WEBVTT - Packard v. Packard, Pt. 2 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:04.000 Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, the production 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:13.000 of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:16.720 to the podcast. I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:20.720 This is part two of our podcast on Packard Versus Packard, 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:26.160 which is when the awfulist Packard had his wife Elizabeth 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:31.280 institutionalized because in his words, she was insane. That was 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:34.400 not her opinion of it at all. Part one we 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:36.520 talked about the early lives of the two of them 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:40.519 and how they had an apparently happy and functional marriage 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:44.760 for about fifteen years that crumbled and became abusive and 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:48.839 then he, as I just said, had her involuntarily committed. Today, 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:51.559 we are going to pick up with Elizabeth's time in 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:55.200 this hospital. First, we're gonna set a little context about 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:57.960 the state of mental health treatment in the nineteenth century. 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:02.360 Some of that's really horrifying. Some of this language, like 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:06.280 we wouldn't necessarily throw around the word insane to describe 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:11.080 a person today. Things like that, uh, super common language 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:16.400 at the time. And um, you can probably understand this 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:20.000 episode without having heard part one. Um, but part one 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:23.200 is really a lot of the detail of how we 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:27.520 got to this point. So before the late eighteenth and 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:31.480 early nineteenth century, people with serious mental health illnesses in 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:35.280 the United States and Europe were generally placed into facilities 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:39.720 commonly called lunatic asylums, and these asylums were not about treatment. 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:44.479 They were essentially prisons. Patients were often put into restraints 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:47.039 and left there with little in the way of comfort 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:50.040 or care, and sometimes they were actively abused by the 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:53.000 staff or others living in the facility, and some of 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:56.920 these asylums were also tourist attractions, with visitors coming to 0:01:57.040 --> 0:02:00.000 gawk at the patients, and the United States that started 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:03.480 to shift in the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds. 0:02:03.920 --> 0:02:07.600 The nation's first private mental hospital was the Asylum for 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:10.840 the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of their Reason, 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:13.840 also known as the Friends Hospital, which was opened by 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:17.720 Quakers in eighteen seventeen. The Friends Hospital focused on the 0:02:17.760 --> 0:02:21.040 idea of moral treatment, which became the standard of care 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:24.080 and most mental hospitals by the middle of the nineteenth century. 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:27.239 The basic idea had been put into practice by physician 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:30.880 William Took at an asylum called The Retreat in York, England, 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:34.639 which opened in seventeen ninety six. Over the late seventeen 0:02:34.720 --> 0:02:38.240 hundreds and early eighteen hundreds, physicians in Britain and France 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:43.080 continued to refine the retreats methods. Moral treatment focused on 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:46.280 the idea that an asylum should treat its patients humanely, 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:50.480 with the institution acting almost like a stern and paternalistic guardian. 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:55.239 Unlike these earlier lunatic asylums, patients weren't kept in restraints. 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.600 They were expected to live in a clean, orderly and 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:03.200 polite way and a strict and disciplined environment. Patients were 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:05.520 expected to do some chores around the building or the 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:07.960 grounds on a regular schedule to give them a sense 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:11.000 of purpose and to keep them on this predictable daily cycle. 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:15.600 Doctors might also prescribe treatments along a more medical model, 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:19.760 including drugs, hydrotherapy, exercise, things like that. In a lot 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.040 of ways, this was a big step forward from what 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:25.160 was common in lunatic asylums, but it turned out to 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:28.480 be hard to carry out in practice. Moral treatment was 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:32.160 only helpful for a relatively small number of patients. A 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:35.400 person who was mostly exhausted and stressed and needed time 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:38.840 to recuperate might leave the hospital feeling like their treatment 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:42.080 had cured them. But for many mental illnesses this just 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:46.200 was not the case. A patient with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:49.800 or depression or any number of other mental illnesses might 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:52.600 be helped to a degree by the predictable daily routine 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:55.920 in a calm and ordered setting, but moral treatment really 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:59.320 didn't address the illness itself. Also, many of the people 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:02.400 who wound up in these hospitals didn't have a mental illness. 