Oakland Tech’s upcoming production of “Arsenic and Old Lace” harbors a murder-filled history. The playwright, Joseph Kesselring, took inspiration from real-life murders for his 1941 macabre comedy. While writing the play, Kesselring visited Connecticut to look at court documents relating to Amy Archer-Gilligan, the owner of a boarding home for the elderly. However, Archer-Gilligan hid dark secrets behind her walls; between 1908 and 1916, 66 of her tenants met an unfortunate fate.
Amy Archer-Gilligan and her first husband, James Archer, opened the Archer Private Home for Elderly People and Chronic Invalids in Windsor, Connecticut around 1908. This establishment was one of few nursing homes at the time, offering tenants both acute and lifetime care. Payment options included either a weekly rate or a one-time fee of $1,000 for lifetime care.
In 1910, James Archer passed away due to kidney disease, leaving his wife and daughter in financial distress. Archer-Gilligan had to both pay back taxes and her daughter’s expensive tuition, leading her to become desperate for money. In 1913, she married her second husband, Michael Gilligan. However, Gilligan died suspiciously in early 1914 of “heart disease” only three months after his wedding to Archer-Gilligan. Despite their short-lived marriage, Gilligan left the entirety of his estate to his wife, amounting to more than $4,000.
In spite of her new wealth, Archer-Gilligan’s motive for money did not stop there. Later investigations showed that many of her tenants died suddenly after either paying the hefty lifetime fee or signing over some amount of money to her.
However, no deaths warranted investigation until 1914. In May of that year, a tenant by the name of Franklin Andrews reportedly died of “gastric ulcers,” but his sister became suspicious upon visiting his room. She found evidence that suggested that Archer-Gilligan had been pressuring her brother for money, and quickly contacted the state attorney and local reporters to look further into his death. Reporters at the Hartford Courant began to investigate, noticing that the Archer Home had a much higher rate of death than any other nursing home at the time. Most of her tenant’s death certificates were also incredibly vague, listing either “sudden death” or “stomach problems” as the cause of death. Reporters then discovered that Archer-Gilligan had purchased arsenic many times, though she said it was to kill rats and bedbugs.
The state later exhumed the bodies of five people who had died in the boarding home. At the time, embalmers used arsenic, so its presence in the corpses did not necessarily indicate poisoning at first glance. However, investigators found that Franklin Andrew’s stomach contained enough arsenic to kill several people. The other four bodies—Alice Gowdy, Charles Smith, Maude Howard Lynch, and Archer-Gilligan’s second husband, Michael Gilligan—also showed signs of arsenic or strychnine poisoning.
Amy Archer-Gilligan’s serial killing spree ended in May of 1916 when police finally arrested her. She was charged with all five of the deaths, but only went to trial for Franklin Andrew’s murder. A year later, she was convicted of first-degree murder by a jury and sentenced to death, but her lawyer appealed. In 1919, she received a new trial, where she pled insanity. She was then convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. In 1924, she was transferred to the Connecticut General Hospital for the Insane, where she remained until her death in 1962.