Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky.
Speaker 2: The most Beautiful Girl in New York City was, according
Speaker 2: to the judges of the contest that decided such matters,
Speaker 2: a dark haired, blue eyed young woman by the name
Speaker 2: of Olive Duffy. It was nineteen fourteen, and with her
Speaker 2: newly minted title and all of the attention that came
Speaker 2: with it, Olive was on her way to fame and fortune.
Speaker 2: She worked first as a showgirl on Broadway before moving
Speaker 2: on to the silver screen, the public's newest and most
Speaker 2: exciting form of mass entertainment. Olive was a natural fit
Speaker 2: for the Hollywood set. A studio darling with both a
Speaker 2: foul mouth and a mischievous air, she seemed to be
Speaker 2: living out the fantasies of so many young girls. She
Speaker 2: got jobs, and eventually she got the man. Olive and
Speaker 2: John Pickford, one of the most eligible bachelors of the day,
Speaker 2: began carousing, partying, and gaining quite the reputation around the sets.
Speaker 2: They were madly in love, yes, but they were also
Speaker 2: wildly volatile. Their pairing rife with a magnetic passion that
Speaker 2: bound them together and seemingly endless, passionate affairs that tore
Speaker 2: them apart. In September of nineteen twenty, Olive and Jack
Speaker 2: set sail for Paris. It was supposed to be a
Speaker 2: reconciliation of sorts, an attempt to quiet their quarrels and
Speaker 2: quell their tempers. Oh. Once they got to town, they
Speaker 2: checked into the hotel Writs and went off to explore
Speaker 2: the city. And there they drank and danced as the
Speaker 2: night ticked on, a stumbling back to their room in
Speaker 2: the early morning hours. There's old wisdom that tells us
Speaker 2: that nothing good can happen at this liminal time between
Speaker 2: night and day. Some may beg to differ, but knowing
Speaker 2: what we know now, we might assume that our ill
Speaker 2: fated couple might agree. Jack would later claim that he
Speaker 2: had already climbed into bed, half asleep and soaked and whiskey,
Speaker 2: when suddenly, from the bathroom Olive began to scream. In
Speaker 2: his haze. Jack stumbled out of bed and found Olive
Speaker 2: leaning against the counter holding a bottle. As he would
Speaker 2: recount later, she looked at him, pale with horror, and said,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I'm poisoned. Allegedly, Olive had been trying
Speaker 2: to take her sleeping medication, but in her drunken, exhausted state,
Speaker 2: she mixed up her medication with Jack's. At that time,
Speaker 2: Jack was treating his painful syphilis sores with bichloride of mercury,
Speaker 2: which just so happens to be extremely toxic if ingested.
Speaker 2: It seems that Olive had grabbed the wrong bottle, poured
Speaker 2: a dose, and drank it down, but very quickly realized
Speaker 2: her mistake. Jack scooped up his wife and carried her
Speaker 2: to the bed. He grabbed the phone and called for
Speaker 2: an ambulance. Olive was taken to the hospital, and shortly
Speaker 2: afterward the story broke in the newspapers. Olive, the most
Speaker 2: beautiful girl in all of New York, died in the
Speaker 2: hospital five days later. The story of all of Thomas's
Speaker 2: poisoning made the front pages of reputable newspapers and gossip
Speaker 2: rags alike. Some believed Jack's affairs had finally been too
Speaker 2: much for her, and that she had died by suicide
Speaker 2: by deploying the precise medication he was using to treat
Speaker 2: the infections had contracted from his string of infidelities. Others
Speaker 2: claimed it was Jack himself, who had deliberately switched to
Speaker 2: the bottles in order to avoid an expensive divorce. Police
Speaker 2: immediately launched an investigation into the starlet's death and ordered
Speaker 2: an autopsy. As it would happen, they quickly came to
Speaker 2: the conclusion that it was, as Jack had reported, a
Speaker 2: terrible accident. For all its tragedy, this poisoning is popularly
Speaker 2: remembered not as something malicious or cruel, but in fact
Speaker 2: a fairly ordinary accident that happened to someone of extraordinary circumstances.
