0:01

Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class,

0:03

the production of I Heart Radios How Stuff

0:05

Works. Hello,

0:12

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy Vie

0:14

Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.

0:16

This is part two of our podcast

0:18

on Packard Versus Packard, which

0:22

is when the awfulist Packard

0:24

had his wife Elizabeth

0:26

institutionalized because

0:28

in his words, she was insane. That

0:31

was not her opinion of it at all. Part

0:34

one we talked about the early lives of the two

0:36

of them and how they had an apparently

0:38

happy and functional marriage for about

0:41

fifteen years that crumbled

0:43

and became abusive and then he, as

0:45

I just said, had her involuntarily

0:47

committed. Today, we are going to pick

0:49

up with Elizabeth's time in this

0:51

hospital. First, we're gonna set a

0:54

little context about the state of mental

0:56

health treatment in the nineteenth century. Some

0:58

of that's really horrifying. Some of

1:00

this language, like we wouldn't

1:03

necessarily throw around the word insane

1:05

to describe a person today.

1:08

Things like that, uh, super

1:10

common language at the time. And um,

1:13

you can probably understand

1:16

this episode without having heard part one.

1:18

Um, but part one is really a

1:21

lot of the detail of how we got

1:23

to this point. So

1:26

before the late eighteenth and early nineteenth

1:28

century, people with serious mental health

1:30

illnesses in the United States and Europe

1:33

were generally placed into facilities

1:35

commonly called lunatic asylums, and

1:37

these asylums were not about treatment. They

1:40

were essentially prisons. Patients

1:42

were often put into restraints and left

1:45

there with little in the way of comfort or

1:47

care, and sometimes they were actively

1:49

abused by the staff or others living in

1:51

the facility, and some of these asylums

1:53

were also tourist attractions, with

1:56

visitors coming to gawk at the patients,

1:58

and the United States that started to shift in

2:00

the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen

2:03

hundreds. The nation's first private

2:05

mental hospital was the Asylum for the

2:07

Relief of Persons Deprived of the

2:09

Use of their Reason, also known as the Friends

2:12

Hospital, which was opened by Quakers

2:14

in eighteen seventeen. The Friends

2:16

Hospital focused on the idea of moral

2:18

treatment, which became the standard of care

2:21

and most mental hospitals by the middle of the nineteenth

2:23

century. The basic idea had been put

2:25

into practice by physician William Took

2:28

at an asylum called The Retreat in York,

2:30

England, which opened in seventeen ninety six.

2:33

Over the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen

2:35

hundreds, physicians in Britain and France

2:38

continued to refine the retreats methods.

2:41

Moral treatment focused on the idea that

2:43

an asylum should treat its patients humanely,

2:46

with the institution acting almost like a stern

2:49

and paternalistic guardian. Unlike

2:51

these earlier lunatic asylums,

2:53

patients weren't kept in restraints. They

2:55

were expected to live in a clean, orderly

2:58

and polite way and a strict

3:00

and disciplined environment. Patients

3:03

were expected to do some chores around the building

3:05

or the grounds on a regular schedule to give

3:07

them a sense of purpose and to keep them on this predictable

3:10

daily cycle. Doctors might

3:12

also prescribe treatments along a more

3:14

medical model, including drugs, hydrotherapy,

3:17

exercise, things like that. In a lot

3:19

of ways, this was a big step forward from

3:21

what was common in lunatic asylums,

3:24

but it turned out to be hard to carry out

3:26

in practice. Moral treatment

3:28

was only helpful for a relatively small

3:30

number of patients. A person who

3:32

was mostly exhausted and stressed and

3:34

needed time to recuperate might

3:37

leave the hospital feeling like their treatment had

3:39

cured them. But for many mental

3:41

illnesses this just was not the case. A

3:43

patient with schizophrenia or bipolar

3:45

disorder, or depression or any number

3:48

of other mental illnesses might be helped

3:50

to a degree by the predictable daily routine

3:52

in a calm and ordered setting, but

3:54

moral treatment really didn't address the illness

3:57

itself. Also, many of the people

3:59

who wound up in these hospitals didn't have a

4:01

mental illness. The field of psychiatry

4:04

was really in its infancy without a clear

4:06

sense of what was or wasn't a mental

4:09

illness. So people with drug and alcohol

4:11

addictions, developmental disabilities,

4:13

and epilepsy, all kinds of other conditions

4:16

wound up in mental hospitals, and

4:18

so did people who just weren't behaving as

4:20

their families or society expected

4:22

them to. There weren't many of these private

4:25

hospitals at first. They were mostly

4:27

in more affluent areas and available to

4:29

wealthier people, so most

4:31

people with mental illnesses that kept

4:33

them from being able to function in society

4:36

were kept out of sight at home, or

4:38

if their families couldn't or wouldn't care

4:40

for them, they wound up in alms houses

4:43

or even prisons. Care Typically

4:45

was not good in any of these scenarios.

