Elizabeth Packard: Incurably Insane? Part 1

In this episode, Gwen and Val discuss the remarkable story of Elizabeth Packard. Labeled as “incurably insane” by not fitting into the rigid standards of the mid-1800s of America, she was condemned to an asylum by her husband. Against all odds, Packard fought for and won her freedom. 

Packard, who is largely forgotten to history,  was a pioneer in women and mental health advocacy and a true testament of resilience in the face of oppression.

Thanks for listening!

Thanks to Wendy Berry of Wendy Berry Arts for our original logo, and to Danielle of D’Lordes and their partner Siah for our theme song. 

Sources used:

The Woman They Could Not Silence, by Kate Moore

A Noble Fight, by Linda Carlisle

Mrs. Packard, by Emily Mann

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Hi, and welcome to the Folly Chronicles, a mother-daughter podcast looking at when historical figures clash with the societal norms of their times. I'm Vale, the mom. And I'm Gwen, the daughter. How are you, honey? I'm good. I had a very productive day yesterday. I um spent all morning applying to a job I probably won't get. Um say that. Um I because like I feel like with things on LinkedIn, like hundreds of people apply to those jobs, but it was a fun um application. So it's for a non-profit that um targets like food insecurity. And so they go to these big corporations and they have this thing called like the great sandwich race, and they um have everyone compete to make as many sandwiches as possible, like in an hour, and whoever does wins, like a prize or whatever. Kasumi actually um uh like sent it my way in in the um instructions, they were like, create a little video of you as like a game show host and like pitch this thing. So it was it was fun, but I spent all morning like updating my resume and my cover letter, which was probably good actually to do.

SPEAKER_03 1:55

Right. But it was and also didn't you have a reading on the 21st? I did, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Oh my god, that was yesterday too. That was yesterday. I know I had a really productive day. Um, it went really well, it was really fun. Um, it was about it's like an hour and a half, probably a little longer, out of the city, and this like small little theater company that they actually started a couple months before COVID hit. And it's remarkable that right, they still like managed to survive through through the pandemic, but they started this um thing called like cold reads where they would get together on Zoom or in person in their little pod and do readings of plays um and kind of in front of a little audience, and they've just you know continued to do it. So we read a doll's house part two, which was really fun. Yeah. How long did that take? You know, uh the actual reading itself took about 90 minutes, and then we had some wine and chatted a little bit afterwards.

SPEAKER_03 3:07

Well, was it remote or was it no no, it was in it was in person at their oh okay, all right. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking that since they began it at in the Zoom process, TV was still yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Also, so her name is Megan. She is the like uh co-founder of River's Edge Theater Company. I was telling her about the play I just did in November, Sacred Monsters. And about uh I was explaining, like, you know, Dore, uh the writer of the play was, you know, an Orthodox Jew. And then when COVID hit, started dancing, and she was like, wait a second, what's her name? And I was like, Oh, Dore. And she said, I was just in a play with Doreah, which was so crazy. And so we sent her connection. I know, I know. And in fact, one of the women that was also in the reading, she um stopped me and she was like, Are you a part of Blessed Unrest? She's also a part of the training ensemble. I just haven't, we haven't crossed paths yet. But New York City is just a small town. I know the arts community really is so small. It was so fun to like, you know, see all these small little connections. And in on top of all of this, Megan is from DC and was uh part of Synetic Theater. So she knows Pata.

SPEAKER_03 4:27

She knows Oh my god, I know it's so crazy.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

The past, Synetic Theater. I know. So yeah, it was really cool. It was it was very fun. Um, but yeah, how about you? Are you still writing those postcards for yes, for Janana Whaley?

SPEAKER_03 4:46

And but yesterday I went to the baptism of my great nephew Theo, which oh my gosh, he uh didn't make a peep throughout the entire time, not only the baptism experience, but then we went to Aunt Kelly's afterwards and had food, and there were a lot of people there, and he was alert through the whole thing and just taking it all in. So cute. Oh my goodness. But this morning was not quite as upbeat because I did some stenciling in the bathroom. Remember how I told you thick of my very beige walls? And so I came up with a solution to do stenciling of the names of some of the the um cities, famous cities and countries that I've visited in the past. So I had this little circle that I stenciled, and um the first one that I did was uh Paris, France. And when I took the stencil off, uh even though I was very careful, the paint bled underneath in such a way that it looks like it's not Paris, it's farts.