Speaker 2: She was known, and she was loved. There were many
Speaker 2: eyes on the case. But others who don't have the
Speaker 2: privileges of love and fame, they aren't so lucky. Some
Speaker 2: tragic accidents, as we will soon see, have more to
Speaker 2: them than meets the eye. I'm Lorn Vogelbaum. Welcome to
Speaker 2: American Shadows. Thomas Neil Cream knew something about death. He was,
Speaker 2: after all, coming of age in the Victorian era, at
Speaker 2: a time where medicine often felt like magic and the
Speaker 2: average life expectancy was much shorter. He'd lost more than
Speaker 2: one sibling and would lose his mother shortly before he
Speaker 2: turned twenty. Even though his family was a prosperous one.
Speaker 2: His father had risen quickly through the ranks of a
Speaker 2: Canadian shipping company, turning him into one of the cities
Speaker 2: healthiest men. Mortality was something that even they couldn't buy
Speaker 2: their way out of. By the time he was twenty one,
Speaker 2: Thomas knew that he couldn't follow in his father's footsteps.
Speaker 2: He informed his dad that he was going to become
Speaker 2: a doctor. He enrolled in McGill University in eighteen seventy
Speaker 2: two and earned a reputation among his schoolmates as quite
Speaker 2: the dandy. He loved flash and he loved style. He
Speaker 2: was sure of himself arrogant, even knowing his life would
Speaker 2: be made easier by his charms and his family money.
Speaker 2: At McGill, he straddled the line between the living and
Speaker 2: the dead, dissecting bodies in his anatomy lessons. Most of
Speaker 2: the cadavers he worked on were probably procured by crooked
Speaker 2: grave robbers in the middle of the night. It was
Speaker 2: an unseemly business, but it was considered the only way
Speaker 2: to unlock the body's secrets, a small price to pay
Speaker 2: to serve the living. The coursework captivated him, sparking all
Speaker 2: kinds of intense curiosities. One of the subjects of his
Speaker 2: fascination came in liquid form. It was chloroform, a new
Speaker 2: wonder drug that had begun showing up in doctor's offices
Speaker 2: and pharmacies across the world. Was prescribed to treat just
Speaker 2: about everything from insomnia to alcoholism to sea sickness, and
Speaker 2: call it still. How it worked exactly was somewhat of
Speaker 2: a mystery. It seemed to slow the body down and
Speaker 2: put a person to sleep. As more doctors began to
Speaker 2: use it, patients began to die on operating tables. It
Speaker 2: said that on average, one in three thousand surgical patients
Speaker 2: died due to its application. But without being totally clear
Speaker 2: on how it worked or what a safe dose was,
Speaker 2: the doctors were at a loss as how to best
Speaker 2: mitigate fatalities. It was a wildly unpredictable substance, asking all
Speaker 2: those who dealt in it to partake of a game
Speaker 2: of chemical roulette. For his part, Thomas was more fascinated
Speaker 2: by chloroform than any other herb or drug. In his arsenal,
Speaker 2: he wrote a thesis on the effects of chloroform and
Speaker 2: graduated from University with honors in March of eighteen seventy six.
Speaker 2: Soon after, Thomas met a woman named Flora Brooks, the
Speaker 2: pretty daughter of a wealthy businessman. He observed all of
Speaker 2: the proper courtship rituals that were demanded of him, even
Speaker 2: though he wasn't marriage minded. He had bigger plans for himself.
Speaker 2: You might imagine his surprise when Flora told him she
Speaker 2: was pregnant. He demanded that she get an abortion, and
Speaker 2: that he be the one to perform it. Soon after,
Speaker 2: Flora fell sick and her family called in a local doctor.
