This Week's Story
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Though trapped in an asylum, Elizabeth Packard helps patients and continues her search for freedom.
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 ten
Elizabeth Packard declared, “The only way my mind can keep balanced in this asylum is by God’s grace.”
“I have always wanted to be with my children and care for them, but I have been torn from them by my husband. God has a different path for me. The women here in Jacksonville Insane Asylum are my ministry.”
She realized the patients’ desire to be heard. “I need to make more effort to listen to them.” She began to pray with them.
Elizabeth had a front row seat on events in the asylum. She saw women put into straightjackets, crib bedsteads, wrist straps, muffs, and mittens.
Elizabeth’s writing privileges were removed. She hunted old pens, pencil stubs, and scraps of newspaper. She sneaked tissue paper, brown paper, scraps of cotton cloth for writing paper. Her writing she hid in the crown of her bonnet.
Mail from her children was not delivered to her. Her inner cry was,
“When will I be discharged? Abuse became worse. Now Elizabeth was protecting patients who were genuinely mentally ill. When first she entered the asylum, she helped the sane patients around her in Ward Seven.
Dr. McFarland wrote, “She has become a dangerous patient!”
In Ward Eight Elizabeth saw attendants choking and beating mentally ill patients. One terrifying abuse was forcing a patient into cold water in a bathtub and holding her under the water. Elizabeth would hear screaming, silence, water-sloshing, then hopefully not silence but sloshing and the words, “I promise I will not scream.”
Two years after Elizabeth was admitted to the asylum, she wrote about the abuse to several newspapers under the names of the couple, Mr. and Mrs. Coe, the asylum cooks. They were willing to use Elizabeth’s writing skills and blow the whistle on the abuse. They received no response from the papers.
Elizabeth asked to meet the six hospital trustees at their quarterly meeting. Every ninety days they met, inspected the asylum, and with Dr. McFarland’s input decided which patients could be released. He allowed Elizabeth to make an appeal to the trustees for her release. They postponed their decision.
Dr. McFarland allowed her to make copies of her appeals. He surprisingly gave her a supply of writing paper. She had a vision of writing a large book about women’s rights. The book became a call for better rights for women, the mentally ill, African Americans, and Native Americans. She showed the need for specific legislative changes.
On October 16, of 1862 Elizabeth Packard finished The Great Drama. It was 2,500 pages and written in six weeks with a Bible, a dictionary, her memory, and imagination.
Another trustee meeting passed with the trustees indefinitely postponing her release. She began her second book. The trustees met again. This time, the trustees directed that she be discharged from the asylum!
Join us soon for the second series highlighting Elizabeth’s career after her discharge from Jacksonville Insane Asylum. Today’s story is brought to you by Todd Warren, Nathan Thomas, and Daniela Thomas.
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