0:04:02.960 --> 0:04:06.280 The field of psychiatry was really in its infancy without 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:09.680 a clear sense of what was or wasn't a mental illness. 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:14.240 So people with drug and alcohol addictions, developmental disabilities, and epilepsy, 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:18.600 all kinds of other conditions wound up in mental hospitals, 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:21.159 and so did people who just weren't behaving as their 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:24.599 families or society expected them to. There weren't many of 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:27.800 these private hospitals at first. They were mostly in more 0:04:27.839 --> 0:04:31.960 affluent areas and available to wealthier people, so most people 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:34.760 with mental illnesses that kept them from being able to 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:37.960 function in society were kept out of sight at home, 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.520 or if their families couldn't or wouldn't care for them, 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:44.920 they wound up in alms houses or even prisons. Care 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:48.599 Typically was not good in any of these scenarios. People 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:51.560 caring for family members at home might have good and 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:55.599 loving intentions, but there was so much stigma surrounding mental 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:58.679 illness and ideas that they were brought on by things 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:02.799 like possession, and a lot of different explanations for mental 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:07.279 illnesses that didn't amount to an illness, um that people 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:09.640 caring for family members were just as likely to be 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:13.960 abusive or neglectful. Prisons and alms houses were brutal and 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:16.440 degrading in general, and then on top of that, they 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:19.320 just were not equipped to handle the behaviors that came 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:23.040 along with untreated mental illnesses. This all started to shift 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:26.480 in the eighteen forties and fifties as reformers like Dorothea 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:30.400 Dix advocated for state funded asylums and better care within 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:34.359 those asylums. Most of these newly built asylums followed the 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.920 moral care model, and some existing state hospitals began using 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:42.080 it as well. New asylum buildings were typically designed according 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:45.800 to the Kirkbride Plan, developed by Dr Thomas Story Kirkbride. 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:49.479 They were divided into symmetrical wings and wards with lots 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:53.400 of fresh air and natural light. Reformers also advocated for 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:56.240 the idea that people with mental illnesses needed to be 0:05:56.360 --> 0:06:00.440 cared for rather than simply locked away. But it turned 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:03.200 out that implementing the moral care model at all these 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:07.000 newly open hospitals could be really difficult. As the public 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:09.600 started to think of mental illness as something that required 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:14.760 treatment at a hospital, admissions skyrocketed in hospitals quickly became overcrowded. 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:19.920 They went from clean and orderly and calm to unsanitary. Understaffed, 0:06:19.920 --> 0:06:23.360 and chaotic waves of immigration to the United States meant 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:25.719 that sometimes patients didn't speak the same language as the 0:06:25.760 --> 0:06:29.479 doctors of the staff. Staff turnover tended to be very high, 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.400 and hospitals were often run by boards of trustees who 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:35.800 might be more focused on politics than on care. Some 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:38.560 of these boards also had a reputation for being corrupt, 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:41.720 and even though the medical field was beginning to think 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:44.479 of mental illness as a treatable illness rather than a 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:47.840 personal moral failing, there was still a lot of stigma 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:50.440 and a perception that it was up to patients to 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:54.200 get better. If a patient wasn't improving, doctors and staff 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:57.160 often concluded that they weren't trying, or that they were 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:00.800 willfully refusing to get better. So it was common for 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:04.880 patients to be cared for by undertrained, frustrated staff who 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:07.760 thought that these people in their care were simply being obstinate. 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:12.200 Abuse and cruelty continued to be commonplace, even in hospitals 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:15.880 that were theoretically following the moral treatment model. Are also, 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:18.200 of course, a number of medical treatments that were going 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:22.280 on that were super questionable by today's standards. This is 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:24.200 a state of mental health care in the United States. 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.840 When Elizabeth Packard was hospitalized, it was improving over what 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:30.040 it had been, but it still had a really long 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:32.160 way to go. We will get to her time in 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:42.880 the hospital after a sponsor break. When Elizabeth Packard was 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:46.360 admitted at the Illinois State Asylum and Hospital for the Insane, 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:51.240 it's superintendent was Dr Andrew McFarland of New Hampshire. He 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:53.480 was at the top of his field. He was part 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:56.200 of the first wave of people to join the Association 0:07:56.240 --> 0:08:00.760 of Medical Superintendence of American Institutions for the Same or 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:03.360 the a M s a i I, which was a 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:07.800 precursor to the American Psychiatric Association. In eighteen sixty he 0:08:07.920 --> 0:08:11.440 was its president. He had tried to hand in his resignation, 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:13.920 citing a serious illness in the family, and when he 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:17.640 tried to do that, the association had declined Elizabeth's admission. 