The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear

Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard was born in Ware, Massachusetts, in 1816, the daughter of a Calvinist minister. As a young woman whose family had means, she attended the Amherst Female Seminary and went on to become the principal of Randolph College, a school for women. While there, at 19, Elizabeth was sent to Worcester State Lunatic Asylum, where she remained for six weeks until she was pronounced recovered. She received exceptional care, but a retrospective investigation of her experience confirmed that she had a physical, not mental, illness, likely a brain infection closely associated with encephalitis or meningitis. When she was 23, she married Reverend Theophilus Packard, 15 years her senior. Together they had children, and in 1854, they left New England and moved to the Midwest, finally settling in Manteno, Illinois. There, Theophilus became pastor of the local Presbyterian church, and Elizabeth developed an even greater interest in the theology she loved. Elizabeth refused to comply when her husband decreed without explanation that their congregation would be switching their doctrine away from the New School views they had previously held and instead embrace Old School doctrine, insisting that she would not abandon her fierce allegiance to abolition. She began to write essays and share her views at their Bible studies, eventually forced by her husband to discontinue participation. In frustration, Elizabeth left the church and became a Methodist. In June 1860, Elizabeth was forcibly taken away from her home and her six children and placed in Jacksonville State Asylum for the Insane in Jacksonville, Illinois. She spent the next three years battling the superintendent to discharge her and writing thousands of pages on women’s rights as “asylum” patients, the mistreatment of “asylum” patients, and the duties of “asylum” superintendents. After her release, she returned home against her husband’s wishes and secured an “insanity hearing.” Declared to not have a mental illness, she spent the next several years campaigning for reform and publishing her collective works. Elizabeth reunited with her children after several years apart from them when they moved into one of two homes she purchased for herself in Illinois. Though she remained cordial with Theophilus, he did not reside in her new home, and they never lived as husband and wife again. She divided her time between traveling across the United States to pursue her activism and spending time at home with her children. She died suddenly due to a ruptured hernia in 1897.

Dr. Andrew McFarland was born in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1817. He was educated at Dartmouth College and appointed superintendent of the New Hampshire Asylum for the Insane in August 1854, where he remained for seven years, after which he practiced as a physician in Concord and Lawrence, Massachusetts. He published a book called The Escape in 1851. In 1854, he became the superintendent at the Illinois State Asylum for the Insane in Jacksonville until his resignation in 1869. He then founded Oak Lawn Retreat, a private psychiatric facility in Jacksonville. He died by suicide in 1891, hanging himself in one of the vacant private rooms at Oak Lawn. At the time, he had been suffering from swelling in the brain that was steadily progressing.

Throughout his career at Jacksonville, numerous allegations from staff and patients alike accused McFarland of grossly mismanaging the “asylum” through his lack of vigilance concerning the abuses taking place there at the hands of the attendants. Many alleged that McFarland was also highly manipulative and perhaps sexually abusive to those in his care. An oversight committee recommended his discharge as superintendent of Jacksonville in the late 1860s, but his loyal supporters on the board of trustees resigned so that he could thwart the committee’s recommendation. He spent much of his life pursuing Elizabeth Packard, attempting to destroy her reputation after she was discharged from his “asylum” and managed to successfully advocate and legislate on behalf of those with mental illnesses, using him and her experience at Jacksonville as justification for much-needed reform.