4:48

People caring for family members at home

4:50

might have good and loving intentions,

4:53

but there was so much stigma surrounding

4:55

mental illness and ideas that

4:57

they were brought on by things like possession,

5:00

and a lot of different explanations

5:02

for mental illnesses that didn't amount

5:04

to an illness, um that

5:07

people caring for family members were just as

5:09

likely to be abusive or neglectful. Prisons

5:12

and alms houses were brutal and degrading

5:14

in general, and then on top of that, they just were

5:16

not equipped to handle the behaviors

5:18

that came along with untreated mental illnesses.

5:21

This all started to shift in the eighteen forties

5:24

and fifties as reformers like Dorothea

5:26

Dix advocated for state funded asylums

5:29

and better care within those asylums.

5:32

Most of these newly built asylums followed

5:34

the moral care model, and some existing

5:36

state hospitals began using it as well.

5:39

New asylum buildings were typically designed

5:41

according to the Kirkbride Plan, developed

5:43

by Dr Thomas Story Kirkbride. They

5:46

were divided into symmetrical wings and

5:48

wards with lots of fresh air and natural

5:50

light. Reformers also advocated

5:53

for the idea that people with mental illnesses

5:55

needed to be cared for rather than

5:57

simply locked away. But it turned

6:00

out that implementing the moral care model

6:02

at all these newly open hospitals could

6:04

be really difficult. As the public

6:07

started to think of mental illness as something that

6:09

required treatment at a hospital, admissions

6:11

skyrocketed in hospitals quickly became

6:14

overcrowded. They went from clean

6:16

and orderly and calm to unsanitary.

6:19

Understaffed, and chaotic waves

6:21

of immigration to the United States meant that sometimes

6:23

patients didn't speak the same language as the doctors

6:26

of the staff. Staff turnover

6:28

tended to be very high, and hospitals

6:30

were often run by boards of trustees who

6:32

might be more focused on politics than on

6:34

care. Some of these boards also had

6:36

a reputation for being corrupt, and

6:39

even though the medical field was beginning to

6:41

think of mental illness as a treatable illness

6:44

rather than a personal moral failing, there

6:46

was still a lot of stigma and a perception

6:48

that it was up to patients to get better.

6:51

If a patient wasn't improving, doctors

6:53

and staff often concluded that they weren't trying,

6:56

or that they were willfully refusing to get

6:58

better. So it was common

7:00

for patients to be cared for by undertrained,

7:03

frustrated staff who thought that

7:05

these people in their care were simply being obstinate.

7:08

Abuse and cruelty continued to be

7:10

commonplace, even in hospitals that were

7:12

theoretically following the moral treatment

7:14

model. Are also, of course, a number

7:16

of medical treatments that were going on that were

7:19

super questionable by today's standards.

7:22

This is a state of mental health care in the United States.

7:24

When Elizabeth Packard was hospitalized, it

7:26

was improving over what it had been,

7:28

but it still had a really long way to go.

7:31

We will get to her time in the hospital after a

7:33

sponsor break.

7:41

When Elizabeth Packard was admitted at

7:43

the Illinois State Asylum and Hospital for

7:45

the Insane, it's superintendent

7:47

was Dr Andrew McFarland of New

7:50

Hampshire. He was at the top of

7:52

his field. He was part of the first wave

7:54

of people to join the Association of

7:56

Medical Superintendence of American

7:58

Institutions for the Same or

8:00

the a M s a i I, which

8:03

was a precursor to the American Psychiatric

8:05

Association. In eighteen sixty

8:07

he was its president. He had

8:09

tried to hand in his resignation, citing

8:11

a serious illness in the family, and when he

8:13

tried to do that, the association had declined

8:16

Elizabeth's admission. Note read quote

8:18

June eighteen sixty

8:20

Elizabeth P. Packard, Kankakee

8:23

County, married, aged forty four,

8:25

native of Massachusetts in this state

8:27

three years slightly insane

8:29

for two years. Was in Wooster

8:32

Hospital twenty five years ago. Present

8:34

attack more decided the past four months.

8:36

Supposed cause is excessive application

8:39

of body and mind. Reverend Theophilist

8:42

Packard McFarland's diagnosis

8:44

was moral insanity with monomania.