Speaker 2: He immediately diagnosed the consequences of the botched abortion. It
Speaker 2: was clear to all at her bedside that Thomas was
Speaker 2: responsible for this whole mess. Flora's father was livid, but
Speaker 2: Thomas and Flora married two days later under the threat
Speaker 2: of her father's gun. It wouldn't be long, though, before
Speaker 2: Thomas get town under the pretense of enrolling in a
Speaker 2: British medical school. Flora was behind in what we can
Speaker 2: assume was a flurry of mixed emotions. She never made
Speaker 2: a full recovery. Flora took to bed dutifully following a
Speaker 2: regiment of pills that Thomas mailed her from overseas. When
Speaker 2: her local doctor asked her where they came from, she
Speaker 2: told him. He told her to stop immediately, he couldn't
Speaker 2: identify them. Laura died soon after, succumbing to what appeared
Speaker 2: to be consumption, But those little pills later aroused suspicion
Speaker 2: in all who came to hear his story. Thomas Cream
Speaker 2: arrived back on this side of the pond in eighteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight. He had a bit of European education under
Speaker 2: his belt and a need for cash. He settled down
Speaker 2: in Ontario. It was here he thought that he would
Speaker 2: set up his new practice. He became an active member
Speaker 2: in his community of something that had long ago been
Speaker 2: instilled in him by his father. He was a frequent
Speaker 2: presence at Sunday morning church services and tutored children in
Speaker 2: their lessons. His daytime hours would never have suggested that
Speaker 2: his neighbors should wonder what he was getting up to
Speaker 2: after dark. His habits had come with him. It was
Speaker 2: whispered that he was seen out frequenting bars and carousing
Speaker 2: with prostitutes. He drank, and it seemed that he had
Speaker 2: picked up a morphine habit along the way. This all
Speaker 2: was wholly unacceptable for a man of his station. Even still,
Speaker 2: he was a doctor. His degree earned him clout in
Speaker 2: the eyes of those who knew him, and created a
Speaker 2: polished reputation that was sought by folks who wanted to
Speaker 2: meet him. But all of that respectability that came with
Speaker 2: his title couldn't save Thomas from what happened. In May
Speaker 2: of eighteen seventy nine, one frosty morning, a young girl
Speaker 2: tromped outside to use Thomas's backyard privy. When she pulled
Speaker 2: the door open, she found a woman dead, slumped cold
Speaker 2: and stiff against the wall. The woman in the privy
Speaker 2: appeared to be in her mid twenties and wore a
Speaker 2: faded purple dress, and next to her sat a small,
Speaker 2: uncorked bottle. A doctor was called, who decided that she
Speaker 2: probably had died before daybreak. He turned his attention to
Speaker 2: the small bottle and gingerly took it in his hands.
Speaker 2: He turned it around and lifted it to his nose.
Speaker 2: He sniffed it and immediately recognized the cloying fumes of chloroform.
Speaker 2: An investigation got under way and the identity of the
Speaker 2: woman was discovered. Her name was Kate Gardner. And those
Speaker 2: who were investigating theorized that she had taken her own
Speaker 2: life after becoming pregnant out of wedlock, but an inquest
Speaker 2: was held all the same. The coroner discovered marks on
Speaker 2: her face bruising it was likely they thought that this
Speaker 2: could have been from a chloroform soaked handkerchief being held
Speaker 2: tightly against her mouth and nose. They came to the
Speaker 2: conclusion that she couldn't have done that long enough to
Speaker 2: kill herself, especially once the chloroform had taken effect. They
Speaker 2: knew they were looking for a killer, and it didn't
Speaker 2: take them long to set their sights on doctor Thomas Crean.
Speaker 2: Thomas didn't deny knowing this woman. He admitted that she
Speaker 2: had consulted with him about an abortion, but he did
Speaker 2: deny having anything to do with the chloroform found at
Speaker 2: the scene. It was finally declared that she was killed
Speaker 2: by the administration of chloroform to her by an unknown person.