SPEAKER_04 6:16

Oh I just feel like sometimes the universe just gets a little chuckle out of my activities. I mean that why? Because it's a bathroom. You have to keep it, you have to keep it, mother. I am not. I'm gonna have to fix the fix. No, keep that.

SPEAKER_03 6:43

I actually asked your dad to come in and look at it, and I said, Does it look like what I think it looks like?

SPEAKER_04 6:48

And he says, It looks like farts.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Wait, can you send me a photo? Please wait, mom, because it's gonna look like so fancy and this little skin. I am not with the Eiffel Tower, but then it says farts.

SPEAKER_04 7:02

No, I am not gonna keep it that way, whatever. It's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

You have no whimsy in your life. That much whimsy. All right.

SPEAKER_03 7:15

Are we ready?

SPEAKER_01 7:17

And we're ready. I am have been waiting for a very long time. You've been talking about this for so long. In fact, I've had to stop you from spilling information because you're just you've been so excited to talk about it.

SPEAKER_03 7:29

So I know. I mean, so we're gonna talk about Elizabeth Parsons where Packard. Okay, and there are so many twists and turns to this story, more than a Jason-born movie, that we're gonna do it in two parts. And today is gonna be part one.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Part one. Amazing. I'm ready.

SPEAKER_03 7:54

So Elizabeth Packard was born on December 28th, 1816, in the central part of the state of Massachusetts, the oldest child of three, to the Reverend Samuel Ware and his wife Lucy. Elizabeth Parents also raised Elizabeth's cousin Angeline Field, who will become her saving grace at one moment later in life.

SPEAKER_04 8:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 8:18

In 1832, when Elizabeth was 16, the family moved to Amherst, Massachusetts. Amherst is where my favorite poet lived in that same era, Emily Dickinson.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 8:30

Emily was two when Elizabeth arrived in town. I'm nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody too? Elizabeth was small, about five foot one, with dark hair, brown almond-shaped eyes, and a long nose. She's described throughout her life as being persuasive, always rejoicing, charismatic, even brilliant, with a rare command of language. As a student, she attended Amherst Female Seminary, an all-girls institution. And there seems to be some overlap with her studies. That even before she graduated, she was also teaching at the Randolph Academy in West Randolph.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Wow. She really was smart.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

Yes, yeah. And things were going really well for her until they weren't.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Oh no, I'm nervous.

SPEAKER_03 9:21

Her circumstances changed abruptly in a way that would haunt the rest of her life. Two months after her 19th birthday, Elizabeth came down with quote brain fever, which in modern understanding was probably encephalitis or meningitis. Brain fever was believed to have come from overexposure to heat or to cold or inebriation or violent mental emotions. In other words, they really did now. Yeah, yeah. Meant for it included purging, forced vomiting, and the use of laxatives.

SPEAKER_04 10:03

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 10:04

And an application of ice to a shaved head. Also bleeding with leeches. It makes me see that scene that um in the movie version of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, where Kate Winslet, as uh Marianne, is lying in bed, limp, almost comatose, with a gash in her arm that the doctor has put there because he's bleeding her, and the wall the blood is going into a beautiful China dish.

SPEAKER_04 10:36

Oh Jesus. Probably designed for that very purpose. Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Okay, so the image is just like horrible already. And it's insane how far we've come in terms of medical science, and that like I'm just thankful that we don't practice that anymore.

SPEAKER_03 10:57

For real. So when treatment didn't work for Elizabeth, surprise! Surprise, yeah. Samuel hustled his daughter to the Worcester Hospital for the Insane, as one does when your child has a fever.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Right, of course.

SPEAKER_03 11:13

This seems like an extreme reaction, and of course it was, but what was Samuel's motivation to do this?

