When Women Kill. The Notorious Jane Toppan Told The Court She Was Sane After Killing So Many People.
Why she did it?
She wanted to feel it when they died.
Her original name was Honora Kelley, (March 31, 1854 — August 17, 1938). She was a nurse who worked with the elderly or killed the elderly. Most of her victims were older.
Her mother died of tuberculosis and her father was an abusive alcoholic. Two years after her mother died, her father surrendered her and her sister to an orphanage. After Delia her sister grew up, she became a prostitute. There was another older sister but she did not go into the orphanage. She was committed to an insane asylum.
Honora changed her name.
Honora went to work as an indentured servant after a few years with Mrs. Ann Toppan. She changed her name to distance herself from the family that she did not want to have anything to do with. She became Jane Toppan and was called “Jolly Jane” after that. The Toppan family never adopted her into the family but she changed it anyway.
Apparently, you did not have to go through all the red tape of changing your name then, as you do now.
She stayed with them for about thirty years.
