Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, the production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Speaker 1: This is part two of our podcast on Packard Versus Packard,
Speaker 1: which is when the awfulist Packard had his wife Elizabeth
Speaker 1: institutionalized because in his words, she was insane. That was
Speaker 1: not her opinion of it at all. Part one we
Speaker 1: talked about the early lives of the two of them
Speaker 1: and how they had an apparently happy and functional marriage
Speaker 1: for about fifteen years that crumbled and became abusive and
Speaker 1: then he, as I just said, had her involuntarily committed. Today,
Speaker 1: we are going to pick up with Elizabeth's time in
Speaker 1: this hospital. First, we're gonna set a little context about
Speaker 1: the state of mental health treatment in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Some of that's really horrifying. Some of this language, like
Speaker 1: we wouldn't necessarily throw around the word insane to describe
Speaker 1: a person today. Things like that, uh, super common language
Speaker 1: at the time. And um, you can probably understand this
Speaker 1: episode without having heard part one. Um, but part one
Speaker 1: is really a lot of the detail of how we
Speaker 1: got to this point. So before the late eighteenth and
Speaker 1: early nineteenth century, people with serious mental health illnesses in
Speaker 1: the United States and Europe were generally placed into facilities
Speaker 1: commonly called lunatic asylums, and these asylums were not about treatment.
Speaker 1: They were essentially prisons. Patients were often put into restraints
Speaker 1: and left there with little in the way of comfort
Speaker 1: or care, and sometimes they were actively abused by the
Speaker 1: staff or others living in the facility, and some of
Speaker 1: these asylums were also tourist attractions, with visitors coming to
Speaker 1: gawk at the patients, and the United States that started
Speaker 1: to shift in the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: The nation's first private mental hospital was the Asylum for
Speaker 1: the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of their Reason,
Speaker 1: also known as the Friends Hospital, which was opened by
Speaker 1: Quakers in eighteen seventeen. The Friends Hospital focused on the
Speaker 1: idea of moral treatment, which became the standard of care
Speaker 1: and most mental hospitals by the middle of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: The basic idea had been put into practice by physician
Speaker 1: William Took at an asylum called The Retreat in York, England,
Speaker 1: which opened in seventeen ninety six. Over the late seventeen
Speaker 1: hundreds and early eighteen hundreds, physicians in Britain and France
Speaker 1: continued to refine the retreats methods. Moral treatment focused on
Speaker 1: the idea that an asylum should treat its patients humanely,
Speaker 1: with the institution acting almost like a stern and paternalistic guardian.
Speaker 1: Unlike these earlier lunatic asylums, patients weren't kept in restraints.
Speaker 1: They were expected to live in a clean, orderly and
Speaker 1: polite way and a strict and disciplined environment. Patients were
Speaker 1: expected to do some chores around the building or the
Speaker 1: grounds on a regular schedule to give them a sense
Speaker 1: of purpose and to keep them on this predictable daily cycle.
Speaker 1: Doctors might also prescribe treatments along a more medical model,
Speaker 1: including drugs, hydrotherapy, exercise, things like that. In a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, this was a big step forward from what
Speaker 1: was common in lunatic asylums, but it turned out to
Speaker 1: be hard to carry out in practice. Moral treatment was
Speaker 1: only helpful for a relatively small number of patients. A
Speaker 1: person who was mostly exhausted and stressed and needed time
Speaker 1: to recuperate might leave the hospital feeling like their treatment
Speaker 1: had cured them. But for many mental illnesses this just
Speaker 1: was not the case. A patient with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder,
Speaker 1: or depression or any number of other mental illnesses might
Speaker 1: be helped to a degree by the predictable daily routine
Speaker 1: in a calm and ordered setting, but moral treatment really
Speaker 1: didn't address the illness itself. Also, many of the people
Speaker 1: who wound up in these hospitals didn't have a mental illness.
Speaker 1: The field of psychiatry was really in its infancy without
Speaker 1: a clear sense of what was or wasn't a mental illness.
