Before I entered an insane asylum and learned its hidden life from the standpoint of the patient, I had not supposed that the inmates were outlaws, in the sense that the law did not protect them in any of their inalienable rights.
--Elizabeth Packard
false accusations
Elizabeth Packard married Theophilus, a strict Calvinist reverend, on May 21, 1839. When she began to question traditional Calvinist ideas and attended Methodist services, her husband claimed she was mentally unstable. In 1860, he called a sheriff to force her to the Jacksonville Asylum for the Insane. Because of women's social status and lack of power, men could institutionalize their wives without a trial.
behind bars
At first, Elizabeth Packard was classified as "slightly insane", but when the superintendent of the hospital, Dr. McFarland, turned against her, she was placed into the ward for the hopelessly insane and violent. Packard was able to sustain her sanity with exercise, remaining hygienic, cleaning the ward and patients, and keeping a journal. Packard took notes on various practices doctors performed and the conditions of the asylum, noting their effect on the institutionalized (Click button below). Packard's experiences while detained led her to become an activist for mental care.
...in a very favorable state [with] her mind free from insanity, her health restored and all the operations of the system going on favorable.
--Dr. Woodward of Jacksonville Asylum for the Insane, discharge papers for Elizabeth Packard
packard vs packard
Upon Packard’s arrival home in 1863, Theophilus locked her in their nursery. She was trapped until January of 1864 when her neighbor, Sarah Haslett, obtained a letter Packard dropped out her window and brought it to Judge Charles R. Starr who issued a decree for habeas corpus ordering Theophilus and Elizabeth to court on January 12, 1864. Reverend Theophilus brought members of his church and family to testify against Elizabeth, claiming that her public arguments and attempts to leave the church were evidence of her insanity. Her lawyers brought in non-congregational neighbors to testify her mental stability. The jury took merely seven minutes to declare Packard legally sane. The Packard vs. Packard trial shed light on husbands claiming their wives insane without proof, and how change was needed to spare innocent lives. This marked the beginning of Elizabeth Packard's legal battle for reform in women's and mental patients' rights.