Speaker 2: The investigation couldn't prove that he was guilty, but the
Speaker 2: public opinion was of a different mind. He was extraordinarily
Speaker 2: suspect in the eyes of his neighbors and the larger community,
Speaker 2: which effectively put an end to his career in Ontario
Speaker 2: not to be wholly dissuaded. He left for Chicago, a
Speaker 2: much larger city, but he could disappear into and re
Speaker 2: emerge anew in Chicago. Part of this new trajectory would
Speaker 2: be a rebranding. He didn't aim for the same air
Speaker 2: of respectability that had had in Ontario, but instead he
Speaker 2: set up a practice near the booming red light district.
Speaker 2: That abortion was still illegal in the United States and Canada,
Speaker 2: Thomas was playing a dangerous, albeit profitable game. He was
Speaker 2: a functional extortionist in charging what he liked by capitalizing
Speaker 2: on the desperation of his patients. At the same time,
Speaker 2: if something went wrong, the women were out of luck.
Speaker 2: Seeking secondary medical attention for a botched abortion might cause
Speaker 2: another doctor to report them for their crime. Because of
Speaker 2: this underground illicit system, Thomas could ensure that his patients
Speaker 2: wouldn't report him, and he felt confident that he could
Speaker 2: continue to operate undetected unless something went wrong again, which
Speaker 2: inevitably it did. In August of eighteen eighty, a resident
Speaker 2: of an apartment building on West Madison Street noticed the
Speaker 2: smell of death permeating the next door flat, and the
Speaker 2: police were summoned and summarily broke down the apartment door.
Speaker 2: There they found a young woman lying peacefully on a
Speaker 2: blood soaked bed. Her body was in a state of
Speaker 2: deep decay. The reporting neighbor told police and the attending doctor,
Speaker 2: one Donald Fraser, that the apartment belonged to an African
Speaker 2: American nurse and midwife named Hattie Mack. The dead woman,
Speaker 2: whose name was mary Anne Matilda Faulkner, was said to
Speaker 2: have been staying with her with an unknown doctor, making
Speaker 2: frequent house calls. A note left by Hattie in the
Speaker 2: apartment suggested someone It was addressed to one doctor Thomas
Speaker 2: Neil Cream. When the police finally located Hattie, she started talking.
Speaker 2: It was a botched abortion, she claimed, and she had
Speaker 2: done everything she could to save the young woman. She
Speaker 2: claimed that Thomas was in the business of abortions. She
Speaker 2: claimed that Thomas had used chloroform on the young woman,
Speaker 2: But when Thomas was confronted, he suggested that Hattie acted
Speaker 2: alone and that he had been the one who was
Speaker 2: called in to help. Thomas's word won out that day,
Speaker 2: which would prove to be a grave mistake. Maryanne Matilda's
Speaker 2: body wouldn't be the last associated with the doctor. The
Speaker 2: next appeared in eighteen eighty one and belonged to a
Speaker 2: domestic servant named Ellen Stack. She had been to see
Speaker 2: a doctor who had written her a prescription. After taking
Speaker 2: the pills, she was soon writhing in pain and soon
Speaker 2: after that dead. The same doctor Donald Fraser, was brought
Speaker 2: to the scene and quickly located the prescribing doctor as
Speaker 2: one doctor Thomas Cream. Thomas naturally pointed fingers at the pharmacist,
Speaker 2: accusing them of making a fatal error. Not long after,
Speaker 2: a young woman named Alice Montgomery checked into a hotel
Speaker 2: called Sheldon House on West Madison. She took some medicine
Speaker 2: with dinner, but collapsed to the floor not long after,
Speaker 2: screaming in pain. Doctor Seymour Knox was summoned to help her,
Speaker 2: but it was too late. He declared that she had
Speaker 2: likely died of strychnine poisoning. During the examination, he discovered
Speaker 2: that she also recently attempted an abortion, and that it
Speaker 2: was likely the same doctor who had with her medicine.