Speaker 1: So people with drug and alcohol addictions, developmental disabilities, and epilepsy,
Speaker 1: all kinds of other conditions wound up in mental hospitals,
Speaker 1: and so did people who just weren't behaving as their
Speaker 1: families or society expected them to. There weren't many of
Speaker 1: these private hospitals at first. They were mostly in more
Speaker 1: affluent areas and available to wealthier people, so most people
Speaker 1: with mental illnesses that kept them from being able to
Speaker 1: function in society were kept out of sight at home,
Speaker 1: or if their families couldn't or wouldn't care for them,
Speaker 1: they wound up in alms houses or even prisons. Care
Speaker 1: Typically was not good in any of these scenarios. People
Speaker 1: caring for family members at home might have good and
Speaker 1: loving intentions, but there was so much stigma surrounding mental
Speaker 1: illness and ideas that they were brought on by things
Speaker 1: like possession, and a lot of different explanations for mental
Speaker 1: illnesses that didn't amount to an illness, um that people
Speaker 1: caring for family members were just as likely to be
Speaker 1: abusive or neglectful. Prisons and alms houses were brutal and
Speaker 1: degrading in general, and then on top of that, they
Speaker 1: just were not equipped to handle the behaviors that came
Speaker 1: along with untreated mental illnesses. This all started to shift
Speaker 1: in the eighteen forties and fifties as reformers like Dorothea
Speaker 1: Dix advocated for state funded asylums and better care within
Speaker 1: those asylums. Most of these newly built asylums followed the
Speaker 1: moral care model, and some existing state hospitals began using
Speaker 1: it as well. New asylum buildings were typically designed according
Speaker 1: to the Kirkbride Plan, developed by Dr Thomas Story Kirkbride.
Speaker 1: They were divided into symmetrical wings and wards with lots
Speaker 1: of fresh air and natural light. Reformers also advocated for
Speaker 1: the idea that people with mental illnesses needed to be
Speaker 1: cared for rather than simply locked away. But it turned
Speaker 1: out that implementing the moral care model at all these
Speaker 1: newly open hospitals could be really difficult. As the public
Speaker 1: started to think of mental illness as something that required
Speaker 1: treatment at a hospital, admissions skyrocketed in hospitals quickly became overcrowded.
Speaker 1: They went from clean and orderly and calm to unsanitary. Understaffed,
Speaker 1: and chaotic waves of immigration to the United States meant
Speaker 1: that sometimes patients didn't speak the same language as the
Speaker 1: doctors of the staff. Staff turnover tended to be very high,
Speaker 1: and hospitals were often run by boards of trustees who
Speaker 1: might be more focused on politics than on care. Some
Speaker 1: of these boards also had a reputation for being corrupt,
Speaker 1: and even though the medical field was beginning to think
Speaker 1: of mental illness as a treatable illness rather than a
Speaker 1: personal moral failing, there was still a lot of stigma
Speaker 1: and a perception that it was up to patients to
Speaker 1: get better. If a patient wasn't improving, doctors and staff
Speaker 1: often concluded that they weren't trying, or that they were
Speaker 1: willfully refusing to get better. So it was common for
Speaker 1: patients to be cared for by undertrained, frustrated staff who
Speaker 1: thought that these people in their care were simply being obstinate.
Speaker 1: Abuse and cruelty continued to be commonplace, even in hospitals
Speaker 1: that were theoretically following the moral treatment model. Are also,
Speaker 1: of course, a number of medical treatments that were going
Speaker 1: on that were super questionable by today's standards. This is
Speaker 1: a state of mental health care in the United States.
Speaker 1: When Elizabeth Packard was hospitalized, it was improving over what
Speaker 1: it had been, but it still had a really long
Speaker 1: way to go. We will get to her time in
Speaker 1: the hospital after a sponsor break. When Elizabeth Packard was
Speaker 1: admitted at the Illinois State Asylum and Hospital for the Insane,
Speaker 1: it's superintendent was Dr Andrew McFarland of New Hampshire. He
Speaker 1: was at the top of his field. He was part
Speaker 1: of the first wave of people to join the Association
Speaker 1: of Medical Superintendence of American Institutions for the Same or
Speaker 1: the a M s a i I, which was a
Speaker 1: precursor to the American Psychiatric Association. In eighteen sixty he
Speaker 1: was its president. He had tried to hand in his resignation,
Speaker 1: citing a serious illness in the family, and when he
Speaker 1: tried to do that, the association had declined Elizabeth's admission.
Speaker 1: Note read quote June eighteen sixty Elizabeth P. Packard, Kankakee County, married,
Speaker 1: aged forty four, native of Massachusetts in this state three
Speaker 1: years slightly insane for two years. Was in Wooster Hospital
Speaker 1: twenty five years ago. Present attack more decided the past
Speaker 1: four months. Supposed cause is excessive application of body and mind.
Speaker 1: Reverend Theophilist Packard McFarland's diagnosis was moral insanity with monomania.
