But if it seemed as if there were therefore no legal reforms for Elizabeth to undertake, nothing could have been further from the truth. Through one of her new allies, a thirty-eight-year-old Chicago judge named James Bradwell—whose brilliant wife, Myra, later became the first woman admitted to the bar in Illinois—Elizabeth had learned that the new law was frequently being flouted. It had no penalties attached for noncompliance, so there was literally no way for it to be enforced. In addition, it was not retroactive, meaning all those wives admitted to the asylum before a jury trial became （allegedly） compulsory were still there and still had no remedy for their release. As Elizabeth saw it, the 1865 law was “a dead letter in practice.”4
These flaws in the law were what Elizabeth now intended to fix, so as “to relieve all the unjustly imprisoned victims in that institution.”5 Even before arriving at the Governor’s Mansion that January night, she’d put what she’d learned in other states into practice, producing a petition to enlist support. Even as she spoke with the governor, that paperwork was in her pocket. It had been signed thus far by thirty-six men, including a mayor, a congressman, and “some of the heaviest merchants and businessmen of Chicago.”6
As soon as Oglesby mentioned his friendship with McFarland, Elizabeth presented the petition. McFarland may well have had friends in high places, but by now, so did she. She handed it over, pressing the governor to look closely at those influential signatures giving their support.
Oglesby had “a studious and thoughtful mind”;7 upon seeing the names, he put every synapse of that brain to work. As he reviewed the impressive list, the governor’s “tone and manner changed at once.”8 Cordial now, he invited Elizabeth to his office the very next day to discuss the matter further.
Elizabeth wasted no time getting to her point. Oglesby was renowned for his “wise, just and honest administration,”9 and she found he listened patiently, then offered assistance. He introduced her to Elmer Baldwin, a member of the Illinois House of Representatives, and via Baldwin’s contacts, Elizabeth pitched her proposed bill widely, including making an informal presentation in the state house library one Friday night to “a very respectable number of members.”10 Best of all, she secured an introduction to the Judiciary Committee and to Senator Joseph Ward, who helped her draft a new personal liberty bill. It set out both that patients must not be admitted without a jury trial and that any current patient who’d been admitted without one was now entitled to be so judged.
After Ward completed his draft, Elizabeth was invited by the Judiciary Committee to review it with them. It was her last chance to make changes before the bill was formally introduced before the general assembly.
The draft was read aloud; she was asked if it suited her.
Elizabeth replied promptly, “Gentlemen, it does not… It needs a penalty attached, for as it now stands ’tis merely legislative advice.”11
The committee duly added a penalty of a fine （not less than $500, not more than $1,000） or imprisonment （not less than three months, not more than a year）， or both, for any doctor who admitted a patient to an asylum without trial.
“There is no [deadline] appointed for the trial of the [current] inmates of the asylum,” she pointed out.
This too was introduced: sixty days from the moment the bill became law.
Elizabeth breathed a sigh of satisfaction. “Gentlemen, the bill suits me now.”
“Then we will recommend its passage.”
And that is exactly what the committee did, from the moment it was introduced to the general assembly for its consideration in mid-January 1867.
To her delight, Elizabeth found that the politicians were far from the only people to support her campaign. Both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Times wrote endorsing editorials of her work, while the Daily Illinois State Register was also an ally. Elizabeth herself wrote several anonymous articles published statewide. At every opportunity, she also shared her “sensational novel”12—both the books she’d published to date. Illinois readers soon declared they “ought to be read by every citizen.”13
But while the world at large seemed increasingly supportive, at least one man was not: Dr. Andrew McFarland. He’d strongly objected to the passing of the 1865 law, but in his view, Elizabeth’s new personal liberty bill was palpably worse.
“[It] is injurious, odious, barbarous, damnable, and you may add as many more expletives to it as you please, and still not say the truth in regard to its evils,”14 he railed. McFarland objected to jury trials on principle, feeling “the haphazard opinions and caprices of men grossly ignorant of the subject before them”15 were not the way to determine insanity; only experts like himself should be given authority to judge. In that spring of 1867, he was campaigning too, but he wanted the opposite to Elizabeth: a complete repeal of the 1865 law so things would go back to the way they were before.