In 1891, Jane Toppan, a proper New England matron, embarked on a profession as a private nurse. Selfless and good-natured, she worked for some of Boston's most prominent families, but they had no idea what they were welcoming into their homes.
Her dark past of tragedy, abuse, and mental illness was carefully hidden. No one who knew Jane as a nurse had any idea that she was morbidly obessed with autopsies, or that she conducted her own after-hours experiments on patients, deriving sexual satisfaction in their slow, agonizing deaths from poison.
Self-schooled in the art of murder, Jane was just beginning her career as the most prolific domestic fiend of the nineteenth century.
Reader and writer, copy editor. Mostly Star Wars, books & nature docs, but I talk about everything she/her, 34, eng/port
39. "Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer," by Harold Schechter* Read as part of my research on Jane Toppan. This research was pretty intense. Exiting my Poirot era for now