The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear
Kate Moore
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is not a book about mental health, but about how it can be used as a weapon.
It’s a historical book. And as the people about whom I’ve written used their own contemporaneous terms to describe “madness”—such as the insane and lunatics and maniacs—I have used them too, though they’re clearly not acceptable or appropriate in the modern age. As I hope this book will make clear, they were always blanket terms anyway, too broad and all-encompassing ever to be useful or sensitive to truth.
It’s a nonfiction book. Everything in it is based on careful historical research. Every line of dialogue comes from a memoir, letter, trial transcript, or some other record made by someone who was present at the time.
It’s a book that is set over 160 years ago. A lot has changed. A lot hasn’t. We are only just beginning to appreciate exactly how a person’s powerlessness may lead to struggles with their mental health. With that understanding, statistics showing higher rates of mental illness in women, people of color, and other disenfranchised groups become translated into truth: not a biological deficiency, as doctors first thought, but a cultural creation that, if we wanted to, we could do something about.
So in the end, this is a book about power. Who wields it. Who owns it. And the methods they use.
And above all, it’s about fighting back.
There’s no more powerful way to silence someone than to call them crazy.
—Holly Bourne, 20181
Confusion has seized us, and all things go wrong, The women have leaped from “their spheres,”
And, instead of fixed stars, shoot as comets along, And are setting the world by the ears!…
They’ve taken a notion to speak for themselves, And are wielding the tongue and the pen…
Now, misses may reason, and think, and debate, Till unquestioned submission is quite out of date…
Like the devils of Milton, they rise from each blow, With spirit unbroken, insulting the foe.
—Maria Weston Chapman, 18402
PROLOGUE
If she screamed, she sealed her fate. She had to keep her rage locked up inside her, her feelings as tightly buttoned as her blouse.
Nevertheless, they came for her. Two men pressed around her, lifting her in their arms, her wide skirts crushed by their clumsy movements—much like her heart inside her chest. Still, she did not fight back, did not lash out wildly, did not slap or hit. The only protest she could permit herself was this: a paralysis of her limbs. She held her body stiff and unyielding and refused to walk to her destiny, no matter how he begged.
Amid the vast crowd that had gathered to bear witness, just one person spoke. The voice was high-pitched and pleading: female, a friend. “Is there no man in this crowd to protect this woman?” she cried aloud. “Is there no man among you? If I were a man, I would seize hold upon her!”1
But no man stepped forward. No one helped. Instead, a “silent and almost speechless gaze” met her frightened eyes, their inaction as impotent as her own subjected self.2
She didn’t know the truth yet. In time, she would.
The only person who could save her was herself.
PART ONE
BRAVE NEW WORLD
A wife once kissed her husband, and said she, “My own dear Will, how dearly I love thee!”
Who ever knew a lady, good or ill, that did not love her own sweet will?
—Chicago Jokes and Anecdotes for Railroad Travelers and Fun Lovers, 18661
Unruly women are always witches, no matter what century we’re in.
—Roxane Gay, 20152
CHAPTER 1
June 18, 1860
Manteno, Illinois
It was the last day, but she didn’t know it.
In truth, we never do.
Not until it is too late.
She woke in a handsome maple bed, body covered by a snow-white counterpane. As her senses resurfaced after a restless night’s sleep, Elizabeth Packard’s brown eyes blearily mapped the landmarks of her room: embroidered ottoman, mahogany bureau, and smart green shutters that—for some reason—were failing to let in any light.
Ordinarily, her husband of twenty-one years—Theophilus, a preacher—would have been snoring next to her, his gravity-defying, curly red hair an impromptu pillow beneath his head. But a few long weeks before, he’d abandoned their marital bed.
He thought it best, or so he’d said, to sleep alone these days.
Instead, her senses were filled by the precious proximity of her slumbering six-year-old son. Unconsciously, Elizabeth reached out for ten-year-old Libby and baby Arthur too—the other two of her six children who’d taken to sleeping beside her—before remembering. Only George was there. The others were both away from home, in what she hoped was coincidence.