8:48

Moral insanity was an accepted diagnosis

8:50

through most of the nineteenth century. In eighteen

8:52

thirty five, R. J. C. Pritcher described

8:55

it this way quote, there is a form of mental

8:57

derangement in which the intellectual

8:59

facult tease are uninjured, while the disorder

9:01

is manifested principally or alone

9:04

in the state of feelings, temper, or

9:06

habits. The moral principles

9:08

of the mind are depraved or perverted,

9:11

the power of self government is lost

9:13

or greatly impaired, and the individual

9:15

is incapable of conducting himself with decency

9:18

and propriety in the business of life.

9:20

Monomania was another nineteenth century

9:23

diagnosis, and as its name suggests,

9:25

it was a mania connected to one specific

9:28

thing, and in Elizabeth's case, that

9:30

was religion. Dr McFarland seems

9:33

to have genuinely believed that Elizabeth was

9:35

mentally ill and that his diagnosis was the correct

9:37

one. Her husband, too, seems

9:39

to have genuinely thought that his wife was,

9:42

in his word, insane. For

9:44

her part, Elizabeth believed these two

9:46

men were conspiring to imprison her

9:49

for her religious views and her refusal

9:51

to be totally subservient to her husband.

9:54

Meanwhile, both her doctor and her

9:56

husband believed that these religious

9:58

views and her lack of subser armance

10:00

were evidence of her mental illness. Elizabeth

10:03

described it this way, quote in

10:05

my first struggle after my independence,

10:07

I lost my personal liberty sad

10:10

beginning, had it not been better

10:12

for me to submit to oppression and spiritual

10:14

bondage rather than have attempted to break

10:16

the fetters of marital and religious despotism.

10:20

No, I cannot feel that I have done either

10:22

for myself for others the least

10:24

wrong in the course I have thus far

10:26

taken. Therefore, I have no recantations

10:29

to make, and can give no pledge of further

10:31

subjection to either of these powers, where

10:34

their claims demand the surrender of my

10:36

conscience to their dictation. And

10:38

this is what they call my insanity, and for

10:40

which I was sent to the asylum to be cured.

10:43

I think it will be a long time before this cure

10:45

will be affected. At the start of her hospitalization,

10:48

Elizabeth thought that Dr McFarland

10:50

already believes her to be saying, or that

10:53

he would come around that opinion in short

10:55

order. It was very obvious to her

10:57

that she was saying, and she thought that it

11:00

would soon be obvious to him as well. So

11:02

for about four months she was in a bright, airy

11:04

ward with a lot of freedom, and she felt like she was

11:06

being treated more like a guest than

11:08

like a patient. In those first months

11:10

in the hospital, Elizabeth wrote a document

11:13

praising the doctor and encouraging him to

11:15

release her. He ignored

11:17

it, and Elizabeth realized that he

11:19

did not believe that she was sane,

11:22

so she started actively advocating

11:24

for herself and her release. Her

11:26

oldest son came to visit her without

11:28

his father's permission, but couldn't secure

11:30

her release because he was not twenty one years

11:33

old. Friends tried to

11:35

get a rid of habeas corpus, but they

11:37

were told that because she was married, that had

11:39

to come from her husband. After Elizabeth

11:42

wrote up a second document, which was scathing

11:44

in its opinions of the hospital and its superintendent,

11:47

she was transferred to another ward,

11:50

a much less nice ward which

11:52

was home to patients whose illnesses just couldn't

11:54

be treated with fresh air and an orderly schedule.

11:57

She found the conditions they're filthy,

12:00

and its staff cruel, and its patients

12:02

uncared for. When patients had visitors,

12:04

she would tell their families about cruelty

12:07

she had witnessed in the hospital. She

12:09

started cleaning the entire ward herself

12:11

and organizing the other patients in protesting

12:14

their conditions. This included

12:16

an ongoing campaign to destroy ordinary

12:18

hospital property like bed linens and

12:21

brooms. Elizabeth was eventually

12:23

transferred out of this ward and given a

12:25

private room to keep her from influencing

12:27

the other patients, and Elizabeth met

12:30

Dorothea Dix. When Dix visited in eighteen

12:32

sixty one, Elizabeth called

12:34

her quote a Christian although honestly

12:36

and conscientiously wrong in sustaining

12:39

our present system of insane asylums.

12:42

Elizabeth admired Dix's compassion

12:44

and her advocacy for the compassionate care of

12:46

asylum patients, but thought she

12:48

was simply wrong in her belief that there needed

12:50

to be a robust system of asylums

12:52

in the first place. Elizabeth

12:54

thought most people who were committed didn't

12:56

need to be and that working to build more

12:58

asylums was Dama Jane. Throughout

13:01

all of this, Dr McFarland was updating

13:03

the Offulist with reports about his wife's

13:05

condition. That Elizabeth's religious

13:07

views were unchanged, that she was unrepentant

13:10

in her refusal to be submissive to her

13:12

husband, that she was inspiring restlessness

13:15

and insubordination among the other patients.