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 11:24

His wife had a history of quote mental instability. And he wanted to a woman with opinions, a woman reacting to well, no, I mean that's that's um a reason, yes, that people um told women that they were mentally unstable, but um I think that she actually was mentally unstable. Well, I think there was a reason, and that it was maybe uh well, I think that there was a solid reason. So he wanted to get ahead of Elizabeth having the same issues of mental instability, but do you remember when I said that Elizabeth was her parents' oldest child? Yeah, she was also their fifth child, the first one to live past infancy.

unknown 12:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 12:18

So if Lucy was mentally unstable, I'm wondering if it could be linked to the fact that in an eight-year period from 1811 to 1819, Lucy had lost not one baby, not two babies, not three babies, but four babies. So like of course. So maybe it was just she was grieving traumatized.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Yeah, that would I would have some serious PTSD. Not to mention like your hormones are raging and the um what is it? The like post postpartum? Yeah, postpartum depression is like also a factor, and I'm sure she was having these kids like back to back.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

And you think her dad was just scared and was hoping that this would fix things, or was he trying to get rid of like rid of the problem? Or what do you think like his reasoning behind it was?

SPEAKER_03 13:33

I think that it was because he didn't connect the dots that his wife was probably dealing with grief and depression. Oh, yes, I meant for sending his daughter to right, but because he didn't make the link and he was thinking of his wife being female and having these issues that his daughter, who was ill, was probably lapsing into this kind of mental insanity. Yeah, because this is the time that we're at. So, anyways, Elizabeth lands in the asylum where she stayed for seven weeks, and she was upset with her father for quote, needlessly and unkindly committing her, and felt that time was what had actually healed her. But it was on the record she had been committed to an asylum for the insane.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Oh, I didn't even think about that.

SPEAKER_03 14:33

Yes, yes, and that plays into something that happens later.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

So wait, I'm so I just have to say before we get any further, one of like the biggest like anxieties or fears I have is like being forced against your will to be like committed to one of these places. It just genuinely like the little like claustrophobic, it just terrifying and I feel it so much in my body. So this one is gonna be hard to like.

SPEAKER_03 15:09

Well, I would never do that too.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Well, thank you. Unless you come down with brain fever, of course, and I would say so.

SPEAKER_03 15:16

Fast forward to 1839. Um, Elizabeth is 22. This is another pivotal moment in her life when she married 37-year-old Theophilus Packard, her father's friend and a fellow Calvinist minister.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Of course. How old is he?

SPEAKER_03 15:33

Uh 37.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Oh, he's 37. But how old is she?

SPEAKER_03 15:36

22.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Sorry, did you just say that?

SPEAKER_03 15:39

I I I did, but it's okay.

SPEAKER_04 15:44

At least I'm listening. Okay, carry on.

SPEAKER_03 15:49

But um Gwen, I know that you're partial to gingers, but I I this is just gonna mess you up because Theophilus is a redhead. Okay, and I guarantee that when you look at this guy's photograph, you're just gonna want to punch him in the face. He looks like he's sucking lemon, you know, just so pompous. Plus, he has a brilliant on the top of his head. He is the poster child for old school Calvinism, a religion grounded in notions of authority and obedience, and that all things are preordained, including salvation. And to prove that you have been chosen, you need to live your life in a grateful manner. You can't just frolic through it. And it's safe to say that Theopolis was not a frolicker.

SPEAKER_04 16:48

No, of course.

SPEAKER_03 16:50

His diary entries give us some insights into his mind. Um, he was obsessed with his health, with his struggles to write suitable sermons, and even whether he was fit to be a minister. Just a lot of gloom and doom.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Yeah, not a cheerful guy.

SPEAKER_03 17:10

No, and later he actually tried to get the town library shut down because novel reading was scandalous. Oh my god. But it was a fairly new thing um in this time period.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

I hate him. He's like, he's giving it to for modern day. I'm picturing like a like a guy in a like manosphere who's like goes to the gym all the time, drinks creatine, and eats like chicken and rice, and that's it. And is like the problem with society is women and the fact that they can vote and blah blah blah. Like, this is what sorry, I didn't mean to go on that rant, but um all this to say I hate him. Also, what was his last name? I want to look him up. There's also a um, sorry, this uh the only thing I can think of, and I'm gonna have to say it now because it's stuck in my brain, is there's a tongue twister, Theophilus Thistle, the successful thistle sifter. And that's all I've been thinking about the past couple minutes. So sorry, continue. What's his last name?