Speaker 2: The prescription was written by doctor Donald Fraser, and when
Speaker 2: Fraser was found, he confirmed the prescription was likely and aborrificant. However,
Speaker 2: this wasn't his doing, the prescription wasn't written in his handwriting,
Speaker 2: and his name was misspelled. Fraser was still interrogated at
Speaker 2: the inquest, and though he was exonerated, newspapers continued to
Speaker 2: speculate about his guilt. Others theorized that the guilty party
Speaker 2: was indeed Thomas Cream, whose office was only a stone's
Speaker 2: throw from Alice's hotel. They never could prove it, but
Speaker 2: the abortion method of killing, location and time period made
Speaker 2: Cream the most likely suspect. Still, Thomas carried on with
Speaker 2: his life and affairs, including romancing a married woman by
Speaker 2: the name of Julius Stott. They had met when she
Speaker 2: diagnosed her husband with epilepsy. Cream's old pills that allegedly
Speaker 2: cured his condition, and Julia picked them up for him regularly.
Speaker 2: It's only when Julia's husband died with three times the
Speaker 2: lethal dose of strychnine in his bloodstream did the police
Speaker 2: turn more seriously to the neighborhood doctor. Thomas had promptly
Speaker 2: written to the coroner, blaming the pharmacist again for batching
Speaker 2: the man's prescription and attempting to claim life insurance funds
Speaker 2: on behalf of his mistress. He was trusting. It seems
Speaker 2: that his story would end here what they happily ever after,
Speaker 2: But Julia, crushed under the pursuit of law enforcement, turned
Speaker 2: on her lover, pointing the finger at Thomas. He was
Speaker 2: charged and convicted guilty of second degree murder. He was
Speaker 2: handed a life sentence. Thomas was furious. He had always
Speaker 2: gotten everything that he wanted. Money, women, and the power
Speaker 2: to decide life and death. This wouldn't be the end
Speaker 2: of his story. He just knew it. It's important to
Speaker 2: understand that even in all of this, Thomas still had connections.
Speaker 2: He still had people who loved him and more importantly,
Speaker 2: in this case, believed in him. And thanks to those
Speaker 2: people and some very crafty lawyers, Thomas was given a
Speaker 2: pardon and released in eighteen ninety one on the account
Speaker 2: of good behavior. He returned home to his native Canada
Speaker 2: and staying some time with his brother Daniel to get
Speaker 2: his bearings. It soon became evident, however, that something was
Speaker 2: not right. But the good doctor Thomas was increasingly volatile
Speaker 2: and began lashing out at family members. He was erratic,
Speaker 2: and soon the family began to discuss what to do
Speaker 2: with him. It seemed at points that he was exhibiting
Speaker 2: symptoms of intoxication and withdrawal. It was decided that his
Speaker 2: old London stomping grounds would be a good place for
Speaker 2: him to go for a while, and so his brother
Speaker 2: made plans to help him get set up there. On
Speaker 2: October first of eighteen ninety one, Thomas wrote a brief
Speaker 2: note to Daniel to say he'd arrived and was getting
Speaker 2: settled in Lambeth, a neighborhood with a seed reputation, though
Speaker 2: he didn't mention that in his letter. He began frequenting
Speaker 2: the restaurant's shops and other familiar amusements, including the best
Speaker 2: spots to hire working women. On October thirteenth of that year,
Speaker 2: Ellen or Nellie Donworth, a local sex worker, went off
Speaker 2: with a tall man. When she arrived back at her
Speaker 2: rooming house, she began to shake horribly. A medical assistant
Speaker 2: was brought to examine her and explained that her condition
Speaker 2: was dire. It appeared that she had all the symptoms
Speaker 2: of strychnine poisoning. She refused to go to the hospital
Speaker 2: and begged him to let her die at home. Even still,
Speaker 2: they decided to bundle her into a carriage, but she
Speaker 2: would pass before they reached their destination. It's important to
Speaker 2: remember that the streets of Victorian London were cold, hard places.
