Serial Killer Nurse Kristen Gilbert

Serial Killer Nurse Kristen Gilbert Kristen Gilbert is a former Veterans Administration (VA) nurse who was found guilty of murdering four VA patients in the early 1990s. She was also convicted of attempting to murder two other hospital patients and has been suspected in the deaths of dozens more.   Childhood Years Kristen Heather Strickland was born Nov. 13, 1967, to parents Richard and Claudia Strickland. She was the oldest of the two daughters in what appeared to be a well-adjusted home. The family moved from Fall River to Groton, Mass., and Kristen lived out her preteen years without any significant problems. As Kristen grew older, however, friends say she became a habitual liar and would boast of being related to Lizzie Borden, a notorious serial killer. She could be manipulative, threatening suicide when angry, and had a history of making violent threats, according to court records. A Nursing Job In 1988 Kristen earned her degree as a registered nurse from Greenfield Community College. That same year, she married Glenn Gilbert, whom she met at Hampton Beach, N.H. In March 1989, she landed a job at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Northampton, Mass., and the young couple bought a home and settled into their new life. To fellow workers, Kristen seemed competent and committed to her job. She was the type of co-worker who would remember birthdays and organize gift exchanges during the holidays. She seemed the social butterfly of the C Ward where she worked. Her superiors rated her nursing as highly skillful and noted how well she reacted during medical emergencies. In late 1990, the Gilberts had their first child, a baby boy. After returning from maternity leave, Kristin switched to the 4 p.m. until midnight shift and almost immediately strange things began to happen. Patients began dying during her shift, tripling the medical centers rate of deaths over the previous three years. During each incident, Kristens calm competent nursing skills shined, and she won the admiration of her fellow workers. An Affair After the Gilberts second child was born in 1993, the couples marriage seemed to falter. Kristen was developing a friendship with James Perrault, a security guard at the hospital, and the two often socialized with other workers at the end of their shifts. At the end of 1994, Gilbert, who was actively having an affair with Perrault, left her husband and their young children. She moved into her own apartment and continued to work at the VA hospital. Kristens co-workers began to grow suspicious  about the deaths that always seemed to occur during her shift. Although many of the patients who died were old or in poor health, there were also patients who had no history of heart problems, yet were dying of cardiac arrest. At the same time, supplies of ephedrine, a drug with the potential to cause heart failure, began to go missing. Suspicious Deaths and a Bomb Threat In late 1995 and early 1996, four patients under Gilberts care died, all of cardiac arrest. In each case, ephedrine was the suspected cause. After three of Gilberts coworkers voiced their concerns that she may have been involved, an investigation was opened. Shortly thereafter, Gilbert left her job at the VA hospital, citing injuries she sustained while at work. By the summer of 1996, Gilbert and Perraults relationship had become strained. In September, federal authorities investigating the hospital deaths interviewed Perrault. Thats when the bomb threats began. On Sept. 26 while working at the VA hospital, Perrault took a phone call from someone claiming to have planted three bombs at the hospital. Patients were evacuated and police called, but no  explosives were found. Similar threats were made to the hospital the next day and on the 30th, all during Perraults shifts. Two Trials It wasnt long before police linked Gilbert to the calls. She was tried and convicted in January 1998 of making a bomb threat and sentenced to 15 months in prison. Federal investigators, meanwhile, were getting closer to linking Gilbert to the patient deaths at the VA hospital. In November of 1998, Gilbert went on trial for murder in the deaths of Henry Hudon,  Kenneth Cutting, and  Edward Skwira, as well as the attempted murders of two other patients,  Thomas Callahan, and Angelo Vella. The following May, Gilbert was also charged in the death of patient Stanley Jagodowski. The trial began in November 2000. According to prosecutors, Gilbert committed the murders because she craved attention and wanted to spend time with Perrault. In seven years at the hospital, prosecutors said, Gilbert was on duty when more than half of the 350 recorded patient deaths occurred. Defense lawyers countered that Gilbert was innocent and that her patients had died of natural causes. On March 14, 2001, jurors found Gilbert guilty  of the first-degree murder in three of the cases and second-degree murder in the fourth. She also was convicted of  attempted murder in the case of two other hospital patients and sentenced to four life sentences. She dropped her appeal of the sentence in 2003. As of February 2017, Gilbert remained incarcerated in federal prison in Texas. Sources Farragher, Thomas. Caregiver or Killer? The Boston Globe. 8 October 2000. Goldberg, Carey. Former Nurse on Trial in Patients Deaths. The New York Times. 23 November 2000. Gorlick, Adam. Murderous Nurse Escapes Death Penalty.  ABC News. 26 March 2001. HLN Staff. When Serial Killers Strike: The Angel of Death on Ward C. CNN. 1 April 2013.