13:18

He also told the Offulist that Elizabeth had

13:20

lost all of her marital and maternal

13:23

instinct, even as Elizabeth's own

13:25

writing reveals that she was really grieving

13:27

over the separation from her children and

13:29

the strain that all of this was putting on them.

13:32

She was especially distressed at the

13:34

idea that her daughter Libby was going to

13:36

have to bear all the burdens of running

13:38

this household. During

13:41

Elizabeth's hospitalization, Libby

13:44

was between the ages of ten and twelve years old.

13:46

In September of eighteen sixty two,

13:48

Elizabeth was summoned to appear before

13:50

the hospital's board of trustees after

13:53

months of petitioning for release. She

13:56

read a document that denounced Calvinism,

13:58

explaining her own beliefs and I she refused

14:00

to raise her children according to their father's

14:02

religious views. Dr

14:04

McFarland had screened this document ahead

14:07

of time, and it began quote, gentlemen, I

14:09

am accused of teaching my children doctrines

14:12

ruinous in their tendency, and such

14:14

as alienate them from their father. I

14:17

reply that my teachings and practice

14:19

both are ruinous to Satan's cause

14:21

and do alienate my children from Satanic

14:23

influences. I teach Christianity,

14:26

my husband teaches Calvinism.

14:29

They are antagonistic systems and uphold

14:31

antagonistic authorities. Christianity

14:34

upholds God's authority, Calvinism

14:36

the devil's authority. But then she

14:39

went on to Rita's second document, one that

14:41

the doctor had not approved ahead of time,

14:43

in which she accused her husband and the doctor

14:45

of conspiring against her. Then detailed

14:47

a range of injustices and indignities

14:50

that she had witnessed at the hospital. Having

14:52

done all that, Though she asked them not to

14:55

release her, divorce was out

14:57

of the question. From Theophilus's point of view,

15:00

Elizabeth did not think that she would be safe

15:02

with him. She also realized

15:04

that her father and brothers did not have the means

15:06

to support her, so she needed to figure

15:08

out how she might support herself.

15:11

She planned to spend the rest of her time in the hospital

15:14

writing a book. Her husband and

15:16

her doctor had been on the same page about

15:18

her care until this point, and this is where they started

15:20

to diverge. Dr McFarland pressed

15:22

the trustees to discharge Elizabeth

15:25

because of how much trouble she was causing

15:27

him. Meanwhile, the awfulist pressed

15:29

them to keep her there because he had

15:31

no other plan to take care of her. After

15:34

this meeting, Dr McFarland told

15:36

Elizabeth that he would help her get her book published,

15:39

probably because he thought doing so would get

15:41

her out of his hospital faster. But

15:43

then she finished the book and it wasn't

15:45

something he could support publishing. It was

15:47

disjointed and rambley, and a lot of it

15:50

was focused on his backstory.

15:52

He told her he wouldn't help her after all, and

15:54

in a desperate effort to get him to change his mind,

15:57

Elizabeth wrote him a love letter, a fusive

16:00

praising him and essentially calling

16:02

him her soul mate. Finally, the hospital

16:04

trustees gave the awful is three months

16:07

notice that they would be discharging his wife.

16:09

Dr McFarland said this was because she

16:12

was incurable and because of the quote

16:14

amount of trouble which Mrs Packard

16:16

causes us and the disastrous influence

16:18

which she exerts onto other patients. Elizabeth

16:21

was released on June eighth, eighteen sixty

16:24

three, and for a time she stayed with a relative.

16:26

Then she went back to Mantino to try

16:28

to get custody of her children. In Elizabeth's

16:31

account, when she got back to Mantino,

16:33

her husband kept her locked in the nursery

16:35

with the windows nailed shut. In

16:38

his account, she was free to come and go regardless,

16:41

Elizabeth wrote a letter and slipped it under

16:43

the window to a passer by.