Speaker 2: Kindness was not found there in the twilight hours, nor
Speaker 2: was it directed toward the women who worked the streets
Speaker 2: in life or in death. They were a class of
Speaker 2: people considered to be a moral scourge, often expendable in
Speaker 2: the eyes of those who met them. This was the
Speaker 2: attitude when Jack the Ripper had begun to stalk these
Speaker 2: very same streets in eighteen eighty eight, and the papers
Speaker 2: filled up with salacious stories of women brutally murdered. Even still,
Speaker 2: the investigators couldn't make much of Nellie's story about the
Speaker 2: tall Man and decided that she had poisoned herself. They
Speaker 2: ignored a letter from someone named a O'Brien, who offered
Speaker 2: to help in finding the killer for an exorbitant fee.
Speaker 2: He strangely seemed to know a lot about her death.
Speaker 2: A week later, a woman by the name of Matilda
Speaker 2: Clover awoke her entire house with her screen. Matilda jerked
Speaker 2: violently as she whispered that someone named Fred had given
Speaker 2: her pills, claiming that they would prevent her from catching
Speaker 2: an even aerial diseases. The doctor who arrived at her
Speaker 2: bedside didn't believe her story. He believed Matilda to be
Speaker 2: suffering from delirium tremends. She died the next day and
Speaker 2: alcoholism was given as her official cause of death. Soon
Speaker 2: another letter arrived to a local doctor offering help in
Speaker 2: finding the real cause of Matilda's death, again for a price.
Speaker 2: The authorities made note, but there was no follow up.
Speaker 2: Two more women friends in boarding house flatmates, would die next,
Speaker 2: but not before telling those of their bedside a tall
Speaker 2: man with a top hat, mustache, and crossed eyes who
Speaker 2: gave them pills after their sexual encounters. In late October
Speaker 2: of eighteen ninety one, young Louise Harvey made a date
Speaker 2: with the man, claiming to be a doctor who wore
Speaker 2: a black overcoat and a top hat. She later reported
Speaker 2: that he had the strangest eyes she had ever seen.
Speaker 2: He told her he was a doctor at the local hospital,
Speaker 2: and he made note of a few spots on her forehead.
Speaker 2: He promised to bring her pills when they met the
Speaker 2: next day. That following day, he brought her roses and
Speaker 2: they strolled along the river towards the theater. While there,
Speaker 2: he handed her two light colored pills and told her
Speaker 2: to swallow them immediately. Suspicious, Louise only pretended to put
Speaker 2: them in her mouth. The man immediately left, claiming he
Speaker 2: had an appointment at the hospital and that he would
Speaker 2: meet her later. He'd never returned. By this point, news
Speaker 2: of the so called Lambeth poisoner was starting to spread
Speaker 2: and everyone was taking notice. One or two bodies might
Speaker 2: be chalked up to the causality of hard living, but
Speaker 2: so many reports of debts and near misses could no
Speaker 2: longer be ignored. The Scotland Yard was starting to sit
Speaker 2: up and pay attention, making inquiries around the neighborhood and
Speaker 2: hearing some disturbing stories. An American policeman soon approached Scotland
Speaker 2: Yard after an unsettling encounter with a local doctor. It
Speaker 2: seems that this policeman had met a tall man who
Speaker 2: had taken him on a tour of where all of
Speaker 2: these women were poisoned and died. With this tip the
Speaker 2: eyewitness accounts and the letters, it didn't take long for
Speaker 2: police to turn their attention to Thomas, who perfectly matched
Speaker 2: the description of their killer. He was tall, often seen
Speaker 2: wearing an overcoat, had a mustache, and crossed eyes. The
Speaker 2: detectives approached him and asked for his help, but not
Speaker 2: before sending for police and jail records from Thomas's time
Speaker 2: in Chicago. They told him that the killer had been
Speaker 2: writing letters. Thomas, in his arrogant delusion and willingness to
Speaker 2: tempt fate, cheerfully provided them with samples of his writing.