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:24.200 Note read quote June eighteen sixty Elizabeth P. Packard, Kankakee County, married, 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:27.880 aged forty four, native of Massachusetts in this state three 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:32.480 years slightly insane for two years. Was in Wooster Hospital 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:36.000 twenty five years ago. Present attack more decided the past 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:40.680 four months. Supposed cause is excessive application of body and mind. 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:47.800 Reverend Theophilist Packard McFarland's diagnosis was moral insanity with monomania. 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:51.079 Moral insanity was an accepted diagnosis through most of the 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:54.520 nineteenth century. In eighteen thirty five, R. J. C. Pritcher 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:56.840 described it this way quote, there is a form of 0:08:56.960 --> 0:09:01.079 mental derangement in which the intellectual facult tease are uninjured, 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:04.240 while the disorder is manifested principally or alone in the 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:08.680 state of feelings, temper, or habits. The moral principles of 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:12.120 the mind are depraved or perverted, the power of self 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:15.680 government is lost or greatly impaired, and the individual is 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:19.360 incapable of conducting himself with decency and propriety in the 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:24.000 business of life. Monomania was another nineteenth century diagnosis, and 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:27.400 as its name suggests, it was a mania connected to 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:31.520 one specific thing, and in Elizabeth's case, that was religion. 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:35.160 Dr McFarland seems to have genuinely believed that Elizabeth was 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:37.720 mentally ill and that his diagnosis was the correct one. 0:09:38.400 --> 0:09:41.400 Her husband, too, seems to have genuinely thought that his 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:45.920 wife was, in his word, insane. For her part, Elizabeth 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:49.080 believed these two men were conspiring to imprison her for 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:52.600 her religious views and her refusal to be totally subservient 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:56.600 to her husband. Meanwhile, both her doctor and her husband 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:59.880 believed that these religious views and her lack of subser 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.960 armance were evidence of her mental illness. Elizabeth described it 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:07.760 this way, quote in my first struggle after my independence, 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:11.679 I lost my personal liberty sad beginning, had it not 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.640 been better for me to submit to oppression and spiritual 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:17.640 bondage rather than have attempted to break the fetters of 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:21.640 marital and religious despotism. No, I cannot feel that I 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.679 have done either for myself for others the least wrong 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:27.960 in the course I have thus far taken. Therefore, I 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:31.120 have no recantations to make, and can give no pledge 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.160 of further subjection to either of these powers, where their 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:37.640 claims demand the surrender of my conscience to their dictation. 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:40.480 And this is what they call my insanity, and for 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:42.640 which I was sent to the asylum to be cured. 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:45.240 I think it will be a long time before this 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:48.400 cure will be affected. At the start of her hospitalization, 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:52.480 Elizabeth thought that Dr McFarland already believes her to be saying, 0:10:52.679 --> 0:10:55.680 or that he would come around that opinion in short order. 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:58.800 It was very obvious to her that she was saying, 0:10:59.200 --> 0:11:01.000 and she thought that it would soon be obvious to 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:03.439 him as well. So for about four months she was 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:05.840 in a bright, airy ward with a lot of freedom, 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:08.000 and she felt like she was being treated more like 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:10.920 a guest than like a patient. In those first months 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:14.080 in the hospital, Elizabeth wrote a document praising the doctor 0:11:14.160 --> 0:11:17.640 and encouraging him to release her. He ignored it, and 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:21.560 Elizabeth realized that he did not believe that she was sane, 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:25.720 so she started actively advocating for herself and her release. 