SPEAKER_04 18:15

Packard.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Packard. Oh duh, because her lower.

SPEAKER_04 18:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 18:18

So he's um you see his picture? I hate him. Oh my god, I can't believe it. You're saying that just because you've seen his picture now.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Oh, yeah, because you just you described Elizabeth as this like sweet, young, energetic, beautiful woman with a mind of her own, who's brilliant and smart, and he looks like he hates the color like red because it's too excitable, you know?

SPEAKER_04 18:49

Like he just oh no, but I mean, you're you're so spot on because that's essentially where it comes to.

SPEAKER_03 18:58

But I mean, not specifically color red, but um anyway, so we agree that he is completely opposite of Alyssa, right? Yeah, and and you know what? I could give him some slack for having anxiety or depression because you know, these things were not understood in this time period, except that for what he does later. I mean, he has no redeeming features.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

Okay, can I just he reminds me of what's his name from Middlemarch? Mm-hmm. That's who he's reminding me of.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

I know exactly who you're referring to. Mm-hmm. Who prevented his wife from marrying his cousin?

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Wait, stop, because I'm not, I haven't finished it.

SPEAKER_04 19:48

Mommy. You're watching it? Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought oh, okay, moving on. I told you I was reading it. I thought you were. Now who listens?

SPEAKER_01 19:57

All right, no, sorry. What's his name? Okay, sorry, you're right, you're right. Whatever. Okay, move on.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

Okay, anyways, Elizabeth might have had I feel very guilty. Elizabeth might have had a dream of about the wedding after the wedding, because she wrote that they were married, quote, with all the love his bachelor heart could muster.

SPEAKER_04 20:24

Which I feel is not a lot, which doesn't sound promising.

SPEAKER_03 20:29

No, but she said to make Theophilus happy was all I wanted, to make my husband shine inside and out.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Oh no. Who was her dad the one that arranged the marriage?

SPEAKER_03 20:43

Well, he approved of it because this is his buddy, and a fellow Calvinist minister.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Why does she want to marry him?

SPEAKER_03 20:52

Well, this is, you know, we're talking about 1800s. Okay. She was 1839. This is just expected.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yeah, okay, fair. Sorry, keep going.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

Theophilus and Elizabeth set up house in Shelburne, Massachusetts, where Theophilus was a minister in the local Calvinist church. They had six children, one girl and five boys, and Elizabeth adored her children. The oldest was Theophilus, whom they called Theo or Toffee, which I think is just so cute.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Oh, okay, that's actually cute.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

Isaac, Samuel, Libby, the girl, George, and Arthur.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

These are really cute names.

SPEAKER_03 21:32

Diaphis couldn't relax with them, though. He worried about their souls. He lectured them about salvation and sin until they cried in fear. And he said that after church, each Sunday, Elizabeth would gather the children in the kitchen to have, quote, good talking times. He wrote in his diary, on the brink of hell.

SPEAKER_04 22:02

He has no joy in his heart.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

No, no. What a horrible, miserable household to be a part of.

SPEAKER_03 22:08

Can you imagine though? And those poor children, the the opposite of their, you know, their parents were in such conflict and how they related to the children.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

He needs um like 50 milligrams of Lexapro and a chill pill, is what he needs.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

And I just want to point out that I have a tendency to like channel the voice of the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk when I'm when I'm quoting anything that Theophilus says.

unknown 22:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 22:45

Theophilus's Orthodox Calvinism was passing out of favor in Massachusetts. Wonder why. And Theophilus decided to move his family to somewhere with a more accepting audience. After a couple of failed attempts to get established in other states in 1857, he eventually landed them in Mantino, Illinois, a little farming village with a population of about 850 near his sister and her husband. But while Theophilus is flailing away, bleeding money from the costs of moving a large family and being without consistent work and becoming increasingly embittered, Elizabeth was evolving. She was exploring various religious ideas, including spiritualism, which was a new movement taking America by storm. Elizabeth actually went on to reject spiritualism, but perhaps its popularity was because as a suffragist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, quote, it is the only religious sect that has recognized the equality of women.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

The religious theory that Elizabeth explored that scandalized the most and might scandalize a few Christians even today wasn't original to Elizabeth and had been around a long time. It was the thought that in the Christian Trinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, that the Holy Ghost must be female. God the Father was obviously male. And if the Holy Ghost was female, then Christ the Savior, the Son, was the fruit of their union. And that made sense to Elizabeth, who wrote essays on her religious ideas and shared them with the members of her husband's congregation, apparently not seeing that this might stir things up in that very conservative environment.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Right.

