This Week's Story
click here to play audioElizabeth Packard discovers that she has been tricked by the director of Jacksonville Insane Asylum. She takes action!
This Week’s Story relives American history and the Bible through brief inspiring stories presented on mp3 audio recordings and text for reading.
I shall put you into the asylum! part eight
Elizabeth was distressed. “There is no secure protection or treatment in this insane asylum. The attendants have little or no medical training. They are overworked and underpaid. Nothing is done here to bring healing for the insane. Only their most basic physical needs are met.
“As asylum director, Dr. McFarland manages 231 patients. He makes rules and keeps order. He quiets unruly patients with drugs, especially ether and chloroform. The doctor allows restraining and isolation of patients. He is not a licensed medical doctor.”
The third month of Elizabeth’s forced incarceration, Toffy, Elizabeth’s firstborn son visited her. At eighteen he looked to be a young man, but he kissed and hugged her with the love of a child.
“Mother, I see it is just as I expected, you are not insane; but the same kind mother as ever.”
Before leaving he promised, “I will write you and do all I can to get you out of here.”
Visitors came rarely to the asylum. Patients felt forsaken. A fence outside the windows of the lower ward had been built since patients had reported to Elizabeth Dr. McFarland’s abuse. As ordered to do by the doctor, Elizabeth did not talk to the lower ward patients any longer, but their voices carried to her; as she was allowed to walk on the asylum outdoor grounds.
Then she discovered that she had been duped. In Dr. McFarland’s office she recognized the handwriting of her son Toffy on a letter. She grabbed it with joy. “Oh, my letter!!”
Dr. McFarland snatched it. smiled, and kept it.
Her brain shouted to her, “I cannot trust the doctor’s word!”
At parties in the asylum, attendants would dance with patients. Never could patients dance with patients. Elizabeth danced for the first time. She loved the ease and grace of the motions.
One day the doctor attempted to dance with her in his office and kissed her on the forehead. Given his position as director of the asylum and her Christian background, his actions were an insult to her self-respect and shocked her.
“Dr. McFarland, men do not send their wives here expecting that you will show your moral treatment in this manner.”
She decided after the experience: “My self-defense will be writing. I have been here nearly four months, and despite being given more freedom than the other patients, I will lift my voice for myself and for the freedom of the other women imprisoned here.
“I will write two documents. One will be a defense of my sanity and the other will be a criticism of cruel treatment I have seen done to women on the Seventh Ward.”
On October 26, 1860 Elizabeth gave her defense to the doctor.
Dr. McFarland read Elizabeth’s defense knowing well that he had no proof of her being insane.
However, in her defense statement she crossed a boundary. Previously she did not express to the doctor her disgust with her husband’s attempts to keep her quiet and under his control.
She proposed that the doctor release her from the asylum to be an independent woman. She urged him to protect her and other oppressed women. That is exactly what he did not want to do.
Elizabeth presented her second document. A brutal response came that eventually led to mental health reforms in many states in the United States.
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