Speaker 1: Moral insanity was an accepted diagnosis through most of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. In eighteen thirty five, R. J. C. Pritcher
Speaker 1: described it this way quote, there is a form of
Speaker 1: mental derangement in which the intellectual facult tease are uninjured,
Speaker 1: while the disorder is manifested principally or alone in the
Speaker 1: state of feelings, temper, or habits. The moral principles of
Speaker 1: the mind are depraved or perverted, the power of self
Speaker 1: government is lost or greatly impaired, and the individual is
Speaker 1: incapable of conducting himself with decency and propriety in the
Speaker 1: business of life. Monomania was another nineteenth century diagnosis, and
Speaker 1: as its name suggests, it was a mania connected to
Speaker 1: one specific thing, and in Elizabeth's case, that was religion.
Speaker 1: Dr McFarland seems to have genuinely believed that Elizabeth was
Speaker 1: mentally ill and that his diagnosis was the correct one.
Speaker 1: Her husband, too, seems to have genuinely thought that his
Speaker 1: wife was, in his word, insane. For her part, Elizabeth
Speaker 1: believed these two men were conspiring to imprison her for
Speaker 1: her religious views and her refusal to be totally subservient
Speaker 1: to her husband. Meanwhile, both her doctor and her husband
Speaker 1: believed that these religious views and her lack of subser
Speaker 1: armance were evidence of her mental illness. Elizabeth described it
Speaker 1: this way, quote in my first struggle after my independence,
Speaker 1: I lost my personal liberty sad beginning, had it not
Speaker 1: been better for me to submit to oppression and spiritual
Speaker 1: bondage rather than have attempted to break the fetters of
Speaker 1: marital and religious despotism. No, I cannot feel that I
Speaker 1: have done either for myself for others the least wrong
Speaker 1: in the course I have thus far taken. Therefore, I
Speaker 1: have no recantations to make, and can give no pledge
Speaker 1: of further subjection to either of these powers, where their
Speaker 1: claims demand the surrender of my conscience to their dictation.
Speaker 1: And this is what they call my insanity, and for
Speaker 1: which I was sent to the asylum to be cured.
Speaker 1: I think it will be a long time before this
Speaker 1: cure will be affected. At the start of her hospitalization,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth thought that Dr McFarland already believes her to be saying,
Speaker 1: or that he would come around that opinion in short order.
Speaker 1: It was very obvious to her that she was saying,
Speaker 1: and she thought that it would soon be obvious to
Speaker 1: him as well. So for about four months she was
Speaker 1: in a bright, airy ward with a lot of freedom,
Speaker 1: and she felt like she was being treated more like
Speaker 1: a guest than like a patient. In those first months
Speaker 1: in the hospital, Elizabeth wrote a document praising the doctor
Speaker 1: and encouraging him to release her. He ignored it, and
Speaker 1: Elizabeth realized that he did not believe that she was sane,
Speaker 1: so she started actively advocating for herself and her release.
Speaker 1: Her oldest son came to visit her without his father's permission,
Speaker 1: but couldn't secure her release because he was not twenty
Speaker 1: one years old. Friends tried to get a rid of
Speaker 1: habeas corpus, but they were told that because she was married,
Speaker 1: that had to come from her husband. After Elizabeth wrote
Speaker 1: up a second document, which was scathing in its opinions
Speaker 1: of the hospital and its superintendent, she was transferred to
Speaker 1: another ward, a much less nice ward which was home
Speaker 1: to patients whose illnesses just couldn't be treated with fresh
Speaker 1: air and an orderly schedule. She found the conditions they're filthy,
Speaker 1: and its staff cruel, and its patients uncared for. When
Speaker 1: patients had visitors, she would tell their families about cruelty
Speaker 1: she had witnessed in the hospital. She started cleaning the
Speaker 1: entire ward herself and organizing the other patients in protesting
Speaker 1: their conditions. This included an ongoing campaign to destroy ordinary
Speaker 1: hospital property like bed linens and brooms. Elizabeth was eventually
Speaker 1: transferred out of this ward and given a private room
Speaker 1: to keep her from influencing the other patients, and Elizabeth
Speaker 1: met Dorothea Dix. When Dix visited in eighteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth called her quote a Christian although honestly and conscientiously
Speaker 1: wrong in sustaining our present system of insane asylums. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: admired Dix's compassion and her advocacy for the compassionate care
Speaker 1: of asylum patients, but thought she was simply wrong in
Speaker 1: her belief that there needed to be a robust system
Speaker 1: of asylums in the first place. Elizabeth thought most people
Speaker 1: who were committed didn't need to be and that working
Speaker 1: to build more asylums was Dama Jane. Throughout all of this,
Speaker 1: Dr McFarland was updating the Offulist with reports about his
Speaker 1: wife's condition. That Elizabeth's religious views were unchanged, that she
Speaker 1: was unrepentant in her refusal to be submissive to her husband,
Speaker 1: that she was inspiring restlessness and insubordination among the other patients.