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:29.599 Her oldest son came to visit her without his father's permission, 0:11:29.960 --> 0:11:32.560 but couldn't secure her release because he was not twenty 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:35.640 one years old. Friends tried to get a rid of 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:38.640 habeas corpus, but they were told that because she was married, 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:42.319 that had to come from her husband. After Elizabeth wrote 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:45.760 up a second document, which was scathing in its opinions 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:48.480 of the hospital and its superintendent, she was transferred to 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:52.920 another ward, a much less nice ward which was home 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:55.960 to patients whose illnesses just couldn't be treated with fresh 0:11:56.000 --> 0:12:00.000 air and an orderly schedule. She found the conditions they're filthy, 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:03.440 and its staff cruel, and its patients uncared for. When 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:06.920 patients had visitors, she would tell their families about cruelty 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:10.200 she had witnessed in the hospital. She started cleaning the 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:14.160 entire ward herself and organizing the other patients in protesting 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:18.880 their conditions. This included an ongoing campaign to destroy ordinary 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:23.280 hospital property like bed linens and brooms. Elizabeth was eventually 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:26.080 transferred out of this ward and given a private room 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:29.760 to keep her from influencing the other patients, and Elizabeth 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:33.480 met Dorothea Dix. When Dix visited in eighteen sixty one, 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:37.679 Elizabeth called her quote a Christian although honestly and conscientiously 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:42.640 wrong in sustaining our present system of insane asylums. Elizabeth 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:46.200 admired Dix's compassion and her advocacy for the compassionate care 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:49.520 of asylum patients, but thought she was simply wrong in 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:51.880 her belief that there needed to be a robust system 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:55.480 of asylums in the first place. Elizabeth thought most people 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:58.360 who were committed didn't need to be and that working 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:01.600 to build more asylums was Dama Jane. Throughout all of this, 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:05.320 Dr McFarland was updating the Offulist with reports about his 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:09.480 wife's condition. That Elizabeth's religious views were unchanged, that she 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:13.360 was unrepentant in her refusal to be submissive to her husband, 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:18.280 that she was inspiring restlessness and insubordination among the other patients. 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:21.400 He also told the Offulist that Elizabeth had lost all 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:25.240 of her marital and maternal instinct, even as Elizabeth's own 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:28.400 writing reveals that she was really grieving over the separation 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:30.920 from her children and the strain that all of this 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:34.440 was putting on them. She was especially distressed at the 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:36.920 idea that her daughter Libby was going to have to 0:13:36.960 --> 0:13:43.439 bear all the burdens of running this household. During Elizabeth's hospitalization, 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:46.199 Libby was between the ages of ten and twelve years old. 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:50.000 In September of eighteen sixty two, Elizabeth was summoned to 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:53.720 appear before the hospital's board of trustees after months of 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:58.280 petitioning for release. She read a document that denounced Calvinism, 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:01.040 explaining her own beliefs and I she refused to raise 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:05.560 her children according to their father's religious views. Dr McFarland 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:08.960 had screened this document ahead of time, and it began quote, gentlemen, 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:12.640 I am accused of teaching my children doctrines ruinous in 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:15.960 their tendency, and such as alienate them from their father. 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:20.200 I reply that my teachings and practice both are ruinous 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:24.760 to Satan's cause and do alienate my children from Satanic influences. 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:30.440 I teach Christianity, my husband teaches Calvinism. They are antagonistic 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:36.920 systems and uphold antagonistic authorities. Christianity upholds God's authority, Calvinism 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:39.840 the devil's authority. But then she went on to Rita's 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:42.960 second document, one that the doctor had not approved ahead 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:44.960 of time, in which she accused her husband and the 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:48.680 doctor of conspiring against her. Then detailed a range of 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:52.040 injustices and indignities that she had witnessed at the hospital. 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:54.960 Having done all that, Though she asked them not to 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:58.800 release her, divorce was out of the question. From Theophilus's 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:01.600 point of view, Elizabeth did not think that she would 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:04.840 be safe with him. She also realized that her father 0:15:05.000 --> 0:15:07.280 and brothers did not have the means to support her, 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:11.280 so she needed to figure out how she might support herself. 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:13.160 She planned to spend the rest of her time in 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:16.600 the hospital writing a book. Her husband and her doctor 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:19.000 had been on the same page about her care until 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:21.040 this point, and this is where they started to diverge. 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:25.520 Dr McFarland pressed the trustees to discharge Elizabeth because of 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:29.160 how much trouble she was causing him. Meanwhile, the awfulist 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:31.840 pressed them to keep her there because he had no 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:34.720 other plan to take care of her. After this meeting, 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:37.800 Dr McFarland told Elizabeth that he would help her get 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:41.080 her book published, probably because he thought doing so would 0:15:41.080 --> 0:15:43.840 get her out of his hospital faster. But then she 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:47.200 finished the book and it wasn't something he could support publishing. 