Elizabeth Packard by Linda V. Carlisle

Author:Linda V. Carlisle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2010-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 8. Elizabeth Packard. Courtesy of The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, Illinois.

Packard reported that as Sewall and Phillips argued in favor of these proposed laws, three representatives from the AMSAII, Drs. Clement Walker (Boston Lunatic Hospital), Edward Jarvis (superintendent of a private asylum in Dorchester, Massachusetts), and John E. Tyler (McLean Asylum for the Insane, Somerville, Massachusetts), arrived to present the Association’s opposition to such legislation. Both Walker and Tyler had participated in the lively discussion that followed McFarland’s presentation (including his discussion of Packard’s case), and Jarvis was a personal friend of McFarland. Packard recorded that the men told legislators that those who signed Packard’s petition probably did so “out of compliment to the lady” without understanding what the petition sought.38

Massachusetts’s lawmakers, however, were apparently convinced otherwise. While the two bills did not pass as written, the legislature did add protection for married women to the commitment procedure. This law (passed in March 1865) required asylum superintendents, upon admitting a married woman, to notify ten near relatives of the woman. It further provided that the patient must be permitted unrestricted communication with those ten relatives and any two other persons designated by the patient.39

Packard wrote that, with these changes to Massachusetts law, she felt “comparatively safe” in that state. Essentially homeless since leaving the asylum, she returned to Sunderland to stay with her aged father and stepmother, who now believed that Theophilus had misled the family regarding her supposed derangement. Her father and brother, Austin, now gave her notarized depositions attesting to their belief that she was sane. Her father also changed his will to leave Packard her inheritance directly rather than in trust through her brother.40

Her father also interceded with Theophilus, asking him to return some of Packard’s belongings and permit her to visit her children. She wrote that Theophilus at first refused but capitulated when public remonstrations from her respected father raised the ire of townspeople. According to Packard, she was permitted a brief, chaperoned visit with Libby, George, and Arthur at her father’s home.41

Meanwhile, Sewall’s review of Packard’s book in the Boston Daily Advertiser evoked a heated response from Theophilus. In a letter-to-the-editor published in the 4 April 1865 edition of the paper, he castigated Sewall for accusing him of “despotic caprice” and suggested he should seek a more reliable source of information than a woman known to be insane. He questioned whether Sewall had actually read Packard’s book and pointed to the chapter on transmigration of souls as clear evidence of derangement. Perhaps, he suggested, Sewall’s mind, too, had “swung away from its proper moorings.” He swore on his reputation “as a Christian clergyman” that the facts of his wife’s case proved her insane. Furthermore, he said, “our family physician warned us that our lives were in danger [and] for weeks before her removal the sleeping rooms of some of the family were secured at night to avert this danger.”42

Theophilus insisted that the judge at his wife’s trial had “yielded to . .

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