SPEAKER_03 25:09

Writing was transformative to her, she said, because it allowed her to discover her real thoughts and realize who she was. And her essays became popular, especially with the women in the church.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

I love that. But of course, who's going to be jealous of that?

SPEAKER_03 25:26

Yep, exactly. He panicked at losing control of his flack, which also meant losing faith, losing face in the community. So he announced to his congregation that his wife was mad. Living with her had become impossible as she caused him unspeakable grief. But in the mid-1800s in America, what could an uptight Calvinist minister do when his wife stopped submitting, had her own ideas, and the marriage fell apart?

SPEAKER_01 26:07

You institutionalized her.

SPEAKER_03 26:09

Yep, because he could up and leave the family, but that was bad optics. He was a minister. He could get a divorce, but again, that would look bad.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:20

The most acceptable option in that day and time, the most acceptable option would be to commit Elizabeth to an asylum. Isn't that crazy? Married women could be committed simply by the request of the husband with two doctors validating that request. And her father had made things so easy for Theophilus because Elizabeth had been committed earlier. She has a history. It was no great leap to think that she was insane again. June 17th, 1860, Theophilus sent the children to stay with his sister, then insisted that Elizabeth sleep that night in the nursery bedroom on the ground floor. For the first time in 21 years, they did not share the marital bed.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

So she has no idea it's coming.

SPEAKER_03 27:27

She knows that there's a rift that's opening between them, but she doesn't know how severe it's gotten.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

But she doesn't know that, like he's about to institutionalize her.

SPEAKER_03 27:39

No. When Elizabeth woke up in the morning of June 18th, she peeked out the window and realized that Theophilus had nailed the shutters into place. But she could see through the slats that he was leading four men down the street toward their house. She quickly locked the bedroom door and started sewing pockets inside her underskirt for someplace to hide her cherished essays. You know, apparently now the dime is dropped that those essays were a problem.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

She's like, oh wait. He uh doesn't actually like my writing. The men also holds one. Can I just ask? Was he like, hey girl, like actually this is hurting my feelings? Can you stop writing this?

SPEAKER_03 28:27

And then she defiantly was like, No, I'm spreading the word of you know, my she actually was um saying that she had a right to her thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Okay, good for her. I mean, duh.

SPEAKER_03 28:40

Yeah, and and this is rather remarkable considering that she was raised in a household with her father being a Calvinist minister and her husband is a Calvinist minister. Um, it's all about authority, but she is has taken the leap mentally that she's in charge of her own thinking and she doesn't understand why she's not allowed her access, you know, access to her own thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

It's just it kill right, it kills me because she, I'm sure, was doing everything that a dutiful religious wife was doing, and she's but this one aspect of my life you don't have power and control over. And this actually really aligns with Adol's House. Um there's a part in the play, Adol's House Part Two, where she talks about in, you know, because Nora leaves Torvald and he doesn't end up in the second play, he doesn't end up filing for a divorce. So she's been going around as an unmarried woman doing a lot of things that, like as a married woman, she um it would be illegal to do. And anything that she made financially, he could take. So she goes to him to ask for a divorce because in order for a woman to divorce a man, she has to prove that he did something horrendous, like um gave her syphilis or um uh uh what's the word, like um engaged in incest, or like gave her physical harm. It's like those three wow. So if there's anything else, then there's she there they can't divorce them. Meanwhile, a man can just, you know, decide at any point if he wants to divorce his wife, but of course here he can't do that because he is a good Christian man and a pillar of society. So what does he do? He commits his wife. Okay, so right.

