Speaker 1: Okay, I get it. You're opinionated, sometimes disagreeable, emotional, or
Speaker 1: maybe you have intellectual interests you'll like to read, you
Speaker 1: have interesting but kind of sketchy friends, they're artistic, or
Speaker 1: you're a little overly sexual, all reasons given for getting
Speaker 1: folks committed to what they call lunatic asylums back in
Speaker 1: the eighteen and early nineteen hundreds. Inside they could be
Speaker 1: restrained and even tortured. I'm Patty Steele, one woman's story
Speaker 1: about the insanity of getting perfectly sane people locked up.
Speaker 1: That's next on the backstory. The backstory is back. We
Speaker 1: know how mental illness impacts our society, people we know
Speaker 1: and work with, our families, even ourselves. But there was
Speaker 1: a time when you could be wrongly accused of being insane,
Speaker 1: thrown into an asylum, and maybe never get out. Inside
Speaker 1: you might be chained to a wall or tied up,
Speaker 1: forced into freezing baths, fed bug infested food, and even beaten,
Speaker 1: and most of the time you had no recourse. Nobody
Speaker 1: was going to listen to you because you were air
Speaker 1: quotes insane. It's eighteen sixty. Elizabeth Parsons ware Packard born
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixteen is living in Kankakee, Illinois, with her husband,
Speaker 1: Theophilus Packard, a conservative Calvinist minister. When she was a teenager,
Speaker 1: her parents felt she had what was called brain fever
Speaker 1: and had her committed for six weeks of treatment. She's
Speaker 1: probably just a typical difficult teenager. That's when they decided
Speaker 1: she needed to marry a much older and very demanding
Speaker 1: husband who could control her, and they chose Theophilus. Now,
Speaker 1: the problem is, Elizabeth is brilliant, independent, and strong willed
Speaker 1: qualities her husband doesn't really appreciate. She's well educated, which
Speaker 1: fuels her passion for learning and debate, and that really
Speaker 1: pisses off her husband, who doesn't like to be disag
Speaker 1: agreed with and has zero interest in engaging in debates
Speaker 1: with her. The Aphulis was all about fire and brimstone
Speaker 1: as well as absolute obedience, and he certainly was not
Speaker 1: okay with having a wife that questioned anything he believed
Speaker 1: or demanded of her. The couple had six children, but
Speaker 1: as time went by, Elizabeth started to voice her own
Speaker 1: more liberal ideas about religion, politics, women's rights, as well
Speaker 1: as her views on their financial decisions and raising their children.
Speaker 1: And that's where the trouble started. The aphulis saw her
Speaker 1: as a threat to his authority and probably his ego.
Speaker 1: He decided she was slightly insane due to what he
Speaker 1: called the excessive application of body and mind, whatever the
Speaker 1: heck that meant. So what to do with this difficult chick. Well,
Speaker 1: in a move that wasn't actually all that unusual in
Speaker 1: those days, he had Elizabeth declared insane. I mean it
Speaker 1: was really crazy. He had a doctor pretend to be
Speaker 1: a sewing machine salesman and then get into a conversation
Speaker 1: with her so he could evaluate her. During the chat,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth talked about how domineering her husband was, and even
Speaker 1: told him that he was accusing her of insanity. How
Speaker 1: you get into a discussion like that with a sewing
Speaker 1: machine guy, I don't know. Anyway, of course, the doctor
Speaker 1: went straight to her husband and told him everything. The
Speaker 1: next day she was off to the Jacksonville Insane Asylum
Speaker 1: in Illinois, where she spent the next three years. It
Speaker 1: was a nightmare. Literally, patients were kept in cramped quarters,
Speaker 1: fed putrid food, plunged into ice baths to cool them off,
Speaker 1: and there was a total lack of basic hygiene. Frequently
Speaker 1: they were tied up or even chained to walls. If
Speaker 1: they protested loudly enough, they might be beaten and put
Speaker 1: into total isolation. In some places, the public could actually
Speaker 1: take tours of the asylum for entertainment, staring at the inmates.
Speaker 1: But Elizabeth was tough, and she began to meticulously document
Speaker 1: everything that happened to her, as well as the abuses
Speaker 1: she witnessed. She wrote everything down, and it was a
Speaker 1: window into a really dark past. She described how patients
Speaker 1: were physically restrained and treated more like prisoners than patients.
Speaker 1: But Elizabeth wasn't just writing for herself. She was building
Speaker 1: a case, one journal entry at a time. Her strength,
Speaker 1: as well as the support of her children, finally paid off,
Speaker 1: and she was ultimately released in eighteen sixty three after
Speaker 1: three grueling years. But her husband still wanted control, so
Speaker 1: when she arrived home, he kept her locked up in
Speaker 1: the nursery with the windows nailed shut. Eventually, she managed
Speaker 1: to smuggle out a letter to a close friend, who
Speaker 1: took it to a judge. The judge sent the case
Speaker 1: to trial. Packard versus Packard only lasted five days in court.
Speaker 1: Theophilis's lawyers tried to prove Elizabeth was insane because she
Speaker 1: had argued with her husband and tried to withdraw from
Speaker 1: his congregation at church. Her defense attorneys called witnesses from
Speaker 1: the neighborhood who testified they never saw any signs that
Speaker 1: she was insane, and a local doctor who had interviewed
Speaker 1: her said that while he didn't always agree with her
Speaker 1: religious beliefs, he felt she was totally sane. He said,
Speaker 1: I do not call people insane because they differ with me.
Speaker 1: I pronounce her a sane woman, and actually wish we
Speaker 1: had a nation of such women. The jury deliberated for
Speaker 1: only seven minutes before she was legally declared sane. But
Speaker 1: it didn't end there. When Elizabeth went home, she found
Speaker 1: that her husband had rented their house to another family,
Speaker 1: sold her furniture, taken her money, all of her writings,
Speaker 1: her clothing, and even taken her children and left the state.
Speaker 1: But she had no legal recourse because in those days,
Speaker 1: women had no legal rights to their property or to
Speaker 1: their children. She didn't take all this without a fight,
Speaker 1: and Elizabeth Packard went on to found the Anti Insane
Speaker 1: Asylum Society. She fought for compassionate care and against laws
Speaker 1: that allowed people to so easily be committed by just
Speaker 1: one other person. Her books like Modern Persecution or Insane
Speaker 1: Asylums Unveiled exposed the horrific conditions in most asylums, and
Speaker 1: the public was outraged. That's a good thing. She also
Speaker 1: wrote books about and advocated for women's rights and freedom
Speaker 1: of speech and all this made her a national celebrity. Ironically,
Speaker 1: her celebrity status earned her so much money she was
Speaker 1: able to not only take care of her children financially
Speaker 1: once she got them back, but also took care of
Speaker 1: her estranged husband, whom she never divorced. And that is
Speaker 1: a kindness born of absolute strength, and her strength and
Speaker 1: courage which change the way we view and treat mental illness.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank Danny Lawrence Cohen for suggesting this
Speaker 1: really fascinating story. I hope you're enjoying The Backstory with
Speaker 1: Patty Steele. Follow or subscribe for free to get new
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Speaker 1: you have a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook,
Speaker 1: It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm
Speaker 1: Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia premiere Networks,
Speaker 1: the Elvis Duran Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer
Speaker 1: is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
Speaker 1: episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out
Speaker 1: to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram
Speaker 1: at real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the backstory with Patty Steele, the
Speaker 1: pieces of history you didn't know needed to know.