16:45

A friend ultimately got that letter to

16:47

Judge Charles Starr, who secured a writ

16:49

of habeas corpus. Since Elizabeth

16:52

was no longer institutionalized but was

16:54

locked in her home this time,

16:56

her husband did not have to be involved. A

16:58

court date was set for trial to determine

17:01

whether she was saying that. Trial

17:03

started on January twelfth, eighteen sixty

17:05

four, and went on for five days. Unfortunately,

17:08

we can't read testimony from it because there's records

17:11

have been lost. But people did hear from

17:13

doctors and friends and family members

17:15

and community members, some of whom said

17:17

Elizabeth was mentally ill and others

17:19

of whom did not. In the end, on

17:22

January eighteenth, eighteen sixty four, the jury

17:24

ruled that she was saying. The awful

17:26

List said the trial was a quote reign of

17:28

mobocracy, insult, partiality,

17:31

prejudice injustice, and malignity.

17:34

On the day of the verdict, he packed up their minor

17:36

children and their belongings and went back to

17:38

Massachusetts. This left

17:40

Elizabeth without her children, with nowhere

17:43

to live and no way to support herself.

17:46

She sued for divorce, but since the awful

17:48

Ist had already left the state, the county

17:50

clerk said he could not be found, and eventually

17:52

she just let the matter drop. We'll get

17:55

to her life after this, including her years

17:57

of work to make sure the same thing couldn't happen

17:59

to other women. After a sponsor break,

18:08

after her husband moved back to Massachusetts

18:10

with their youngest children. Elizabeth

18:12

Packard returned to the idea she'd had in

18:14

the hospital, and that was of supporting herself

18:17

through writing. She started revising

18:19

material that she had started in the hospital.

18:22

Her first published book was called

18:24

Exposure on board the Atlantic and Pacific

18:26

Car of Emancipation for the Slaves of Old

18:28

Columbia engineered by the Lightning

18:31

Express or Christianity and Calvinism,

18:33

compared with an Appeal to the Government

18:35

to emancipate the Slaves of the Marriage Union.

18:38

That was followed by quote edited by

18:40

a slave now imprisoned in Jacksonville

18:42

Insane Asylum, placed there by her husband

18:44

for thinking and all capital letters,

18:47

written under the inspection of Dr McFarland,

18:50

Superintendent of Insane Asylum, Jacksonville.

18:52

She used a lot of slavery imagery

18:55

in her writing. Unsurprisingly

18:57

it was like eighteen sixty three. This

19:00

was the first of seven books and numerous pamphlets

19:02

that she wrote over the next sixteen years,

19:05

which did turn out to be enough for her to

19:07

support herself. Asylum

19:09

narratives had become a popular genre.

19:12

These were sensational first person accounts

19:14

of people who had been institutionalized.

19:17

They were part memoir and part expos

19:19

a intended to resonate with fans

19:21

of the Gothic fiction that was popular at the time.

19:24

Elizabeth's goal was both to support

19:26

herself and encourage reform to

19:29

the asylum system. We should note

19:31

that also makes it hard to figure out, like exactly

19:33

what the truth is to the accounts, because she

19:35

was writing them to sell books when

19:38

very sensational accounts were pretty

19:41

typical, and she was also trying

19:43

to get people to change the law, and then

19:45

once again, very sensational accounts could

19:47

work toward that end. Also, that makes

19:49

a little tricky to figure out, like exactly what

19:52

the details were. But that's just some

19:54

background. She also got

19:56

to work lobbying legislators to pass

19:59

laws to keep what had happened to

20:01

her from happening to other women. She

20:03

often drafted these bills herself

20:05

and lobbied lawmakers personally to get

20:07

them introduced and past. Some of her

20:09

bills were focused on the rights of married women, like

20:12

the right for a woman to have full custody

20:14

of her children after a divorce, rather than her

20:16

husband just having that custody by default. There

20:19

was also the right for a married woman to

20:21

keep all the money she earned rather than

20:23

it going to her husband again by default.

20:26

Both of these were issues that directly

20:28

affected her. When her husband had

20:30

left with her children, she had no recourse,

20:32

and when she started publishing books, she wanted

20:35

to be able to keep all the money she earned. She

20:37

also worked on bills relating to patient rights.

20:40

She had observed that a person accused of a crime

20:42

was guaranteed rights to counsel and do process,

20:45

but in most states, a person who had a mental

20:47

illness had none of that and might be committed

20:50

without any kind of hearing. This

20:52

also meant that people who weren't mentally ill

20:54

could be wrongly committed, so she lobbied

20:57

for bills that required a trial before a person

20:59

was committed to an asylum or hospital.

21:01

Elizabeth also drafted bills relating

21:04

to the rights of patients and mental hospitals.