SPEAKER_03 30:46

So here she is, she's in the nursery, and um she now hears that the men are in the hallway outside the nursery, trying unsuccessfully to get into the locked room because she's not going to unlock that door. They leave, but before Elizabeth could finish getting dressed, so she's half dressed, they hacked away at the outside shutters using an axe. That is terrifying. I know! Can you imagine what she's thinking? Then they climbed through the windows into the room and demanded that she leave her home and get inside a carriage, which is waiting outside to take her to the train station. But Elizabeth refuses to cooperate in her own abduction and refuse to walk. Good for her. The men were forced to carry her to the carriage. And again, when they arrived at the station, they had to carry her from the carriage and into the train. So kudos.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

She's not making it easy for them. Yeah. Not to mention, did she even get to say goodbye to her kids? Did they no?

SPEAKER_03 32:01

Okay, good point. Keep that in mind. Okay, but they had all been farmed out, probably to Thalophis's sister, um, who who lives nearby. So all of that had to have been horrible at this point. But what makes it worse, and you know, in keeping with what you were saying, um, so tha Theophilus is sitting next to her as her guard inside the train, and Elizabeth looks out the window and she sees her little son, seven-year-old George, running alongside the train weeping for his mother. Oh no. I know. So for that alone, you know, I cannot forgive him.

SPEAKER_05 32:51

Oh my god, that poor kid.

SPEAKER_03 32:55

The next time she sees him, Gwen, she's she won't recognize him. And she literally does not recognize him the next time she sees him. That's we're getting ahead of ourselves. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

So I don't know if I want to continue.

SPEAKER_03 33:12

I know, and he doesn't get better. In fact, it gets worse through the story. Uh so later when he sends a trunk of Elizabeth's clothes to the asylum, not the ones she requested, by the way, he has thrown in a bunch of rotten lemons in amongst the clothes. Yeah, but she's the problem.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

What is what is wrong with him? It's just to me, I'm like, why are religious people some of the most bitter, hateful, resentful, mean people?

SPEAKER_03 33:52

I guess that if they're hiding behind the shield of God, then their behavior is forgiven.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

Yeah, maybe some of the nastiest people choose religion because of that, because they can hide their identity and they don't have to actually like address.

SPEAKER_03 34:12

Sorry, not to shit on like religion, but no, I mean I understand exactly. I feel the same way, although there are people in my life that are truly aligned with religion and and live it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Well, I mean it's I'm not yeah, I think it's the there are people that are drawn to it for the right reasons, and but a majority of them are drawn for the wrong reasons, and they're unfortunately the louder voices that drown out a lot of the good voices, especially now, it seems, in this day and age.

SPEAKER_03 34:48

So after many years on the train. I'm sorry, honey, are you?

SPEAKER_01 34:51

No, I was just saying he he sucks. So yeah, I'm done.

SPEAKER_03 34:55

After many hours on the train, they arrived in Jacksonville, Illinois. Theopolis escorted Elizabeth to the Jacksonville Insane Asylum run by Dr. Andrew McFarland.

SPEAKER_01 35:07

Unless they already hate him. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 35:10

Which one? The doctor?

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:13

McFarland had been a general practitioner who had switched to mental medicine, as it was called, after his mother had become, quote, temporarily insane. I mean, what is going on? These poor women in the 1800s, there must have been something very contagious about this mentally mental insanity.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

I know, I feel like these women sneeze and their family are like, okay, send them off. They're insane, they're crazy. I mean, why? Oh, okay. Anyway, sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 35:49

So McFarlane and Elizabeth don't know this yet, but they will become arch enemies. But things started out well. According to Elizabeth, McFarlane was a quote, fine-looking gentleman who treated her in the manner reserved for women of a certain social status, like she was a guest. He placed her in Ward 7 with other well-educated women, many of whom she was shocked to see were also not insane. Wow. Yeah, I hope Trad Wives are taking note because many of these women, and this was before women could vote, were completely dependent on their husbands. And they were committed by their husbands. Yeah. Committed, much like Elizabeth, for becoming independent in their views, like Sarah Menard, whose husband committed her for studying spiritualism, or Maria Chapman, whose husband committed her for studying the teachings of the Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg. Quote, it isn't fair that we credit men's lies and discredit women's truths, Elizabeth said. Wow. Interesting, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:02

In this day and age, oh, that is so relevant still. It is absolutely like I don't even have the words. The fact that that is still so pertinent to today.