Women and Labor in Early America

Women and Labor in Early America Working in the Home From the late colonial period through the American Revolution, womens work usually centered on the home, but romanticizing this role as the Domestic Sphere came in the early 19th century. During much of the colonial period, the birth rate was high: soon after the time of the American Revolution it was still about seven children per mother. In early America among the colonists, the work of a wife was often alongside her husband, running a household, farm or plantation. Cooking for the household took a major part of a womans time. Making garments - spinning yarn, weaving cloth, sewing and mending clothes - also took much time. Slaves and Servants Other women worked as servants or were enslaved.  Some European women came as indentured servants, required so serve for a certain amount of time before having independence.  Women who were enslaved, captured from Africa or born to slave mothers, often did the same work that the men did, in the home or in the field. Some work was skilled labor, but much was unskilled field labor or in the household. Early in colonial history, Native Americans were also sometimes enslaved. Division of Labor by Gender In the typical white home in 18th century America, most of which were engaged in agriculture, the men were responsible for agricultural labor and the women for domestic chores, including cooking, cleaning, spinning yarn, weaving and sewing cloth, care of the animals that lived near the house, care of the gardens, in addition to their work caring for the children. Women participated in mens work at times. At harvest time, it was not unusual for women to also work in the fields. When husbands were away on long journeys, the wives usually took over the farm management. Women Outside Marriage Unmarried women, or divorced women without property, might work in another household, helping out with household chores of the wife or substituting for the wife if there was not one in the family. (Widows and widowers tended to remarry very quickly, though.)  Some unmarried or widowed women ran schools or taught in them, or worked as governesses for other families. Women in the Cities In cities, where families owned shops or worked in trades, the women often took care of domestic chores including raising children, preparing food, cleaning, taking care of small animals and house gardens, and preparing clothing. They also often worked alongside their husbands, assisting with some tasks in the shop or business, or taking care of customers. Women could not keep their own wages, so many of the records that might tell us more about womens work just dont exist. Many women, especially but not only widows, owned businesses. Women worked as apothecaries, barbers, blacksmiths, sextons, printers, tavern keepers and midwives. During the Revolution During the American Revolution, many women in colonial families participated in boycotting British goods, which meant more home manufacture to replace those items.  When men were at war, the women and children had to do the chores that would usually have been done by the men. After the Revolution After the Revolution and into the early 19th century, higher expectations for educating the children fell, often, to the mother. Widows and the wives of men off to war or traveling on business often ran large farms and plantations pretty much as the sole managers. Beginnings of Industrialization In the 1840s and 1850s, as the Industrial Revolution and factory labor took hold in the United States, more women went to work outside the home. By 1840, ten percent of women held jobs outside the household; ten years later, this had risen to fifteen percent. Factory owners hired women and children when they could, because they could pay lower wages to women and children than to men. For some tasks, like sewing, women were preferred because they had training and experience, and the jobs were womens work. The sewing machine was not introduced into the factory system until the 1830s; before that, sewing was done by hand. Factory work by women led to some of the first labor union organizing involving women workers, including when the Lowell girls organized (workers in the Lowell mills).