He had reason to be. Though life had thrown the odd curveball at him, he’d always bounced back—and then some. Back in 1887, the original Oak Lawn had burned down, but he had rebuilt and, only that September, had handed over its management to his doctor son, George, so the McFarland legacy could continue. In 1886, Elizabeth had finally lost her patience and sued him for libel, claiming damages of $25,000 （$686,093） for his constant claims that she was insane. Available records do not indicate a verdict, but McFarland would have won if the case did come to trial. Elizabeth had specifically sued about a letter published in the New Jersey press, but McFarland denied “having written any article,”51 and he was right. It was his private correspondence to a fellow superintendent that had been published, and he had no control over whether his letters happened to be leaked…
In his own private life, meanwhile, though his first wife died, he remarried only the following year to a woman, Abby Knox, seven years his junior. And though it proved an unhappy marriage—less than nine months after the wedding, Abby had fled the asylum, alleging physical and emotional abuse at her husband’s hands—it did not affect McFarland, financially at least. Abby filed for divorce on the grounds of cruelty, requesting maintenance and an equal share of property, but Isaac Morrison, McFarland’s longtime lawyer, immediately submitted a cross-bill alleging desertion on her part. Seemingly under pressure, Abby withdrew her bill, so the judge ruled in favor of the doctor.
On that November day in 1891, just as the sun was setting, McFarland paused outside a vacant room. He was in a quiet corridor; only one patient resided in that particular part of the hospital. Working methodically, he removed his hat from his sore head and slipped off his shoes. Then he loosened his necktie and collar before taking them off too. Only once he was shorn of these accoutrements did he step inside that empty room and close the door behind him.
Once inside, he slipped off his jacket, his waistcoat too. Putting his back into it, as his arms no longer worked as they once had, he dragged the washstand closer to the door. He forced his limbs to follow his orders and managed to climb up onto it.
One wonders what thoughts were flitting through his mind. Did he think of the head injury he’d sustained in the Oak Lawn fire, the one he’d recently been told would prove fatal? Did he think of the depression he’d suffered the past few months, ever since he’d received that diagnosis? Or did he think of the requiem he’d already written: “I’m weary; let me rest”？52
Did he even think of Elizabeth?
Probably not.
Whatever was going through the doctor’s mind, he had made it up. That afternoon, he stepped off the washstand…and into an eternal silence. His inquest declared it was “Death by strangulation…while laboring under temporary mental aberration.”53
The doctor hung himself.
In almost every one of his obituaries, the journalists namechecked Elizabeth and the “famous Packard investigation.”54 Even in death, they danced their strange duet. The two of them were bound together in history now—and they always would be.
As for Elizabeth, she outlived both the men who’d tried to silence her; she truly had the last word. She continued in good health until the start of her eighth decade, living with Toffy, the son who’d always been such a support, while she cared for Libby in California. In July 1897, she traveled with her daughter to Chicago, perhaps to visit Samuel and his family or to return to her own home on Prairie Avenue. Despite Libby’s condition, they made it, but less than a week later, Elizabeth was rushed to the hospital. It was there that she died, aged eighty, from a strangulated hernia. It was July 25, 1897.
Her death was reported all across the country, the news mourned “with sincere sorrow by the thousands of men and women throughout the United States who had aided and sympathized in Mrs. Packard’s philanthropic efforts.”55
“She was remarkably successful,” avowed the Boston Transcript, “and to her efforts are due the enactment of many measures for ameliorating the condition of such unfortunates. It has been claimed that no woman of her day, except possibly Harriet Beecher Stowe, exerted a wider influence in the interest of humanity.”56
The Chicago Tribune put it more simply: “Wise Friend of the Insane Is Dead.”57
The papers declared she had left “an enviable record behind.”58 She’d also left her vast raft of bestselling books. Yet despite Elizabeth having lived such an incredibly public life, the final act in her own great drama was pronounced “strictly private.”59 Only family and close friends attended her funeral as she was laid to rest in Rosehill Cemetery.