21:06

When she was hospitalized, the mail

21:08

was often censored or withheld from

21:10

patients, so she drafted bills that guaranteed

21:13

patients free and uncensored access

21:16

to their mail. In eighteen sixty five,

21:18

following her advocacy, Illinois passed

21:20

a personal liberty bill requiring a trial

21:22

for any person being committed, whether

21:24

they were married or not, ending the ability

21:27

for husbands to have their wives committed without

21:29

a trial. The legislature

21:31

passed this unanimously. A

21:33

later amendment made this retroactive,

21:35

so that people who had been admitted before eighteen

21:38

sixty five were still entitled

21:40

to a trial. Not long after, an

21:42

investigating committee was convened to examine

21:45

allegations of abuse at the Illinois

21:47

Hospital for the Insane, including Elizabeth's

21:50

accounts. Elizabeth was called to testify,

21:52

with questioning going on for about six hours.

21:55

At the very end of that day, that love letter

21:57

that she had written to Dr McFarland was

22:00

introduced as evidence to try

22:02

to undermine her believability.

22:04

Because she had been on the stand for so long, the commission

22:07

allowed her to respond to that the next day,

22:09

and when she did, she explained what we said

22:11

earlier, that it had been a desperate effort to flatter

22:13

him and get him to help her publish her book. Ultimately,

22:16

the committee found numerous examples

22:18

of cruelty toward patients at the hospital,

22:21

as well as evidence that McFarland had misclassified

22:24

patients housing people with minor

22:26

treatable conditions with patients who were

22:28

disruptive and violent. Although

22:30

the commission recommended that McFarland be dismissed,

22:33

the city of Jacksonville and the hospital's board

22:35

of trustees stood by him.

22:37

He eventually resigned on November eighteen

22:40

sixty eight, while continuing to have a career

22:43

in mental health. Elizabeth kept

22:45

up her lobbying through all of this, and through

22:47

a very bitter, very public three

22:49

way dispute among herself, her husband,

22:51

and her former doctor. Every

22:54

time she proposed new legislation, McFarland

22:57

publicly raised questions about her

22:59

mental health. The Offulis was also

23:01

publicly disparaging of her, and she of

23:03

him. This whole situation was

23:06

unsurprisingly extremely hard

23:08

on their children. When the Afulis

23:10

first had Elizabeth's institutionalized, the

23:12

children mostly sided with her. Then,

23:15

after three years with their father, they believed

23:18

that he had been right about their mother's mental

23:20

state. Sometime after

23:22

being reunited with her, most of them

23:24

supported her side of the story again, and

23:26

this went back and forth repeatedly as

23:29

they were with one parent or the other, or

23:31

had their own issues going on with their personal

23:33

lives and their relationships to the rest of the family.

23:36

The increasingly acrimonious relationship

23:39

between Elizabeth and the Aflis affected

23:41

them as well. Libby Packard

23:43

in particular struggled with her own mental

23:45

health and possibly an eating disorder

23:47

for much of her life, almost certainly

23:49

exacerbated by their stressful and chaotic

23:52

family situation. She ultimately

23:55

died in the Illinois Eastern Hospital

23:57

for the Insane in eighteen sixty nine.

23:59

Elizabeth got a home in Chicago, where

24:01

her oldest children already lived. Soon

24:04

after, she learned that Massachusetts had passed

24:06

a law giving mothers equal rights

24:08

to custody. She filed a petition

24:11

to seek custody of her three youngest children,

24:13

and the awfulist didn't contest it. By

24:15

this point, he really didn't have a good way

24:17

to support himself or the children. He

24:20

could not really find a congregation for his

24:22

very conservative Calvinism anymore, and

24:24

in light of Elizabeth's books and varied

24:26

public testimony and ongoing advocacy,

24:29

a lot of people believed that he had maliciously

24:31

imprisoned his wife and did not, as a

24:33

result, want him to be their preacher. Elizabeth,

24:36

for her part, lived a mostly comfortable life

24:38

in Chicago until the Great Chicago Fire,

24:40

spending more time with her children and less

24:42

on her bills and advocacy.

24:45

The fire destroyed her stock of books

24:47

and the plates used to print them, which temporarily

24:50

left her without a way to earn a living. She

24:52

was eventually able to get set up with a new publisher

24:55

in New York, but then another fire

24:57

destroyed much of her stock there as well.

