Elizabeth Ware Packard: Silent No More

by Linda Harris Sittig

I will soon be finishing my 13th year of Strong Women in History and embarking on year number 14. That means I have researched and written on the lives of over 150 mostly unknown but powerful women who persevered to make this world a better place.

Through those 150+ women, I thought I had heard almost every conceivable story of strength and fortitude until I learned about Elizabeth Packard. So, please, when you finish reading her story, applaud her because the lives she saved could well have been our own. 

Born in Massachusetts in December 1816, Elizabeth was known for being a curious child—so curious that her Calvinist minister father often worried about her. She was educated at the Amherst Seminary for Girls, where she excelled in mathematics.

MARRIED

At 23, she married Theophilus Packard, Jr., a Calvinist minister friend of her father’s. Theo was 14 years older, and within 15 years, she bore him six children. In 1854, they left Massachusetts and eventually settled in Illinois, where Theo led a new congregation.

By all accounts, Elizabeth enjoyed the Midwest because it was not as oppressive as New England. She began to reach out beyond their home, do local missionary work, and read about other religious beliefs beyond Calvinism.

The more Elizabeth read about other beliefs, the more authoritarian and controlling Theo became. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when she expressed some opinions in their local Bible study that were not exactly in line with what Theo was preaching.

Remember that this is 1860, on the cusp of the Civil War. Women in America had few rights. As soon as they married, all their property, possessions, and even their children became the husband’s legal property.

COMMITTED

When Elizabeth expressed her views in public, Theo retaliated by having her committed to an insane asylum – the Illinois Hospital for the Insane. All that was required was a letter from two doctors attesting to her insanity. The doctors were not even required to examine or talk to her; they could take her husband’s testimony as proof. This same law existed in various states at the time. When she entered the asylum, Elizabeth assumed it would be for a few months at best, then Theo would reverse his decision. But he did not.

At this stage in her life, Elizabeth had been married to Theo for 21 years and was 44. Her youngest child was six years old.

During the next three and a half years, Elizabeth was held as a virtual prisoner. She was denied all contact with her children, friends, or other family members because Theo had decried they would be improper influences on her mental state.

She was subjected to horrific physical abuse by the attendants and emotional abuse from the director of the hospital, who destroyed any letters addressed to her and those she tried to send out of the hospital, repeatedly telling her that everyone had forgotten her.

But what had perhaps shocked Elizabeth the most was the realization that an overwhelming number of the women she met in the hospital were married women like herself—perfectly sane but whose husbands had them committed to ‘keep them in line.’ Three women had been committed because they indulged in reading novels, and the youngest inmate was a five-year-old girl.

BECOMING AN ACTIVIST

So, Elizabeth began to campaign for fairer treatment inside the hospital. At first, she organized supportive prayer groups, but when the superintendent saw how popular Elizabeth was with the other women, he disbanded any meetings.

Next, Elizabeth began a campaign for fairer treatment by the attendants. The superintendent then placed her in solitary for ‘disrupting the inmates.’ Unbeknownst to him, Elizabeth had kept a daily journal detailing all the events she was privy to in the hospital. Eventually, the superintendent forbade her from any writing materials, but she had hidden the journal pages inside the pockets of her clothes.

It would take over three years for Elizabeth to complain about urine-soaked floors, inadequate bed linens, and nutritionally poor food, and then the superintendent decided he wanted to get rid of her.

When Elizabeth was finally released (with her hidden journal), against much protest from Theo, she learned that her friends had been protesting all along for the injustice committed against her. Her house had fallen into unsightly disrepair, and Theo had appropriated their 13-year-old daughter to take over all the chores previously done by Elizabeth—all the cooking, cleaning, mending, and managing a house worthy of a minister.

FAUX FREEDOM

Elizabeth was home and free. But not really. Theo threatened again and again to have her recommitted if she defied him. And he counseled the children not to pay any attention to what Elizabeth asked them to do, constantly reminding their children that their mother had been declared legally insane.

Next, Theo confined her to her room, locked the door, and nailed the windows shut so she could not escape. Meals were sent to the room, where she ate alone. He cut off the heat to the room and refused to allow the children to visit.

In late December 1863, Theo petitioned to have Elizabeth recommitted, but the Trustees of the Illinois hospital refused, saying they believed she would always be insane and the hospital needed the spaces for patients who could be cured. Furious, Theo launched a plan for her to be committed to a hospital in Massachusetts instead. Committed for life.

THE COURT CASE

And then, Elizabeth’s friends had a lawyer serve Theo with a writ of Habeas Corpus because he had held Elizabeth as a prisoner in her own home. A trial ensued, and the lawyer defending Elizabeth demanded proof from Theo that Elizabeth was insane.

All he could answer was her insanity was due to her ridiculous religious beliefs.

As the trial drew to a close, Theo no longer appeared in the courtroom, which struck Elizabeth as strange. When the trial was over and Elizabeth was awarded her freedom, she returned home only to find that Theo had sold the house and moved the children to Massachusetts, even removing all of Elizabeth’s clothes.

Elizabeth, still legally married, now had no home, possessions, family, or means of support. But friends took her in. She made a decision then that would define the rest of her life. She submitted her journal, now in the form of a book, for publication and decided to devote the remainder of her life to two causes: one, getting her children back, and two, getting laws changed in America about committing citizens to insane asylums, particularly women.

ELIZABETH’S CAMPAIGN

In the end, she stayed married to Theo, on paper only, but they never lived together again. She was reunited with her children; however, the relationship was strained because so much time had passed. Elizabeth spent the remainder of her life helping to secure the passage of 34 bills in 44 legislatures across 24 states. She campaigned tirelessly for three decades for women’s rights and the rights of the mentally ill. She fought hard to establish independent boards to inspect asylums, and most spectacular was her initiative to secure the postal rights of patients so they were guaranteed access to mail.

Informally, all of her achievements began to be known as “Packard’s Laws.”

Theo died in 1885. When Elizabeth died in 1897, the United States was only 23 years away from securing a woman’s right to vote (white only at that time). Since then, American women have refused to go back to a time when a husband or other male family member could have them incarcerated for insanity that, in truth, did not exist.

Of all the women I have researched, Elizabeth’s story was almost surreal. It was nearly incomprehensible that a man in America could have that much legal power over his wife. Thank you to blog follower Carol Runyan, who told me to read Kate Moore’s amazing story, The Woman They Could Not Silence.

I heartedly recommend Moore’s book so you can read and understand the complete significance of Elizabeth Packard’s trauma and achievements. As we end one year and start another, I am grateful and in awe of all the women who devoted their lives to making our world a better place for everyone. Blessings to you and yours this holiday season.

~ Linda

www.lindasittig.com