Elizabeth may have narrowed her eyes at that. She’d been absolutely right to fear calamity. If this doctor and her husband had had their way, she’d already have been on her way to an asylum.
“Her viewing the subject of religion,” continued Brown pompously, his doctor’s sensibility offended by the amused reaction of the crowd, “from the osteric standpoint of Christian exegetical analysis, and agglutinating the polsynthetical ectoblasts of homogeneous asceticism.”
If it was meant to shame an ignorant crowd into silence, his high-flown language absolutely failed. “The witness left the stand amid roars of laughter,” Stephen Moore later recalled, perhaps trying to suppress a smile himself, “and it required some moments to restore order in the courtroom.”
When the gathered crowds at last fell silent, it was to hear the oath of Dr. Joseph Way, who’d also recently certified Elizabeth’s insanity. History does not record where he waited before giving evidence, but his account was such that it was almost as if he’d just overheard Brown’s humiliation.
Bonfield talked him through his examination of Elizabeth.
“On most subjects she was quite sane,” recalled Way. “On the subject of religion I thought she had some ideas that are not generally entertained. At that time, I thought her to be somewhat deranged or excited on that subject; since that time,” he added, “I have thought perhaps I was not a proper judge.”
It was hardly the indictment Bonfield had been aiming for.
“I am not much posted on disputed points in theology,” the doctor continued anxiously, “and I find that other people entertain similar ideas. They are not in accordance with my views, but”—and here he differed from Dr. Knott, who’d condemned three-fourths of believers with his opinion—“that is no evidence that she is insane.”
There was barely anything for Moore to do on his cross-examination after testimony like that.
“She was perfectly sane on every subject except religion,” Way confirmed, “and I would not swear now that she was insane.”
This was really not the start to the trial that Theophilus had wanted. But he still had more witnesses to come—and he was far more confident in those who were to follow. Because it had not only been him who’d worked so hard to commit Elizabeth in 1860. His parishioners had literally petitioned for that end.
The very first sermon ever preached in his former church had been 1 Corinthians 1:10: “Now I beseech you, brethren…that ye all speak the same thing.”18
Elizabeth was about to learn if the wolves were all still howling from the same hymn sheet.
CHAPTER 43
As the trial continued, it excited “much attention”1—“one of the most remarkable cases ever brought before a judicial tribunal,”2 declared the Chicago Tribune. Each day that Elizabeth arrived at the courthouse—she was staying with friends while her case was heard—the crowd seemed to have swollen in size.
Many people were on her side. “Mrs. Packard, I always knew you were not insane,” they would shout as she fought her way toward the courtroom, or “I always felt that you was an abused woman.”3 Theophilus, in turn, had his own supporters. Samuel Packard, now sixteen, attended court in his father’s corner, his “hypnotic and compelling…intense blue eyes”4 watching every moment of his mother’s trial.
And then there were the Doles.
“One morning early, I was sent for,” Deacon Abijah Dole began as he took the stand. He told a story of finding Elizabeth in her night clothes, her long brown hair an unruly river. “Her hair was disheveled,” he testified. “Her face looked wild.”5
His implication was plain: if her appearance was as unpinned as this, what was happening in her mind? He was happy, too, to throw some Salem-style witchcraft into the mix for good measure.
“She took me by the hand and led me to the bed,” he recalled. “Libby was lying in bed, moaning and moving her head… She [Elizabeth] called Mr. Packard a devil.”
Under cross-examination, he continued, “I supposed when I first went into the room that her influence over the child had caused the child to become deranged… I believed that she had exerted some mesmeric or other influence over the child, that caused it to moan and toss its head.”
Only under further questioning from Moore would he admit that “the child had been sick with brain fever” and that Elizabeth’s distressed appearance might have been caused by her watching over her daughter all night. Tight-lipped, Dole had to confirm, “The child got well.”