Speaker 1: He also told the Offulist that Elizabeth had lost all
Speaker 1: of her marital and maternal instinct, even as Elizabeth's own
Speaker 1: writing reveals that she was really grieving over the separation
Speaker 1: from her children and the strain that all of this
Speaker 1: was putting on them. She was especially distressed at the
Speaker 1: idea that her daughter Libby was going to have to
Speaker 1: bear all the burdens of running this household. During Elizabeth's hospitalization,
Speaker 1: Libby was between the ages of ten and twelve years old.
Speaker 1: In September of eighteen sixty two, Elizabeth was summoned to
Speaker 1: appear before the hospital's board of trustees after months of
Speaker 1: petitioning for release. She read a document that denounced Calvinism,
Speaker 1: explaining her own beliefs and I she refused to raise
Speaker 1: her children according to their father's religious views. Dr McFarland
Speaker 1: had screened this document ahead of time, and it began quote, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: I am accused of teaching my children doctrines ruinous in
Speaker 1: their tendency, and such as alienate them from their father.
Speaker 1: I reply that my teachings and practice both are ruinous
Speaker 1: to Satan's cause and do alienate my children from Satanic influences.
Speaker 1: I teach Christianity, my husband teaches Calvinism. They are antagonistic
Speaker 1: systems and uphold antagonistic authorities. Christianity upholds God's authority, Calvinism
Speaker 1: the devil's authority. But then she went on to Rita's
Speaker 1: second document, one that the doctor had not approved ahead
Speaker 1: of time, in which she accused her husband and the
Speaker 1: doctor of conspiring against her. Then detailed a range of
Speaker 1: injustices and indignities that she had witnessed at the hospital.
Speaker 1: Having done all that, Though she asked them not to
Speaker 1: release her, divorce was out of the question. From Theophilus's
Speaker 1: point of view, Elizabeth did not think that she would
Speaker 1: be safe with him. She also realized that her father
Speaker 1: and brothers did not have the means to support her,
Speaker 1: so she needed to figure out how she might support herself.
Speaker 1: She planned to spend the rest of her time in
Speaker 1: the hospital writing a book. Her husband and her doctor
Speaker 1: had been on the same page about her care until
Speaker 1: this point, and this is where they started to diverge.
Speaker 1: Dr McFarland pressed the trustees to discharge Elizabeth because of
Speaker 1: how much trouble she was causing him. Meanwhile, the awfulist
Speaker 1: pressed them to keep her there because he had no
Speaker 1: other plan to take care of her. After this meeting,
Speaker 1: Dr McFarland told Elizabeth that he would help her get
Speaker 1: her book published, probably because he thought doing so would
Speaker 1: get her out of his hospital faster. But then she
Speaker 1: finished the book and it wasn't something he could support publishing.
Speaker 1: It was disjointed and rambley, and a lot of it
Speaker 1: was focused on his backstory. He told her he wouldn't
Speaker 1: help her after all, and in a desperate effort to
Speaker 1: get him to change his mind, Elizabeth wrote him a
Speaker 1: love letter, a fusive praising him and essentially calling him
Speaker 1: her soul mate. Finally, the hospital trustees gave the awful
Speaker 1: is three months notice that they would be discharging his wife.
Speaker 1: Dr McFarland said this was because she was incurable and
Speaker 1: because of the quote amount of trouble which Mrs Packard
Speaker 1: causes us and the disastrous influence which she exerts onto
Speaker 1: other patients. Elizabeth was released on June eighth, eighteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: and for a time she stayed with a relative. Then
Speaker 1: she went back to Mantino to try to get custody
Speaker 1: of her children. In Elizabeth's account, when she got back
Speaker 1: to Mantino, her husband kept her locked in the nursery
Speaker 1: with the windows nailed shut. In his account, she was
Speaker 1: free to come and go regardless, Elizabeth wrote a letter
Speaker 1: and slipped it under the window to a passer by.
Speaker 1: A friend ultimately got that letter to Judge Charles Starr,
Speaker 1: who secured a writ of habeas corpus. Since Elizabeth was
Speaker 1: no longer institutionalized but was locked in her home this time,
Speaker 1: her husband did not have to be involved. A court
Speaker 1: date was set for trial to determine whether she was
Speaker 1: saying that. Trial started on January twelfth, eighteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: and went on for five days. Unfortunately, we can't read
Speaker 1: testimony from it because there's records have been lost. But
Speaker 1: people did hear from doctors and friends and family members
Speaker 1: and community members, some of whom said Elizabeth was mentally
Speaker 1: ill and others of whom did not. In the end,
Speaker 1: on January eighteenth, eighteen sixty four, the jury ruled that
Speaker 1: she was saying. The awful List said the trial was
Speaker 1: a quote reign of mobocracy, insult, partiality, prejudice injustice, and malignity.
