The law did not apply to married women. They could be received at an asylum simply “by the request of the husband.”4
Because married women at that time in the eyes of the law were “civilly dead.”5 They were not citizens, they were shadows: subsumed within the legal identities of their husbands from the moment they took their marital vows. “The husband and wife are one,” said the law, “and that one is the husband.”6 He spoke for her, thought for her, and could do what he wanted with her. The law gave him power “to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.”7
In sending Elizabeth to an asylum, Theophilus Packard planned to do both.
The Illinois law in fact explicitly stated that married women could be admitted “without the evidence of insanity…required in other cases.”8 The only safety net was that admittance only occurred “if the Medical Superintendent shall be satisfied that they are insane.”9
But Theophilus had already dealt with that. Though the state hospital was overcrowded, rejecting 75 percent of all applicants, Elizabeth had been selected as a patient on the strength of her husband’s application.
Theophilus just needed to get her there.
Elizabeth’s mind spun from what he told her. Under the laws of the United States at that time, a man’s wife was his property: Theophilus could do as he wished. She later wrote in bleak despair, “I…have married away all the freedom I ever had in America.”10
Although the crisis had been coming for months, at this, its climax, she still felt betrayed. She and Theophilus had been married for twenty-one years. She had borne him six children. She had lived with him, laughed with him, sometimes even longed for him. She’d railed at him, rued for him, rubbed along with him for decades. She’d poured every ounce of energy she had into building their home and making their meals—into making a life together. Now, he was tearing her from it.
“If it had been an open enemy who had done it,” she later wrote, “I could have borne it with comparative ease, but it is him, mine acquaintance, my equal, and one whom the world considered my best friend.”11 She felt herself reeling from the revelation: “[The] man to whom I trusted…myself has proved a traitor.”12
She kept calm. Very quickly, she recognized that wailing and railing at the injustice would only add weight to her husband’s claim that she was mad. Ironically, the harder she fought for her freedom, the more likely it was to be lost. How convenient for him if she acted in such a way to support his plan of banishment!
So she did not cry. She did not let herself think about her children. She channeled all her energy into self-possession, body and face becoming a blank canvas on which she let nothing show.
But inside, Elizabeth’s mind was racing. She still hoped for some legal remedy, at least for some chance of self-defense. Securing her essays was therefore essential. Thinking quickly, she asked all present to leave her room so she could bathe and dress in private, intending to secrete her Bible class essays beneath her cage crinoline.
But Theophilus narrowed his eyes at her request. He insisted that Sarah Rumsey stay. Elizabeth protested—just think of the impropriety of bathing before this girl!—but he was resolute.
Under Sarah’s watchful eyes, she dared not take the papers. Awkwardly, Elizabeth finished her ablutions and began to dress. She donned her wardrobe like armor, each garment a godsend that gave a touch more time at home. She heaved on her corset and her petticoats, spread out her heavy skirts across her cage crinoline.
Too soon, she ran out of items. With a sense of frustrating finality, she slung her traveling shawl across her shoulders and tied her bonnet ribbons beneath her chin. As she picked up her smart gold pocket watch, Elizabeth tried not to note the time, not to see how little freedom she had left. Already, the watch’s message was meaningless.
All that mattered was that time was running out.
CHAPTER 4
She refused to walk to the station. It was one of the few protests she had left. Of course, it didn’t make a difference. The two doctors simply swept her up in their arms and carried her to the waiting wagon.
All the way there, Elizabeth protested calmly, asking for a legal trial and vowing she would never leave her children voluntarily. She begged of Theophilus the chance to see them one last time before they left Manteno, but he bluntly told her no. It was not an accident that none were present. He was not about to bring them back to see her stolen from them.
As she tried to reason with him, Theophilus claimed, “It is for your good I am doing this. I want to save your soul…I want to make you right.”1