25:00

This time she was insured, though, so she

25:02

had some money to live on while she started

25:04

again. By eighteen seventy two, she

25:06

only had one child left at home, and she started

25:09

more aggressively taking up these causes,

25:11

traveling from state to state advocating

25:14

for bills to protect patient rights and the rights

25:16

of married women. Iowa passed

25:18

legislation known as Packard's Law that

25:20

year. This law established

25:23

visiting committees, which had to include at

25:25

least one woman, to inspect

25:27

asylums in that state. These

25:29

committees were authorized to fire abusive

25:31

employees. Their contact information

25:34

had to be posted in every word of the hospital,

25:37

and hospitals were also required to inform

25:39

patients of their right to contact the

25:41

committee about their concerns. This

25:43

law also outlawed the censorship

25:46

or the withholding of patients mail, and

25:48

it required a coroner's inquest if

25:50

a patient mysteriously died. This

25:52

bill faced a lot of resistance

25:54

from Iowa's hospitals and from the

25:56

Association of Medical Superintendence

25:59

of American Institutions for the Insane.

26:02

As Elizabeth started campaigning state

26:04

by state to try to get similar measures passed

26:06

elsewhere, the A M S A

26:08

I I embarked on what it called the

26:10

Project of the Law to try to block

26:12

as many of these bills as they could. They

26:15

thought these bills made it harder for the hospitals

26:18

to subdue patients, and they worried about

26:20

how their work was damaging the reputation

26:22

of the entire field. Yeah, the

26:24

idea that the M A M. S AI

26:27

I thought that patients needed to be subdued

26:29

caused Elizabeth Packard a great amount

26:32

of outrage. She

26:34

campaigned through New York and New England

26:36

and then on to other parts of the country, facing

26:38

character assassination by the A M.

26:40

S AI and by her husband everywhere

26:43

she went. In spite of that, she tended

26:45

to be very effective. I mean, she

26:47

wasn't always successful. She introduced plenty

26:49

of bills that didn't ultimately get passed, but

26:51

in the words of a Massachusetts legislator

26:53

quote, we passed the bill because we could

26:55

not do otherwise. For Mrs Packard was

26:58

so very persistent, we could not bluff her off.

27:00

She also went to Washington, d c. And

27:02

lobbied President Ulysses S. Grant for

27:04

a bill to protect the right of patients in asylums

27:07

to get their mail without censorship or

27:09

surveillance. Although Grant

27:11

agreed that such a law was needed, that

27:14

bill did not ultimately pass. By

27:16

the end of Elizabeth Packard's life, more than

27:18

thirty bills had been passed to protect the

27:20

rights of married women or of psychiatric

27:23

patients. Some of these came from her

27:25

direct advocacy, and others came from

27:27

the widespread nudes coverage of her

27:29

work and her story. In eighteen seventy

27:31

five, Mary Todd Lincoln went through

27:33

a widely publicized insanity

27:35

trial. One of the doctors who

27:38

examined her was Dr McFarland,

27:40

and many reports noted that the laws governing

27:43

her trial were very strict because

27:45

of Elizabeth Packard's advocacy.

27:47

At the same time, this trial revealed that

27:50

it was still possible for someone to skirt

27:52

the law to have someone else committed. Mary

27:54

Todd Lincoln's son informed her of the

27:56

upcoming trial at the last minute, and

27:59

then appointed an attorney who was in

28:01

favor of committing her to represent

28:03

her. In eighteen seventy eight, Elizabeth

28:05

Packard published The Great Drama, which

28:07

was four volumes long, that is

28:10

sixteen hundred pages. It was written

28:12

during her last month in the asylum, and it's

28:14

very scattered and chaotic. I

28:17

mean, we talked about Dr McFarland

28:19

saying that he couldn't help her get it published. It

28:21

was full of references to spiritualism

28:23

and personal visions that she had

28:26

connected to the idea of spiritualism. These

28:28

were things that she had distanced herself

28:30

from an earlier published writing. It's

28:33

clear from the text itself that being

28:35

in the asylum for three years had taken

28:37

a mental and emotional toll on her,

28:40

But it also seems like at this point she had established

28:43

enough of her name for herself that she didn't

28:45

think it was gonna hurt her if she made

28:47

all of these thoughts public. The Awful

28:49

Ist Packard died in eighteen eighty five,

28:52

and then Andrew McFarland died in

28:54

November of eight Elizabeth's

28:57

writing doesn't reveal her thoughts or feelings

28:59

about either of these deaths. She

29:01

was, by all appearances, continuing to

29:03

lobby for bills to protect women and people

29:06

with mental illness throughout all of it. Elizabeth

29:09

Packard died on July at

29:12

the age of eighty after surgery

29:14

on a strangulated hernia. Her legacy

29:16

is a little bit complicated. It's clear that in

29:18

her own mind she was mentally well

29:20

for all of her adult life. Some

29:23

of her writing, though, is chaotic and disordered

29:25

in a way that it suggests she might have had some kind

29:27

of underlying condition, although not necessarily

29:30

one that would have required her to be

29:32

hospitalized against her will.