SPEAKER_03 37:20

Yeah. Dr. McFarlane allowed Elizabeth to walk the grounds without a chaperon and gave her unlimited paper and pen so that she could do her favorite thing right, which she did a lot of.

unknown 37:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 37:34

Because of their long and deep intellectual talks, she felt to connection with Dr. McFarland and believed that she was his favorite patient. She thought of him as a most noble kind protector. Okay. After all, at the regular dances that the asylum put on for the well-to-do patients, isn't that crazy?

SPEAKER_01 37:59

They get a little dance, they get to frolic around and spin, and so everything is okay. Be distracted.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Yeah. So he danced with her quite often and had once kissed her on the forehead. Okay. She hoped that she could persuade him that she was not insane and therefore release her. Yeah, you know, I'm wondering, there might have been like a little Stockholm syndrome thing happening.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Probably because he's, I think it seems to me like he's actually seeing her for her intelligence. So she's probably so starved for someone to actually like take her seriously, especially a man.

unknown 38:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

He's allowing her to write, even.

unknown 38:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

I'm surprised her husband didn't ban her from writing in the institution.

SPEAKER_03 38:56

Well, he's he's gone. He doesn't really care what happens in there. He's he's not worried about it.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

Maybe he put lemons in the luggage and they just happened to rot in transportation. Maybe he didn't really mean to put rotted lemons. Well, that's interesting. Maybe he was giving him maybe he was concerned about her getting scurvy and was hoping that the citrus he provided would help. I'm just, you know, I maybe dumbfounded. What is happening?

SPEAKER_05 39:38

No, I'm just I was just thinking maybe he didn't like as we go on, you will see that he does not think that way. Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

What in God's name is that? It's just a thought we had. It's just a thought. I just suddenly was like, maybe he didn't know that they were going to write.

SPEAKER_05 40:01

I just am so flabbergasted. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

What are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_04 40:06

Institutionalize me for speaking my mind. Okay, no, it's it's wonderful to be open-minded. I am just like stunned, but we will keep going.

SPEAKER_03 40:16

Okay, let's keep let's just so, anyways, Ward 7 is actually just like Dante's circles of hell. This is just Elizabeth's first circle. By late autumn of 1860, she realized that McFarland was working with her husband to keep her in the asylum. That McFarland was the quote puppet master who was withholding her mail and inserting frequently in their discussions that she was friendless, seemingly deliberately making her feel hopeless. Oh my God. Isn't that diabolical? So Elizabeth began to resist, even though she knew that the way out of the asylum was by submission to both doctor and husband. She knew that she had to be true to herself, though. I didn't do anything wrong, she said. So this is kind of crazy. She asked hospital visitors for help. So can you imagine being a hospital visitor and you're just, you know, walking in and suddenly this woman stops you and says that she needs help. Visitors were assured by staff that having conspiracy theories was part of being insane.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

Yes, of course. Of course. Anything to discredit.

SPEAKER_03 41:46

And she was an expert seamstress, having designed and made all of her own family's clothes, and she didn't mind sewing for the institution, although patients actually had to make their own strait jackets, which seems a little unfair.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

But she was probably not work for. What? Trusting. Like if I had to make my own strait jacket, I would be making the most bare minimum, like you know, no buckles. Right, no buckles, no nothing. Okay, keep going. Sorry.

SPEAKER_03 42:23

But she was troubled when she realized that she was also sewing for the McFarland family's personal needs. And she actually, and this this goes before she sent Mrs.

SPEAKER_04 42:34

McFarlane a bill for her work.