Speaker 2: By the end of their investigation, Scotland Yard was confident
Speaker 2: that they had their killer, but the handwriting samples and
Speaker 2: the records of his previous conviction for murder by poison
Speaker 2: clinched it. Doctor Thomas Cream was promptly arrested. You can
Speaker 2: imagine Thomas's surprise when Louise Harvey took the stand. Despite
Speaker 2: his calculations, she had somehow survived, and her testimony was damning,
Speaker 2: especially since he had casually and confidently mentioned people that
Speaker 2: one of the poisoner's victims died at the theater. She
Speaker 2: was supposed to have died at the theater, but here
Speaker 2: she was in London's Central Criminal Court, in telling the
Speaker 2: jurors about her run in with Thomas, and how he
Speaker 2: had demanded that she take the pills, and how he
Speaker 2: insisted on checking her hands to make sure she wasn't
Speaker 2: holding onto them. She explained to her audience that she
Speaker 2: and Thomas had planned to join up again that evening,
Speaker 2: even though she suspected something was strange about him. He
Speaker 2: never showed up and she was fairly relieved. Prosecutors made
Speaker 2: a case that all of the women were poisoned with strychnine,
Speaker 2: while Thomas's defense insisted he was only linked through gossip.
Speaker 2: They insisted that there were many men in London who
Speaker 2: dressed like Thomas and this was all simply a case
Speaker 2: of mistaken idea entity, though they've had no explanation for
Speaker 2: Thomas and the Lambeth poisoner sharing the same crossed eyes.
Speaker 2: It took only ten minutes for the jury to find
Speaker 2: Thomas Neil Cream guilty of murder and sentence him to hang.
Speaker 2: While he was in prison awaiting execution, he finally admitted
Speaker 2: to his crimes and claimed many others previously unknown. Thomas
Speaker 2: stepped up to the gallows and into infamy on November
Speaker 2: fifteenth of eighteen ninety two. The city breathed a sigh
Speaker 2: of relief as a noose was looped around his neck
Speaker 2: and the floor fell out from under him. There's more
Speaker 2: to this story stick around after this brief sponsor break
Speaker 2: to hear all about it. A good nurse needs a
Speaker 2: good bedside manner. They need a warm disposition, a kind spirit,
Speaker 2: and a confident mastery of any task at hand. Jane
Speaker 2: Toppin seemed to have this. She was so good, humored
Speaker 2: and beloved at the Cambridge, Massachusetts hospital where she worked
Speaker 2: that she received the nickname Jolly Jane. What no one realized, though,
Speaker 2: were what terrible secrets she kept. Jane was born Honora Kelly,
Speaker 2: the daughter of Irish immigrants, on March thirty first of
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty four. Her upbringing was a tumultuous one, with
Speaker 2: her mother dying and father going mad as She and
Speaker 2: her sister were sent to an orphanage when she was
Speaker 2: only six. At that time, there were few systems in
Speaker 2: place to help orphaned children, especially poor ones. The young
Speaker 2: girls might be trained as domestic servants, which was often
Speaker 2: the only career choice they had. In November of eighteen
Speaker 2: sixty two, Honora was sent to live with the Topphin
Speaker 2: family in Lowell, Massachusetts as an indentured servant. They re
Speaker 2: christened her Jane and gave her their last name, though
Speaker 2: they never officially adopted her into the family. Jane seemed
Speaker 2: to adjust well and stayed on as a paid servant
Speaker 2: when she was eighteen after being officially released from her
Speaker 2: indentured status. As she lived there until she was thirty three,
Speaker 2: when she decided that she would leave to take up nursing.
Speaker 2: She began her career at Cambridge Hospital in eighteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: and though she was adored by her patients, her colleagues
Speaker 2: didn't take as kindly of a liking to her. They
Speaker 2: thought she was a gossip and dishonest, a beer guzzler
Speaker 2: with a crass sense of humor. They kept their distance
Speaker 2: and she kept her job. It would go on like
Speaker 2: this for a good long while. Patients came in and
Speaker 2: stayed for a time to recover. But after a while
Speaker 2: the hospital staff noticed that instead of leaving out the
Speaker 2: front doors, more and more patience were shipped out through
Speaker 2: the morgue. No one suspected that during her downtime, Jolly
Speaker 2: Jane was poisoning her patience. Her friendliness was really just
Speaker 2: a cover for finding her next victim. It's thought that
Speaker 2: Jane actually despised her patients, specifically the elderly. To this end,
Speaker 2: she took to falsifying patient's medical records, mixing up drug
Speaker 2: cocktails and injecting them into their veins. She would experiment with,
Speaker 2: keeping them in a liminal space between life and death,
Speaker 2: alive but barely conscious and most likely unaware of the
Speaker 2: power at play. It said that doctors were generally so
Speaker 2: impressed with Jane's diligence on the floor that they recommended
Speaker 2: her for a position at Massachusetts General Hospital, one of
Speaker 2: the most prestigious medical facilities in the country. Death followed
Speaker 2: her there too, but her undoing wouldn't come from patients
Speaker 2: dying on her watch, rather for handing out painkillers too liberally.