Speaker 1: On the day of the verdict, he packed up their
Speaker 1: minor children and their belongings and went back to Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: This left Elizabeth without her children, with nowhere to live
Speaker 1: and no way to support herself. She sued for divorce,
Speaker 1: but since the awful Ist had already left the state,
Speaker 1: the county clerk said he could not be found, and
Speaker 1: eventually she just let the matter drop. We'll get to
Speaker 1: her life after this, including her years of work to
Speaker 1: make sure the same thing couldn't happen to other women.
Speaker 1: After a sponsor break, after her husband moved back to
Speaker 1: Massachusetts with their youngest children. Elizabeth Packard returned to the
Speaker 1: idea she'd had in the hospital, and that was of
Speaker 1: supporting herself through writing. She started revising material that she
Speaker 1: had started in the hospital. Her first published book was
Speaker 1: called Exposure on board the Atlantic and Pacific Car of
Speaker 1: Emancipation for the Slaves of Old Columbia engineered by the
Speaker 1: Lightning Express or Christianity and Calvinism, compared with an Appeal
Speaker 1: to the Government to emancipate the Slaves of the Marriage Union.
Speaker 1: That was followed by quote edited by a slave now
Speaker 1: imprisoned in Jacksonville Insane Asylum, placed there by her husband
Speaker 1: for thinking and all capital letters, written under the inspection
Speaker 1: of Dr McFarland, Superintendent of Insane Asylum, Jacksonville. She used
Speaker 1: a lot of slavery imagery in her writing. Unsurprisingly it
Speaker 1: was like eighteen sixty three. This was the first of
Speaker 1: seven books and numerous pamphlets that she wrote over the
Speaker 1: next sixteen years, which did turn out to be enough
Speaker 1: for her to support herself. Asylum narratives had become a
Speaker 1: popular genre. These were sensational first person accounts of people
Speaker 1: who had been institutionalized. They were part memoir and part
Speaker 1: expos a intended to resonate with fans of the Gothic
Speaker 1: fiction that was popular at the time. Elizabeth's goal was
Speaker 1: both to support herself and encourage reform to the asylum system.
Speaker 1: We should note that also makes it hard to figure out,
Speaker 1: like exactly what the truth is to the accounts, because
Speaker 1: she was writing them to sell books when very sensational
Speaker 1: accounts were pretty typical, and she was also trying to
Speaker 1: get people to change the law, and then once again,
Speaker 1: very sensational accounts could work toward that end. Also, that
Speaker 1: makes a little tricky to figure out, like exactly what
Speaker 1: the details were. But that's just some background. She also
Speaker 1: got to work lobbying legislators to pass laws to keep
Speaker 1: what had happened to her from happening to other women.
Speaker 1: She often drafted these bills herself and lobbied lawmakers personally
Speaker 1: to get them introduced and past. Some of her bills
Speaker 1: were focused on the rights of married women, like the
Speaker 1: right for a woman to have full custody of her
Speaker 1: children after a divorce, rather than her husband just having
Speaker 1: that custody by default. There was also the right for
Speaker 1: a married woman to keep all the money she earned
Speaker 1: rather than it going to her husband again by default.
Speaker 1: Both of these were issues that directly affected her. When
Speaker 1: her husband had left with her children, she had no recourse,
Speaker 1: and when she started publishing books, she wanted to be
Speaker 1: able to keep all the money she earned. She also
Speaker 1: worked on bills relating to patient rights. She had observed
Speaker 1: that a person accused of a crime was guaranteed rights
Speaker 1: to counsel and do process, but in most states, a
Speaker 1: person who had a mental illness had none of that
Speaker 1: and might be committed without any kind of hearing. This
Speaker 1: also meant that people who weren't mentally ill could be
Speaker 1: wrongly committed, so she lobbied for bills that required a
Speaker 1: trial before a person was committed to an asylum or hospital.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth also drafted bills relating to the rights of patients
Speaker 1: and mental hospitals. When she was hospitalized, the mail was
Speaker 1: often censored or withheld from patients, so she drafted bills
Speaker 1: that guaranteed patients free and uncensored access to their mail.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty five, following her advocacy, Illinois passed a
Speaker 1: personal liberty bill requiring a trial for any person being committed,
Speaker 1: whether they were married or not, ending the ability for
Speaker 1: husbands to have their wives committed without a trial. The
Speaker 1: legislature passed this unanimously. A later amendment made this retroactive,
Speaker 1: so that people who had been admitted before eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: five were still entitled to a trial. Not long after,
Speaker 1: an investigating committee was convened to examine allegations of abuse
Speaker 1: at the Illinois Hospital for the Insane, including Elizabeth's accounts.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth was called to testify, with questioning going on for
Speaker 1: about six hours. At the very end of that day,
Speaker 1: that love letter that she had written to Dr McFarland
Speaker 1: was introduced as evidence to try to undermine her believability.