29:35

Or this could have been totally situational,

29:38

just stemming from this combination of social

29:40

expectations and her deteriorating

29:43

relationship with her husband, and the hospitalization

29:45

itself, and just all the stress that came along

29:47

with all of that. And there are also questions

29:50

about whether the laws she was drafting really

29:52

were what was best for patients. It

29:54

is clear that before she lived, it was far too

29:56

easy for people to have family

29:58

members committed, especial lee for

30:00

husbands to commit their wives.

30:03

But what's less clear is whether a requirement

30:05

for a jury trial is the best way to protect

30:07

a person's rights. Many of the

30:09

laws that Packard worked on were later revised

30:12

to protect patient privacy during these trials,

30:15

or to require some other assessment process

30:18

rather than a trial before being admitted to

30:20

an impatient facility. Regardless,

30:22

though the laws definitely offered

30:24

more protection than had existed before,

30:27

whether it's ultimately true that those were the right

30:29

protections or not. Yeah,

30:34

that's a stressful one because you find yourself getting

30:37

raged up about people involved in Yeah.

30:41

Well, and it's like when

30:43

we talked about all the moral treatment stuff in Part

30:45

one, Like, I've dealt with anxiety for a

30:47

lot of my life, and there have definitely been times

30:49

when, like the situation I was in was

30:51

exacerbating that, and the idea

30:54

of being in an airy ward with lots

30:56

of fresh air and a predictable routine,

30:59

like that's sounds amazing, But

31:02

I wouldn't have come out of that experience

31:04

with the underlying anxiety addressed

31:06

at all. Yeah, yeah, uh

31:10

yeah, I mean it's it's a continually

31:12

evolving field as well, like the study of

31:15

mental health, So who knows

31:17

where we'll be in fifty years and if we'll look back

31:19

on how we address various things in

31:21

today's time looks completely archaic

31:24

and not sufficient in its own right.

31:27

Yeah, totally got some listener

31:29

mail I do it is from Sophie.

31:31

Sophie says Hi, Tracy and Holly. I

31:34

just finished listening to your episode about Julia Sand

31:36

and Chester Arthur, and it brought up a lot

31:38

of good memories for me. I got my undergraduate

31:40

degree and ended up minoring in theater arts

31:42

from the time I spent playwriting and stage

31:45

managing. My first experience

31:47

in the theater department was as an assistant stage

31:49

manager for a play about Julia Sand. It

31:51

was called Great Emergencies, and it was written

31:54

by one of the graduate student playwrights,

31:56

Sean de Mayor. I'm not sure how to say

31:58

that person's name. I'm sorry if I have banged it. The

32:01

play incorporated a lot of Julia's letters into

32:03

the dialogue, at times staging

32:05

her as sitting at the table with President Arthur's

32:07

advisers to show the influence her advice

32:09

had on his decisions. The play also

32:12

dramatized Arthur's relationship and ultimate

32:14

falling out with Roscoe Conkling in the Stalwarts,

32:17

and included a hilariously awkward portrayal

32:19

of the day Arthur visited Sand's home. Apparently,

32:22

she was so caught off guard that her first instinct

32:24

was to try to hide behind the curtains. I

32:27

remember finding it amusing how similar

32:29

the political issues of the time were to us

32:31

today, extreme partisan politics,

32:33

racist immigration policies. It's

32:35

also impossible to avoid admiring

32:37

Sand for taking the initiative and using her

32:39

voice as a writer and political junkie, as you

32:42

put it, to make a difference in the world when

32:44

she had no way of knowing that anything

32:46

would come of it. The play ended on a

32:48

rather sad note, with an imaginary conversation

32:50

between Sand and Arthur's ghost, who tells

32:52

her that he's going to have all of his papers

32:54

burned, leaving her with the impression

32:56

that her letters will be burned with them, so

32:59

nobody will ever know who she was or what

33:01

she did. I can only assume

33:03

that her ghost would be pleased to know that

33:05

through this podcast, you were uplifting her and so

33:07

many other forgotten voices in history. Hopefully

33:10

these stories will inspire others to

33:12

put their voices to use to even when it

33:14

seems the world will not listen. Keep doing what

33:16

you're doing best, Sophie Thank you so much Sophie

33:18

for this awesome letter. I love

33:20

hearing about this play as

33:23

a former theater kid especially,

33:26

and I also love Julius san Still if

33:28

you would like to write to us about this or any other podcasts,

33:30

where a history podcast at how stuff Works

33:33

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33:35

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33:37

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33:39

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33:42

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33:46

see our upcoming live shows over

33:48

this summer. You can also

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33:52

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33:55

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