I am willing to assert that not many of us know the name of Elizabeth Ware Packard or the change she brought about during her life. In these times of the erosion of human rights, including women’s rights, her efforts are even more poignant.
Elizabeth was born in 1816 in Massachusetts, the eldest of three children, her father a minister. Elizabeth was educated, having studied French, algebra and the classics at Amherst Female Seminary. In 1839, her parents obligated her to marry Theophilus Packard, who was described as “cold and domineering,” a severe Calvinist minister fourteen years older than Elizabeth. They had six children.
Well into the marriage, Elizabeth began questioning her husband’s religious beliefs and his philosophy on how to raise children and how he handled their finances. She strongly defended abolitionist John Brown and was outspoken on the inhumanity of slavery. In Illinois, the law provided that a husband could commit his wife to an insane asylum without any kind of judicial input and certainly without a wife’s consent, and in 1860 Theophilus Packard did just that, giving Elizabeth no notice until the county sheriff arrived at the home to place her in custody. Can you imagine? This is where we can thank Elizabeth for her tenacity that started some of the changes for the rights of women in the United States and beyond.
Elizabeth spent three years at the Jacksonville Insane Asylum in Illinois, continuously proclaiming her sanity. She refused to give up and with the help of her children calling for her release, she was declared “incurable” by the asylum’s doctor and discharged. Upon arriving home, her husband locked her in the nursery and nailed the windows shut. Who exactly was insane? She managed to get a letter to a friend who took it to a judge who then granted Elizabeth a jury trial. The trial lasted five days, with witnesses on both sides. Physicians on her husband’s side testified that her religious views and refusal to submit to her husband surely were adequate evidence to her insanity. The jury took only seven minutes of deliberation to deem her sane. Before Elizabeth could return home, her husband gathered her children and all her belongings and money, rented the family house out and moved back to Massachusetts, leaving Elizabeth “homeless, penniless, and without her children.” These circumstances fuelled her determination to help the vulnerable in institutions and the rights of married women. She campaigned in several states to protect the rights of those groups. She helped the fight for regular visits with those confined to institutions and to allow for the monitoring of conditions under which they are obligated to live. The resulting “Packard’s Law” prohibited officials in asylums from seizing mail intended for patients. Elizabeth won reforms to those laws that allowed the commitment of individuals and a law protecting the property of married women in Illinois. She published books revealing the treatment she was forced to endure and spoke publicly about her campaigns. She was eventually awarded custody of her three younger children. She continued her efforts throughout the 1880s, often facing stiff opposition from the powerful psychiatric profession, none of which deterred her courage.
Many books were written about Elizabeth Packard’s life, some focusing on the legislation she was responsible for, while others focused on the claims of her so-called insanity and the treatment she received. Kate Moore wrote a well-researched story of Elizabeth’s character. “The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear” was published in 2021. It was this book that created a stir that had the Illinois mental health centre renamed from the Andrew McFarland Mental Health Center, the doctor who participated in Elizabeth’s wrongful commitment to the institution, to the Elizabeth Packard Mental Health Center in 2023. That’s a nice bit of justice.
Kate Moore posed the question in her book of what would happen if your husband could have you committed to an insane asylum for the mere fact that you disagreed with his opinions. An assertive woman was seen as a mad woman. Women who had a mind of their own at that time in society were seen as unnatural, and it was assumed that “healthy” women would “behave.” That certainly gets my blood pumping.
Kate Moore had an idea of writing about forgotten women, women who had been silenced. She went looking for a woman in history who spoke up and, against all odds, created change. She found Elizabeth Packard and the rest is, as they say, history. We should all look in our own backyard for examples of those working toward a better society and could use our support. I plan to read Kate’s book as soon as it comes available in my local library. I may burst into flames while reading it, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.
wendistewart@live.ca