Speaker 1: Because she had been on the stand for so long,
Speaker 1: the commission allowed her to respond to that the next day,
Speaker 1: and when she did, she explained what we said earlier,
Speaker 1: that it had been a desperate effort to flatter him
Speaker 1: and get him to help her publish her book. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the committee found numerous examples of cruelty toward patients at
Speaker 1: the hospital, as well as evidence that McFarland had misclassified
Speaker 1: patients housing people with minor treatable conditions with patients who
Speaker 1: were disruptive and violent. Although the commission recommended that McFarland
Speaker 1: be dismissed, the city of Jacksonville and the hospital's board
Speaker 1: of trustees stood by him. He eventually resigned on November
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty eight, while continuing to have a career in
Speaker 1: mental health. Elizabeth kept up her lobbying through all of this,
Speaker 1: and through a very bitter, very public three way dispute
Speaker 1: among herself, her husband, and her former doctor. Every time
Speaker 1: she proposed new legislation, McFarland publicly raised questions about her
Speaker 1: mental health. The Offulis was also publicly disparaging of her,
Speaker 1: and she of him. This whole situation was unsurprisingly extremely
Speaker 1: hard on their children. When the Afulis first had Elizabeth's institutionalized,
Speaker 1: the children mostly sided with her. Then, after three years
Speaker 1: with their father, they believed that he had been right
Speaker 1: about their mother's mental state. Sometime after being reunited with her,
Speaker 1: most of them supported her side of the story again,
Speaker 1: and this went back and forth repeatedly as they were
Speaker 1: with one parent or the other, or had their own
Speaker 1: issues going on with their personal lives and their relationships
Speaker 1: to the rest of the family. The increasingly acrimonious relationship
Speaker 1: between Elizabeth and the Aflis affected them as well. Libby
Speaker 1: Packard in particular struggled with her own mental health and
Speaker 1: possibly an eating disorder for much of her life, almost
Speaker 1: certainly exacerbated by their stressful and chaotic family situation. She
Speaker 1: ultimately died in the Illinois Eastern Hospital for the Insane
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty nine. Elizabeth got a home in Chicago,
Speaker 1: where her oldest children already lived. Soon after, she learned
Speaker 1: that Massachusetts had passed a law giving mothers equal rights
Speaker 1: to custody. She filed a petition to seek custody of
Speaker 1: her three youngest children, and the awfulist didn't contest it.
Speaker 1: By this point, he really didn't have a good way
Speaker 1: to support himself or the children. He could not really
Speaker 1: find a congregation for his very conservative Calvinism anymore, and
Speaker 1: in light of Elizabeth's books and varied public testimony and
Speaker 1: ongoing advocacy, a lot of people believed that he had
Speaker 1: maliciously imprisoned his wife and did not, as a result,
Speaker 1: want him to be their preacher. Elizabeth, for her part,
Speaker 1: lived a mostly comfortable life in Chicago until the Great
Speaker 1: Chicago Fire, spending more time with her children and less
Speaker 1: on her bills and advocacy. The fire destroyed her stock
Speaker 1: of books and the plates used to print them, which
Speaker 1: temporarily left her without a way to earn a living.
Speaker 1: She was eventually able to get set up with a
Speaker 1: new publisher in New York, but then another fire destroyed
Speaker 1: much of her stock there as well. This time she
Speaker 1: was insured, though, so she had some money to live
Speaker 1: on while she started again. By eighteen seventy two, she
Speaker 1: only had one child left at home, and she started
Speaker 1: more aggressively taking up these causes, traveling from state to
Speaker 1: state advocating for bills to protect patient rights and the
Speaker 1: rights of married women. Iowa passed legislation known as Packard's
Speaker 1: Law that year. This law established visiting committees, which had
Speaker 1: to include at least one woman, to inspect asylums in
Speaker 1: that state. These committees were authorized to fire abusive employees.
Speaker 1: Their contact information had to be posted in every word
Speaker 1: of the hospital, and hospitals were also required to inform
Speaker 1: patients of their right to contact the committee about their concerns.