Speaker 2: Jane was fired, but the doctors liked her, so they
Speaker 2: began recommending her as a private nurse for wealthy clients.
Speaker 2: Out from under the supervision of the hospital, Jane was
Speaker 2: a free agent. She began earning twenty five dollars a week,
Speaker 2: a mighty sum at a time when a working woman
Speaker 2: could expect to earn at five dollars a week outside
Speaker 2: of the home, and soon the bodies began to follow her,
Speaker 2: first her landlords, then a patient, then a dear friend
Speaker 2: of hers, then finally her foster sister who she had
Speaker 2: grown up with, all found poisoned. Jane moved herself back
Speaker 2: into the home she grew up in, with her eyes
Speaker 2: set on marrying her deceased foster sister's husband, Ormond. Soon
Speaker 2: upon her arrival, the housekeeper turned up dead. Jane got
Speaker 2: to work in the home, a familiar space with familiar
Speaker 2: tasks she had mastered years earlier, as she hoped to
Speaker 2: impress Ormond, who wanted absolutely nothing to do with her.
Speaker 2: She figured if he wasn't going to be impressed with
Speaker 2: her homemaking skills, perhaps he would be impressed with her nursing.
Speaker 2: She decided to poison him, but when he survived and
Speaker 2: suspected what had happened to him, Jane was thrown out.
Speaker 2: She was testing her luck but saw no reason to stop,
Speaker 2: so soon took up residence with an elderly mister Davis.
Speaker 2: She killed him and his two daughters, Minnie and Genevieve,
Speaker 2: who had come to stay for two weeks, and she
Speaker 2: might have gotten away with it, as she always had
Speaker 2: if the daughters hadn't been married. Minnie's father in law
Speaker 2: grew suspicious of such a short violent illness and requested
Speaker 2: a toxicology exam for his daughter in law. Medical examiner
Speaker 2: discovered Mannie had been poisoned. Local detectives began investigating Jane,
Speaker 2: and on October twenty ninth of nineteen oh one, police
Speaker 2: arrested her in Amherst, New Hampshire. She went to trial
Speaker 2: in the summer of nineteen oh two. As she took
Speaker 2: the stand, it all came out. She told the court
Speaker 2: room of the thirty one murders she knew about, but
Speaker 2: said there could be over a hundred. Patience from Cambridge
Speaker 2: who had lived to tell the tale spoke of Jane
Speaker 2: taking a perverse pleasure as she hovered beside them in
Speaker 2: their beds as they fought to survive. Jane was sentenced
Speaker 2: to life in an asylum. As she got older, she
Speaker 2: only became more brazen, and it said that she could
Speaker 2: be heard at all hours yelling down the halls. Get
Speaker 2: some morphine, Dearie, and we'll go out in the ward.
Speaker 2: You and I will have a lot of fun seeing
Speaker 2: them die. Medical professionals hold an awful lot of power
Speaker 2: within their domain, and few stop to question their actions
Speaker 2: are intent. For Jane, the tables were turned. Her life
Speaker 2: was now in the hands of fellow Nurses.
Speaker 1: American Shadows as hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was
Speaker 1: written by Robin Minitter, researched by Ali Steed, and produced
Speaker 1: by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,
Speaker 1: visit grimminmile dot com. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.