Moore talked him through the other topics they’d discussed, but although Brown conceded that on most, Elizabeth “exhibited no special marks of insanity,” he still would not be swayed from his focal point.
“I brought up the subject of religion,” he testified. “Then I had not the slightest difficulty in concluding that she was hopelessly insane.”
Moore paused. As a lawyer, he was famed for his “clear and lucid”16 logic and his ability to use “simplicity of statement” to make his points clear to a jury, no matter their own intellectual ability. He decided to drill into Elizabeth’s so-called madness and illuminate it for the watching jurymen.
“Doctor,” he began, “what particular idea did she advance on the subject of religion that led you to the conclusion that she was hopelessly insane?”17
“She advanced many of them,” Brown said vaguely. “I formed my opinion not so much on any one idea advanced, as upon her whole conversation.” Perhaps feeling under pressure, he added, “She then said that she was the ‘Personification of the Holy Ghost.’ I did not know what she meant by that.”
“Was…that a new idea to you in theology?” Moore asked lightly, seemingly sympathetic to the doctor’s struggle.
“It was,” Brown affirmed.
“Are you much of a theologian?”
“No,” the doctor conceded.
“Then,” said Elizabeth’s lawyer, his tone sharpening, “because the idea was a novel one to you, you pronounced her insane.”
“Well,” said Brown defensively, “I pronounced her insane on that and other things that exhibited themselves in this conversation.”
Moore would not let him slither away that easily. He pinned him, asking, “Did she not show more familiarity with the subject of religion and the questions of theology, than you had with these subjects?”
“I do not pretend much knowledge on these subjects,” Brown replied, flustered at the very suggestion that a woman might be more expert than he.
“What else did she say or do there,” Moore inquired, “that showed marks of insanity?”
“She claimed to be better than her husband,” Brown said hurriedly. To a doctor, this would genuinely have seemed insane, given the “scientific” belief of the era that white men were biologically superior to all. Nor had Brown finished. “She had a great aversion to being called insane. Before I got through the conversation she exhibited a great dislike to me, and almost treated me in a contemptuous manner.”
What unnatural, sick, unfeminine behavior…
Brown was Bonfield’s witness again. Perhaps sensing that the doctor had more to say on his reasons for finding Elizabeth mad, Theophilus’s lawyer asked him to state “all the reasons you have for pronouncing her insane.”
Happily, Brown pulled out some notes he’d brought with him. “I have written down, in order,” he said, regaining his professional deportment, “the reasons which I had, to found my opinion on, that she was insane.” He cleared his throat. “I will read them.”
All around the courtroom, the gathered masses leaned in. Elizabeth, at her lawyers’ table, turned her bright brown eyes on him as she listened.
“That she disliked to be called insane,” he read. “That she pronounced me a copperhead [unsupportive of the Union in the Civil War], and did not prove the fact. An incoherency of thought. That she failed to illuminate me and fill me with light.”
Glances began to be exchanged among the spectators.
“Her aversion to the doctrine of the total depravity of man,” he continued. “Her claim to perfection or nearer perfection in action and conduct.” He was perhaps getting flustered. “Her aversion to being called insane,” he repeated. “Her feelings towards her husband.”
The crowd was getting restless now. These were no reasons to say a woman was mad.
“Her belief that to call her insane and abuse her, was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Her explanation of this idea. Incoherency of thought and ideas.”
But it was Brown who was becoming incoherent. “Her extreme aversion to the doctrine of the total depravity of mankind,” he said again over a rumble of laughter from the crowd, “and in the same conversation, saying her husband was a specimen of man’s total depravity.”
He may have raised his voice to be heard over the laughter. “The general history of the case,” he asserted. “Her belief that some calamity would befall her, owing to my being there, and her refusal to shake hands with me when I went away.”