Nor was it solely the fear of jury trials that had an impact; the committee’s almost year-long focus on the hospital did too. Ten percent more patients were discharged in 1867–68 than in the previous two years. It was, in fact, the highest recorded discharge rate in the hospital’s entire history. That same year, McFarland even released the asylum’s first-ever patient, the woman who’d been committed for “extreme jealousy,”4 whose insanity had seemingly warranted a sixteen-year seclusion from society. Suddenly, she was free to go.
Elizabeth’s law had not come too late after all. She had helped her sisters; it was just that they’d been snuck out the back door.
But thanks to McFarland’s manipulation of the situation, she didn’t even know it.
Fuller moved on to the issue of “unjust commitments.”5 Regarding the question of whether any patients had been unjustly placed in the asylum, the committee concluded, “The answer must be in the affirmative.” Of the 205 patients in the Jacksonville asylum who’d been admitted since the passage of the 1865 law, only 57 had “regular and complete” paperwork. A massive 148 had been admitted “without the proper legal evidence of their insanity.”
“That there should appear so large a proportion of the admissions in violation of law,” intoned Fuller in a somber tone, “shows a carelessness on this subject without excuse, and deserving of censure.”
The censure continued. On the classification of patients—raised by Elizabeth as an issue when she’d complained of having been moved to Eighth Ward as punishment—Fuller deemed McFarland’s policy “fundamentally wrong”6 and the doctor guilty of “most culpable and cruel conduct.”7
It had certainly felt cruel to Elizabeth at the time.
Then there were pages and pages of evidence relating to the barbaric treatment of patients, such as choking, beating, and baths that were used not to clean but to control patients. Those were perhaps the most difficult passages for Fuller to read aloud.
Having laid out all the evidence, he reached the committee’s conclusions. He focused on their findings regarding McFarland.
Familiarity with suffering and sorrow has apparently, to some extent, deadened his sensibilities and sympathies; and, long accustomed to govern, he has become about the hospital…a kind of supreme law, and the rule of force has too often usurped the law of love… He assumes that insane patients are never to be believed, and therefore does not listen with favor to their complaints. He substantially denies the right of petition and investigation… He does not require or encourage attendants to report to him each other’s delinquencies… His government of patients is believed too severe, and his discipline of attendants too mild…
After…carefully reviewing and considering the evidence, the Committee unanimously resolved that it seemed their imperative duty to recommend: An immediate change in the office of Superintendent.8
They thought McFarland should be fired for what he’d done.
By the time Fuller finished reading, the trustees were almost apoplectic with rage. They felt as the AMSAII did, that McFarland should be “presumptively entitled to favorable regard, by reason of [his] standing”9 and to “charitable constructions of [his] acts.”10 But above all they resented the committee’s dramatic conclusion, which they felt was more a direct order than a gentle recommendation to a fellow body of men. Fuller was overstepping the mark and by a long way; only the trustees had the legal power to hire or fire the superintendent. They felt he was infringing on their territory.
They also thought the “evidence” he’d collected was literally not worth the paper it was written on. Because who had given all this so-called evidence against their institution? Former patients. People “whose recovery, in all instances, is more than doubtful.”11 Such an unreliable source of information was not “worthy of serious public attention,”12 and they therefore attached “but small importance”13 to it. As for the attendants turned whistleblowers, the trustees thought them disgruntled former employees: lower-class “servants”14 who’d found the opportunity to speak out against their “former master…too tempting.”15 They were unreliable too.
But without the witness evidence, there was no evidence of patient abuse.
And if the trustees chose to ignore it, McFarland was in the clear.
Having presented his report, Fuller left them to debate their decision, hoping they’d adopt his recommendation. Instead, the trustees unanimously agreed to write at once to the governor to prevent publication. They dashed off a missive on McFarland’s letterhead notepaper to request the governor suppress the report, temporarily at least, while they conducted their own inquiry.