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:49.960 It was disjointed and rambley, and a lot of it 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:53.320 was focused on his backstory. He told her he wouldn't 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:55.800 help her after all, and in a desperate effort to 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:58.600 get him to change his mind, Elizabeth wrote him a 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:02.640 love letter, a fusive praising him and essentially calling him 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:06.160 her soul mate. Finally, the hospital trustees gave the awful 0:16:06.200 --> 0:16:09.560 is three months notice that they would be discharging his wife. 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:13.080 Dr McFarland said this was because she was incurable and 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:16.280 because of the quote amount of trouble which Mrs Packard 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:19.800 causes us and the disastrous influence which she exerts onto 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:24.280 other patients. Elizabeth was released on June eighth, eighteen sixty three, 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:26.800 and for a time she stayed with a relative. Then 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:29.400 she went back to Mantino to try to get custody 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.400 of her children. In Elizabeth's account, when she got back 0:16:32.400 --> 0:16:35.720 to Mantino, her husband kept her locked in the nursery 0:16:35.760 --> 0:16:39.040 with the windows nailed shut. In his account, she was 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:42.440 free to come and go regardless, Elizabeth wrote a letter 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:45.479 and slipped it under the window to a passer by. 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:48.880 A friend ultimately got that letter to Judge Charles Starr, 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:52.520 who secured a writ of habeas corpus. Since Elizabeth was 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:56.560 no longer institutionalized but was locked in her home this time, 0:16:56.600 --> 0:16:59.200 her husband did not have to be involved. A court 0:16:59.280 --> 0:17:02.080 date was set for trial to determine whether she was 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:05.880 saying that. Trial started on January twelfth, eighteen sixty four, 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:09.360 and went on for five days. Unfortunately, we can't read 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:12.359 testimony from it because there's records have been lost. But 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:15.600 people did hear from doctors and friends and family members 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:18.880 and community members, some of whom said Elizabeth was mentally 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:21.760 ill and others of whom did not. In the end, 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:25.000 on January eighteenth, eighteen sixty four, the jury ruled that 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:27.800 she was saying. The awful List said the trial was 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:34.239 a quote reign of mobocracy, insult, partiality, prejudice injustice, and malignity. 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:36.320 On the day of the verdict, he packed up their 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:39.720 minor children and their belongings and went back to Massachusetts. 0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:43.600 This left Elizabeth without her children, with nowhere to live 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:47.360 and no way to support herself. She sued for divorce, 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:49.600 but since the awful Ist had already left the state, 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:52.240 the county clerk said he could not be found, and 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:55.080 eventually she just let the matter drop. We'll get to 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:57.800 her life after this, including her years of work to 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:00.000 make sure the same thing couldn't happen to other women. 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:10.080 After a sponsor break, after her husband moved back to 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:14.080 Massachusetts with their youngest children. Elizabeth Packard returned to the 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:16.159 idea she'd had in the hospital, and that was of 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:20.240 supporting herself through writing. She started revising material that she 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:23.760 had started in the hospital. Her first published book was 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:27.000 called Exposure on board the Atlantic and Pacific Car of 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:30.560 Emancipation for the Slaves of Old Columbia engineered by the 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:35.000 Lightning Express or Christianity and Calvinism, compared with an Appeal 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:37.920 to the Government to emancipate the Slaves of the Marriage Union. 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:41.400 That was followed by quote edited by a slave now 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:44.840 imprisoned in Jacksonville Insane Asylum, placed there by her husband 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:48.960 for thinking and all capital letters, written under the inspection 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:53.360 of Dr McFarland, Superintendent of Insane Asylum, Jacksonville. She used 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:58.000 a lot of slavery imagery in her writing. Unsurprisingly it 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:00.800 was like eighteen sixty three. This was the first of 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:03.840 seven books and numerous pamphlets that she wrote over the 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:06.920 next sixteen years, which did turn out to be enough 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:10.760 for her to support herself. Asylum narratives had become a 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:15.040 popular genre. These were sensational first person accounts of people 0:19:15.040 --> 0:19:19.040 who had been institutionalized. They were part memoir and part 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:22.320 expos a intended to resonate with fans of the Gothic 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:26.000 fiction that was popular at the time. Elizabeth's goal was 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:30.160 both to support herself and encourage reform to the asylum system. 