Jane Toppan: America’s First Female Serial Killer
The book that this paper will review is “America’s First Female Serial Killer: Jane Toppan and the Making of a Monster,” by Mary Kay McBrayer. This book talks about how a lady who was a nurse killed 31 people to make herself feel better. Many criminals commit crimes because they want to feel better about themselves or prove something to the community and everyone that has rebuked them. Therefore, the book highlights the life of Jane Toppan and her journey to being a cold and heartless murderer. The agenda of this book review is to determine the underlying issues that could have led the first female killer, Jane Toppan, to commit all those murders and the theoretical explanation that surrounds them. Therefore, this review will help readers understand the personal development of people who have been extremely damaged by the situations and people around them. It will also help readers understand that serial killers and people deemed monsters were once human beings who wished for everything good in life.
Mary K McBrayer is considered a Christian, horror-enthusiast, belly-dancer, literature professor, and a prose writer from South of Atlanta. McBrayer runs her blog and co-runs a podcast, “Everything Trying to Kill You,” where she analyses horror and scary movies. Her first true crime story was based on an article titled “The 19th-Century Nurse Who Was Secretly a Serial Killer,” where she wrote about Jane Toppan. However, she felt that she wanted the article to be more of a book with stories about Jane before she was a serial killer in the 1880s. Hence, she referred to a book called “Fatal,” which had written a summary of Jane Toppan’s story and decided to build a novel out of it. Her love for true crime stories, horror movies, and mental health led her to write the book about Jane Toppan, highlighting all the possible reasons she ended up being a serial killer. She also wanted her readers to know about Jane Topper because not many individuals were familiar with her history, and those familiar with it only knew the ugly side of the story. Hence, she felt obligated to research and write more about Jane Toppan and her experiences in life that led her to be a serial killer.
This review will divide the book into three parts to help readers understand the pattern in which Jane Toppan became a serial killer and a monster during her time. The three parts include Jane’s past experiences as a child and developing adult, making of a serial killer, and her trial and life at the end. In Jane’s past experiences as a child, she was a normal child with dreams about her family and life. Her parents were immigrants from Ireland who came to America at the turn of the century. She was born in 1857 as Honora Kelley in Boston, but her mother fell ill from tuberculosis and passed away when Jane was one. This made his father depressed because he did not know how to take care of four girls alone when he was poor and just a tailor. Hence, he was believed to sew his eyelids shut, making people label him as a mad man. He abused his girls until he decided to take them to an orphanage. But he only took Honora (Jane) and her sister Delia when they were 6 and 8 years old, respectively.
This orphanage was called Boston Female Asylum, which was known to place the girls when they turned ten years old in wealthy and respectable families. Therefore, Honora was placed under the care of Mrs. Ann C. Toppan of Lowell, Mass, who changed her name to Jane Toppan. Her childhood suddenly changed because she attended a good school where she performed well and gained friends. However, she started becoming a sociopath due because of lying about her biological parents and her siblings. This part of the book explains the unstable childhood that Jane had the experiences that could have led her to become a serial killer. She was abused by her father and foster parents, who made her hate herself by never adopting her and writing her out of the will. Therefore, when she was still developing, her mind was already distorted, but she still focused on having a better future with everything she ever wanted.
The second part is the making of a serial killer. Toppan finished and graduated from Lowell High School when she was 18 years. She was then freed by her foster parents and was given 50 dollars as her inheritance. However, she continued being a servant to the Toppans until she was 33 years old and moved out of the house. In 1887, she started her nurse training at Cambridge Hospital; almost everyone in that institution loved her because of her personality. However, she had some “evil” traits like celebrating when students she did not like were dismissed from the training, stealing, and lying. Hence, this led to her being detested by many of her colleagues. She was considered as one of the best nurses, which even led her to become a private nurse to several wealthy people through recommendations by doctors. Her behaviors continued to escalate, and she started a killing spree to make her feel better and not for retribution for what other people did to her. she took control of her life and got to know what she was interested in, and that was murdering people. She killed people, stole, and became more incompetent. This means that her mind was damaged enough and made her not care about things or people, even those who loved her.
The third part was her arrest and trial in 1902. She did not show any remorse and partly blamed her previous boyfriend, who lied to her when she was sixteen that he would marry her. She stated that she probably would not have killed people if she had been a married woman because her mind would have been occupied with her home, children, and husband. Even though she stated she was not insane and knew what she was doing, the court declared her not guilty because her mind was unstable and she was committed to spending her life in an asylum at Taunton State Hospital. Therefore, this means that Jane was mentally ill; she was a psychopath who had a rough childhood, had people who did not love or want to be with her. This made her take control of her life and decided to do what was best for her insanity, which was killing people. Therefore, people judge her for killing individuals but could not understand the underlying issues that cause her to behave and develop a deviant character.
The book emphasizes the character development of Jane Toppan and the underlying issues that might have led her to become a serial killer. The author well explains these issues to help readers understand the main reasons why Toppan became a serial killer. Another strength of the book is that the author does a great job in achieving her thesis about why Jane Toppan became a serial killer by demonstrating every aspect of her thesis in the book.
The author shows weakness in the book by trying hard to justify Toppan’s actions even though it was clear Jane liked what she did to people. The book is more directed to the psychology of Toppan than the criminology of crimes she committed. Another weakness shown by the author in the book is she said that Jane did not kill people for retribution, but also said that she killed people because her ex-lover at 16 dumped her for another woman. This contradicts how the readers understood Jane’s reason for becoming a serial killer.
A criminology student should read this book because it presents them with characteristic development for serial killers in the course of history. Many serial killers have had an unstable childhood, which includes being abused by parents or other people in society. However, this story is a combination of an unstable childhood and the development of a deviant character while still young, which is triggered by a significant event. Hence, students should understand that Jane’s criminal behavior is the product of rational choice, which she used to commit the crime for gratification or personal gain like satisfaction making this crime story based on the psychological and social factors in Jane’s life.