Speaker 1: This law also outlawed the censorship or the withholding of
Speaker 1: patients mail, and it required a coroner's inquest if a
Speaker 1: patient mysteriously died. This bill faced a lot of resistance
Speaker 1: from Iowa's hospitals and from the Association of Medical Superintendence
Speaker 1: of American Institutions for the Insane. As Elizabeth started campaigning
Speaker 1: state by state to try to get similar measures passed elsewhere,
Speaker 1: the A M S A I I embarked on what
Speaker 1: it called the Project of the Law to try to
Speaker 1: block as many of these bills as they could. They
Speaker 1: thought these bills made it harder for the hospitals to
Speaker 1: subdue patients, and they worried about how their work was
Speaker 1: damaging the reputation of the entire field. Yeah, the idea
Speaker 1: that the M A M. S AI I thought that
Speaker 1: patients needed to be subdued caused Elizabeth Packard a great
Speaker 1: amount of outrage. She campaigned through New York and New
Speaker 1: England and then on to other parts of the country,
Speaker 1: facing character assassination by the A M. S AI and
Speaker 1: by her husband everywhere she went. In spite of that,
Speaker 1: she tended to be very effective. I mean, she wasn't
Speaker 1: always successful. She introduced plenty of bills that didn't ultimately
Speaker 1: get passed, but in the words of a Massachusetts legislator quote,
Speaker 1: we passed the bill because we could not do otherwise.
Speaker 1: For Mrs Packard was so very persistent, we could not
Speaker 1: bluff her off. She also went to Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: And lobbied President Ulysses S. Grant for a bill to
Speaker 1: protect the right of patients in asylums to get their
Speaker 1: mail without censorship or surveillance. Although Grant agreed that such
Speaker 1: a law was needed, that bill did not ultimately pass.
Speaker 1: By the end of Elizabeth Packard's life, more than thirty
Speaker 1: bills had been passed to protect the rights of married
Speaker 1: women or of psychiatric patients. Some of these came from
Speaker 1: her direct advocacy, and others came from the widespread nudes
Speaker 1: coverage of her work and her story. In eighteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: Mary Todd Lincoln went through a widely publicized insanity trial.
Speaker 1: One of the doctors who examined her was Dr McFarland,
Speaker 1: and many reports noted that the laws governing her trial
Speaker 1: were very strict because of Elizabeth Packard's advocacy. At the
Speaker 1: same time, this trial revealed that it was still possible
Speaker 1: for someone to skirt the law to have someone else committed.
Speaker 1: Mary Todd Lincoln's son informed her of the upcoming trial
Speaker 1: at the last minute, and then appointed an attorney who
Speaker 1: was in favor of committing her to represent her. In
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy eight, Elizabeth Packard published The Great Drama, which
Speaker 1: was four volumes long, that is sixteen hundred pages. It
Speaker 1: was written during her last month in the asylum, and
Speaker 1: it's very scattered and chaotic. I mean, we talked about
Speaker 1: Dr McFarland saying that he couldn't help her get it published.
Speaker 1: It was full of references to spiritualism and personal visions
Speaker 1: that she had connected to the idea of spiritualism. These
Speaker 1: were things that she had distanced herself from an earlier
Speaker 1: published writing. It's clear from the text itself that being
Speaker 1: in the asylum for three years had taken a mental
Speaker 1: and emotional toll on her, But it also seems like
Speaker 1: at this point she had established enough of her name
Speaker 1: for herself that she didn't think it was gonna hurt
Speaker 1: her if she made all of these thoughts public. The
Speaker 1: Awful Ist Packard died in eighteen eighty five, and then
Speaker 1: Andrew McFarland died in November of eight Elizabeth's writing doesn't
Speaker 1: reveal her thoughts or feelings about either of these deaths.
Speaker 1: She was, by all appearances, continuing to lobby for bills
Speaker 1: to protect women and people with mental illness throughout all
Speaker 1: of it. Elizabeth Packard died on July at the age
Speaker 1: of eighty after surgery on a strangulated hernia. Her legacy
Speaker 1: is a little bit complicated. It's clear that in her
Speaker 1: own mind she was mentally well for all of her
Speaker 1: adult life. Some of her writing, though, is chaotic and
Speaker 1: disordered in a way that it suggests she might have
Speaker 1: had some kind of underlying condition, although not necessarily one
Speaker 1: that would have required her to be hospitalized against her will.