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:33.000 We should note that also makes it hard to figure out, 0:19:33.040 --> 0:19:35.760 like exactly what the truth is to the accounts, because 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:39.560 she was writing them to sell books when very sensational 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:43.240 accounts were pretty typical, and she was also trying to 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:45.720 get people to change the law, and then once again, 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:49.159 very sensational accounts could work toward that end. Also, that 0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:52.280 makes a little tricky to figure out, like exactly what 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:56.359 the details were. But that's just some background. She also 0:19:56.400 --> 0:20:00.200 got to work lobbying legislators to pass laws to keep 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:02.679 what had happened to her from happening to other women. 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:07.320 She often drafted these bills herself and lobbied lawmakers personally 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:10.040 to get them introduced and past. Some of her bills 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:12.080 were focused on the rights of married women, like the 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:14.520 right for a woman to have full custody of her 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:17.399 children after a divorce, rather than her husband just having 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:20.119 that custody by default. There was also the right for 0:20:20.160 --> 0:20:22.960 a married woman to keep all the money she earned 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:25.560 rather than it going to her husband again by default. 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:29.520 Both of these were issues that directly affected her. When 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:32.360 her husband had left with her children, she had no recourse, 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:35.159 and when she started publishing books, she wanted to be 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:37.720 able to keep all the money she earned. She also 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:40.880 worked on bills relating to patient rights. She had observed 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:43.320 that a person accused of a crime was guaranteed rights 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:46.520 to counsel and do process, but in most states, a 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:48.800 person who had a mental illness had none of that 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:52.439 and might be committed without any kind of hearing. This 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:55.199 also meant that people who weren't mentally ill could be 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:58.359 wrongly committed, so she lobbied for bills that required a 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:01.639 trial before a person was committed to an asylum or hospital. 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.120 Elizabeth also drafted bills relating to the rights of patients 0:21:05.160 --> 0:21:09.000 and mental hospitals. When she was hospitalized, the mail was 0:21:09.080 --> 0:21:12.720 often censored or withheld from patients, so she drafted bills 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:16.640 that guaranteed patients free and uncensored access to their mail. 0:21:17.000 --> 0:21:20.480 In eighteen sixty five, following her advocacy, Illinois passed a 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:24.359 personal liberty bill requiring a trial for any person being committed, 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:27.439 whether they were married or not, ending the ability for 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:31.000 husbands to have their wives committed without a trial. The 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:35.960 legislature passed this unanimously. A later amendment made this retroactive, 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:38.600 so that people who had been admitted before eighteen sixty 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:42.280 five were still entitled to a trial. Not long after, 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:46.720 an investigating committee was convened to examine allegations of abuse 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:50.480 at the Illinois Hospital for the Insane, including Elizabeth's accounts. 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:53.760 Elizabeth was called to testify, with questioning going on for 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:56.800 about six hours. At the very end of that day, 0:21:56.800 --> 0:21:59.680 that love letter that she had written to Dr McFarland 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:04.560 was introduced as evidence to try to undermine her believability. 0:22:04.720 --> 0:22:06.560 Because she had been on the stand for so long, 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:09.240 the commission allowed her to respond to that the next day, 0:22:09.440 --> 0:22:12.000 and when she did, she explained what we said earlier, 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.000 that it had been a desperate effort to flatter him 0:22:14.040 --> 0:22:16.600 and get him to help her publish her book. Ultimately, 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:20.520 the committee found numerous examples of cruelty toward patients at 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:24.000 the hospital, as well as evidence that McFarland had misclassified 0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:28.040 patients housing people with minor treatable conditions with patients who 0:22:28.080 --> 0:22:32.320 were disruptive and violent. Although the commission recommended that McFarland 0:22:32.359 --> 0:22:35.320 be dismissed, the city of Jacksonville and the hospital's board 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:39.680 of trustees stood by him. He eventually resigned on November 0:22:40.280 --> 0:22:43.080 eighteen sixty eight, while continuing to have a career in 0:22:43.160 --> 0:22:46.880 mental health. Elizabeth kept up her lobbying through all of this, 0:22:47.000 --> 0:22:50.640 and through a very bitter, very public three way dispute 0:22:50.640 --> 0:22:54.320 among herself, her husband, and her former doctor. Every time 0:22:54.359 --> 0:22:59.000 she proposed new legislation, McFarland publicly raised questions about her 0:22:59.000 --> 0:23:02.640 mental health. The Offulis was also publicly disparaging of her, 0:23:02.720 --> 0:23:08.000 and she of him. This whole situation was unsurprisingly extremely 0:23:08.119 --> 0:23:12.640 hard on their children. When the Afulis first had Elizabeth's institutionalized, 0:23:12.680 --> 0:23:16.680 the children mostly sided with her. Then, after three years 0:23:16.680 --> 0:23:18.960 with their father, they believed that he had been right 0:23:19.040 --> 0:23:23.360 about their mother's mental state. Sometime after being reunited with her, 0:23:23.640 --> 0:23:26.159 most of them supported her side of the story again, 0:23:26.680 --> 0:23:29.360 and this went back and forth repeatedly as they were 0:23:29.359 --> 0:23:31.880 with one parent or the other, or had their own 0:23:31.920 --> 0:23:34.880