SPEAKER_03 42:37

I love that, as she should, as she should throughout. She chronicled instances of abuse and mistreatment of patients by staff, jatting down testimony from other patients. Elizabeth finally approached McFarlane and said that she would print her complaints and even reveal the instance of the kiss that he gave her. She gave him a choice repentance or exposure.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

Oh, honey. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:09

Mm-hmm. So Elizabeth had become a deep pain in McFarlane's Keister. In retaliation for her threats, he grabbed her and marched her off to a lower level of hell, ward 8. You can stay in this ward now, Dr. McFarlane said as he opened the door and shooed her in. She was immediately hit with the noxious smells of unwashed bodies and bodily excretions and heard the noises of screaming, fighting, running, and hallooing, whatever that is. Eighteen women were on the ward, all caked with dirt, with rough flying and streaming hair, who were splashing through puddles of urine on the hallway floors. So this is back in the day before toilets, but still people generally use chamber pots, but not here. And there was no bathtub.

SPEAKER_06 44:08

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_03 44:11

Elizabeth was told to go immediately to bed, which was no longer in a private room. She was locked in a dormitory room with wailing women, made to sleep on a bed with a sour-smelling urine-soaked straw mattress.

SPEAKER_06 44:25

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_03 44:26

It was the blackest night of my existence, she said. But what did she do? She did not promptly become insane, which the conditions seemed to warrant. She did not cave and beat the door and beg for McFarland to return to say that yes, she would obey her husband. No. Instead, she decided that the women around her must be her priority. Their personal cleanliness was plainly my first most obvious duty, she said.

SPEAKER_01 45:00

Oh. I'm gonna cry.

SPEAKER_03 45:09

She is so remarkable. So the next day, she filled a clean chamber pot with sudsi warm water and started cleaning the women.

unknown 45:19

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 45:20

She cleaned their faces, necks, and hands, hair when allowed. And this inspired the staff. And they joined in. They scrubbed the walls and the floors of the ward, replacing the old mattress straw with fresh. And Elizabeth sewed new cloth covers for each mattress. But because Elizabeth was not broken, McFarlane doubled down. He forced Elizabeth to eat meals with old Mother Triplet, who is considered the most dangerous patient in the ward, and who immediately threatened to kill her.

SPEAKER_01 45:58

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_03 46:01

Elizabeth said, I considered myself very fortunate if I left the table without being spit upon by her or by having her tea or coffee or gravy or sauce thrown upon my dress. Eating in the dining hall, even without Old Mother Triplet, would have been hazardous because women would seize tumblers, salt cellars, plates, bowls, and pitchers and hurl them in demoniac fat frenzy so that broken glass in China would fly about our face and eyes like hailstone, Elizabeth said. Nights were no better. No one came to save her.

SPEAKER_02 46:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

But Elizabeth didn't keep quiet. She hounded McFarland for a bathtub for the ward. She begged for an audience with the chaplain to list her complaints. And she not only continued to clean the women, she befriended them, listening to their difficult stories and understanding their circumstances. She always verbally intervened when another attendant, like the dreadful Mrs. Bonner, dragged them off for discipline, which translated to being beaten, or when they finally got the bathtub, being water tortured. The women patients there loved her. One young woman could not sleep unless she was lying beside Elizabeth. The good doctor had had enough.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

She low-key just became an undercover journalist, basically, documenting the conditions that these women are were going through.

SPEAKER_02 47:43

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 47:47

And I just I don't know what's going to happen, but I just I feel so poorly for all the women who were never released or who didn't have the inner strength or were beaten down to the point where I would be hurling plates. I would be hurling things against the walls if I had no control, no autonomy over anything, and I was trapped. They were just trapped in their own filth. Of course, you'd be crawling out of your skin and be. Would you actually get a drink with him?

SPEAKER_03 53:09

With Dr. McFarland. Yes. Um now I do think that he would have a drink. Um I would like to know what happened with his mother when she was, quote, temporarily insane, what the circumstances were around that. I'm really curious. I didn't see anything in the books that I read that elaborated on that.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:42

But it just seemed like so many women were just labeled as insane or having mental instability without ever looking beyond the the symptoms to get to what might have contributed to that.

SPEAKER_01 54:02

I think it's yeah, and it's also scary to hear how easy it was and how the power of being a man can corroborate any story you make up because there will be other men who will easily back you up in your lie.

SPEAKER_00 54:24

Hey everyone. Will here just jumping in to say that that is a wrap on episode two, part one of the Folly Chronicles. Part two should be coming out not too long from now, so stick around for the next one, and we'll see you then.