24 Facts About Elizabeth Packard

Elizabeth Packard was wrongfully committed to an insane asylum by her husband, who claimed that she had been insane for more than three years.

Elizabeth Packard later founded the Anti-Insane Asylum Society, campaigning for divorced women to retain custody of their children.

Elizabeth Packard, born in Ware, Massachusetts, was the oldest of three children and the only daughter of Samuel and Lucy Ware.

Elizabeth Packard was educated at the Amherst Female Seminary, where she studied French, algebra, and the new classics, thanks to the "adequate wealth" of her parents.

In 1860, Theophilus Elizabeth Packard judged that his wife was "slightly insane", a condition he attributed to "excessive application of body and mind".

Elizabeth Packard learned of this decision on June 18,1860, when the county sheriff arrived at the Packard home to take her into custody.

Elizabeth Packard spent the next three years at the Jacksonville Insane Asylum in Jacksonville, Illinois.

Elizabeth Packard was regularly questioned by doctors, but refused to agree that she was insane or to change her religious views.

Elizabeth Packard managed to drop a letter complaining of this treatment out of the window, which was delivered to her friend Sarah Haslett.

At the subsequent trial of Packard v Packard, which lasted five days, Theophilus's lawyers produced witnesses from his family who testified that Elizabeth had argued with her husband and tried to withdraw from his congregation.

The record from the Illinois State Hospital stating that Mrs Elizabeth Packard's condition was incurable was entered into the court record.

Elizabeth Packard was legally declared sane, and Judge Charles Starr, who had changed the trial from one about habeas corpus to one about sanity, issued an order that she should not be confined.

When Elizabeth Packard returned to the home she shared with her husband in Manteno, Illinois, she found that the night before her release, her husband had rented their home to another family, sold her furniture, had taken her money, notes, wardrobe and children, and had left the state.

Elizabeth Packard appealed to the Supreme Courts of both Illinois and Massachusetts, to where her husband had taken her children, but had no legal recourse, as married women in these states at the time had no legal rights to their property or children.

Elizabeth Packard did not return to her former life, but became a national celebrity, publishing "an armload of books and criss-crossing the United States on a decades-long reform campaign", not only advocating for married women's rights and freedom of speech, but speaking out against "the power of insane asylums".

Elizabeth Packard became what some scholars call "a publicist and lobbyist for better insanity laws".

Elizabeth Packard petitioned the Illinois and Massachusetts legislatures, and in 1869 legislation was passed in those states allowing married women equal rights to property and custody of their children.

Elizabeth Packard realized how narrow her legal victory had been, and that the underlying social principles which had led to her confinement still existed.

Elizabeth Packard founded the Anti-Insane Asylum Society and published several books, including Marital Power Exemplified, or Three Years Imprisonment for Religious Belief, Great Disclosure of Spiritual Wickedness in High Places, The Mystic Key or the Asylum Secret Unlocked, and The Prisoners' Hidden Life, Or Insane Asylums Unveiled.

Elizabeth Packard only received broader recognition, starting in the 1930s, by a well-known historian of mental illness, Albert Deutsch, and again in the 1960s from those who were "attacking the medical model of insanity".

In 1991, Barbara Sapinsley wrote the first book which focused on Elizabeth Packard, entitled The Private War of Mrs Packard.

In 2021, Kate Moore wrote a detailed and highly researched story highlighting the character of kindness, service, and perseverance of Elizabeth Packard entitled The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear.

Emily Mann wrote the play Mrs Elizabeth Packard, which premiered in May 2007.

In Mann's play, Elizabeth Packard describes her life fully in the insane asylum; it is considered historically accurate.