfaction, Jane finally turned her attention to the trial.
By then, it was after 8:00 A.M., and she was expected in court in less than an hour.
Though her choices were extremely limited, she spent the next thirty minutes trying to decide what to wear. She had only two dresses and three shirtwaists (all of which had been extensively altered to accommodate her expanded girth). Still, she couldn’t seem to settle on an outfit. She tried on each garment at least a dozen times. She was still having trouble making up her mind when her lawyers arrived to accompany her to the courthouse. In the end, she settled on a black dress with a white shirtwaist, a large black hat with a heavy veil and a garnish of forget-me-nots, and a white ribbon tied about her throat.
Clearly, she wanted to look her best when she appeared before the public for the first time in six months. But the crowd on the lawn outside the jail was so dense that few spectators could even glimpse her as—flanked by Jailer Cash and Deputy Sheriff Hutchins—she walked to the gray stone courthouse, less than a hundred feet away.
• • •
The heavy black veil obscured her features as Jane entered the hushed, expectant courtroom. After taking her place between the two high railings in the long prisoner’s dock, she tucked the fabric over the brim of her hat and glanced around.
To one observer, her face seemed “white and strained,” as though she were on the “verge of physical and mental collapse.” Most people in the room, however, saw things very differently. To their eyes, Jane seemed quite relaxed throughout the proceedings. “Very often during the progress of the trial,” wrote the correspondent for the Boston Herald, “she smiled and chatted merrily with Mrs. Cash, with her counsel, and with some lady acquaintances who sat near her.”
Two weeks before the start of the proceedings, the Barnstable Patriot had predicted that the Toppan trial would “not last more than three days.” As it happened, that estimate was off by more than two-thirds. From the time the court opened until the jury brought in its verdict, less than eight hours elapsed.
The first order of business was the empaneling of the jury. Samuel Chapman of Dennis was the first to be called. Jane studied him closely as he strode to the juror’s box, his long gray whiskers hanging all the way down to his belt. As he leaned against the railing, he calmly returned her gaze until she lowered her eyes and whispered something to Mr. Cash, who sat directly beside her. For the next half-hour, she subjected each of the prospective jurors to the same intense scrutiny. Unlike the unflappable Chapman, some flinched visibly before her penetrating gaze.
Though Jane’s expression betrayed a clear distaste for several of the jurors, no challenges were made by either the prosecution or defense. Thirty-one minutes after the selection process began, the twelve “good men and true”—from various walks of life and from towns all over the Cape—had been chosen.
Smith K. Hopkins, the wizened clerk who had needed a full quarter-hour to read the indictment at the end of the Grand Jury proceedings, now took almost as long—more than twelve minutes—to read it again. According to the Boston Post, Jane “seemed as if she was about to faint” as she listened to Hopkins’s quavering voice—though whether her reaction was the result of emotional stress or of the excruciating experience of hearing the old man stammer through the document yet again was impossible to say.
Once the indictment was read, Attorney General Parker rose to make his opening statement. He briefly set forth the circumstances in the death of Mary “Minnie” Gibbs and declared that Jane had freely admitted to the murder. As a result of her confession, the “usual issue” in such trials—i.e., whether the accused had actually committed the crime—would not be contested. “The facts known to the Commonwealth, so far as they relate to the commission of the offense, cannot and will not be controverted by the defense,” he said. The only question for the jury to decide was Jane’s criminal responsibility—“whether or not the defendant was morally conscious of her acts.”
Having concluded his address, Parker proceeded to call a series of witnesses to establish the facts of the crime. Mrs. Gibbs’s cousin, Beulah Jacobs—looking exceptionally attractive in a long black dress that emphasized her hourglass figure—told the jury that Minnie had sickened and died after drinking mineral water and cocoa wine pressed on her by Nurse Toppan. Her testimony was corroborated by Harry Gordon. The third witness—Dr. Frank Hudnut of Boston, who had been called to examine Mrs. Gibbs in consultation with the late Dr. Latter—told the jurors that Minnie’s appearance was “entirely consistent” with morphine poisoning.
Other witnesses added testimony of a highly incriminating nature. Dr. James Watson of Falmouth, who had treated Minnie for a minor stomach ailment in late July 1901, asserted that she was in fundamentally sound health at the time. Certainly she had shown no sign of any condition that might have “caused her death” just a few weeks later. Mrs. Caroline Wood of Cohasset, a family friend of the Davises and mother of General Leonard Wood, revealed that Jane had been violently opposed to the suggestion that an autopsy be performed on Minnie’s body. Jane’s old love-object, Oramel Brigham, told the jury that he had overheard a peculiar conversation between Jane and Dr. William Lathrop the previous August. “She asked him: if a person had been poisoned with morphine and atropine and then embalmed, if those poisonous drugs would be found if they exhumed the body and had an autopsy.” Lathrop himself described Jane’s suicide attempts during her stay at Brigham�
��s home in September 1901.
Druggist Benjamin Waters of Wareham testified that, during a two-week period in late July 1901, Jane had telephoned his store and ordered 120 quarter-grain morphine pills. Dr. Edward Wood of Harvard unequivocally attributed Mrs. Gibbs’s death to “morphine poisoning.” His examination had turned up “large amounts” of morphine in the liver, indicating that “it must have been absorbed from the stomach before death.” He estimated that the poison had been taken “inside of twenty-four hours before her death.”
Since the real question facing the jury was not whether Jane had committed the murder but whether she was insane, the key witness of the day was Dr. Stedman. As predicted by the press, Stedman withheld the most shocking details of Jane’s confession—the voluptuous pleasure that murder provided; the excitement of holding a dying victim tight; the thrill of taking Minnie Gibbs’s ten-year-old son to bed with her while his mother languished just a few feet away. Even so, Stedman’s testimony left little doubt as to Jane’s deeply disturbed personality.
“She told us voluntarily that she had caused the death of Mrs. Gibbs by giving her poisonous doses of atropine and morphine,” he declared in response to Parker’s questioning. “She stated that the drugs were in the form of tablets or pellets of atropine and morphine separately; that each pellet of morphine contained a quarter of a grain of that drug and each pellet of atropine contained a sixth of a grain of that drug; that she didn’t know how many she gave; that she certainly gave over a dozen pellets, and I understood her to say she gave that amount twice.”
When Parker asked the psychiatrist whether Jane had given a reason for administering the poison to Minnie Gibbs, Stedman nodded. “She did,” he said.
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