Speaker 1: Or this could have been totally situational, just stemming from
Speaker 1: this combination of social expectations and her deteriorating relationship with
Speaker 1: her husband, and the hospitalization itself, and just all the
Speaker 1: stress that came along with all of that. And there
Speaker 1: are also questions about whether the laws she was drafting
Speaker 1: really were what was best for patients. It is clear
Speaker 1: that before she lived, it was far too easy for
Speaker 1: people to have family members committed, especial lee for husbands
Speaker 1: to commit their wives. But what's less clear is whether
Speaker 1: a requirement for a jury trial is the best way
Speaker 1: to protect a person's rights. Many of the laws that
Speaker 1: Packard worked on were later revised to protect patient privacy
Speaker 1: during these trials, or to require some other assessment process
Speaker 1: rather than a trial before being admitted to an impatient facility. Regardless,
Speaker 1: though the laws definitely offered more protection than had existed before,
Speaker 1: whether it's ultimately true that those were the right protections
Speaker 1: or not. Yeah, that's a stressful one because you find
Speaker 1: yourself getting raged up about people involved in Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's like when we talked about all the moral
Speaker 1: treatment stuff in Part one, Like, I've dealt with anxiety
Speaker 1: for a lot of my life, and there have definitely
Speaker 1: been times when, like the situation I was in was
Speaker 1: exacerbating that, and the idea of being in an airy
Speaker 1: ward with lots of fresh air and a predictable routine,
Speaker 1: like that's sounds amazing, But I wouldn't have come out
Speaker 1: of that experience with the underlying anxiety addressed at all. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I mean it's it's a continually evolving field
Speaker 1: as well, like the study of mental health, So who
Speaker 1: knows where we'll be in fifty years and if we'll
Speaker 1: look back on how we address various things in today's
Speaker 1: time looks completely archaic and not sufficient in its own right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally got some listener mail I do it is from Sophie.
Speaker 1: Sophie says Hi, Tracy and Holly. I just finished listening
Speaker 1: to your episode about Julia Sand and Chester Arthur, and
Speaker 1: it brought up a lot of good memories for me.
Speaker 1: I got my undergraduate degree and ended up minoring in
Speaker 1: theater arts from the time I spent playwriting and stage managing.
Speaker 1: My first experience in the theater department was as an
Speaker 1: assistant stage manager for a play about Julia Sand. It
Speaker 1: was called Great Emergencies, and it was written by one
Speaker 1: of the graduate student playwrights, Sean de Mayor. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how to say that person's name. I'm sorry if
Speaker 1: I have banged it. The play incorporated a lot of
Speaker 1: Julia's letters into the dialogue, at times staging her as
Speaker 1: sitting at the table with President Arthur's advisers to show
Speaker 1: the influence her advice had on his decisions. The play
Speaker 1: also dramatized Arthur's relationship and ultimate falling out with Roscoe
Speaker 1: Conkling in the Stalwarts, and included a hilariously awkward portrayal
Speaker 1: of the day Arthur visited Sand's home. Apparently, she was
Speaker 1: so caught off guard that her first instinct was to
Speaker 1: try to hide behind the curtains. I remember finding it
Speaker 1: amusing how similar the political issues of the time were
Speaker 1: to us today, extreme partisan politics, racist immigration policies. It's
Speaker 1: also impossible to avoid admiring Sand for taking the initiative
Speaker 1: and using her voice as a writer and political junkie,
Speaker 1: as you put it, to make a difference in the
Speaker 1: world when she had no way of knowing that anything
Speaker 1: would come of it. The play ended on a rather
Speaker 1: sad note, with an imaginary conversation between Sand and Arthur's ghost,
Speaker 1: who tells her that he's going to have all of
Speaker 1: his papers burned, leaving her with the impression that her
Speaker 1: letters will be burned with them, so nobody will ever
Speaker 1: know who she was or what she did. I can
Speaker 1: only assume that her ghost would be pleased to know
Speaker 1: that through this podcast, you were uplifting her and so
Speaker 1: many other forgotten voices in history. Hopefully these stories will
Speaker 1: inspire others to put their voices to use to even
Speaker 1: when it seems the world will not listen. Keep doing
Speaker 1: what you're doing best, Sophie Thank you so much Sophie
Speaker 1: for this awesome letter. I love hearing about this play
Speaker 1: as a former theater kid especially, and I also love
Speaker 1: Julius san Still if you would like to write to
Speaker 1: us about this or any other podcasts, where a history
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff Works dot com and then we're
Speaker 1: all over social media at miss in History. That is
Speaker 1: where you will find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can come to our website, which is missed in
Speaker 1: History dot com. You can look at where it says
Speaker 1: live shows and see our upcoming live shows over this summer.
Speaker 1: You can also find a searchable archive of every episode
Speaker 1: ever and show notes for the podcast that Holly and
Speaker 1: I have worked on. And you can subscribe to our
Speaker 1: show on Apple podcasts, that I heart rate you app
Speaker 1: and wherever else you find your podcasts. Stuff you Missed
Speaker 1: in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio's
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit I heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.