Elizabeth Packard

Elizabeth Packard was born in Massachusetts in 1816 into a comfortable home where her parents were able to provide for her education. She taught briefly at a girls’ school before at age 23 agreeing at her parents’ urging to marry 37-year-old Calvinist minister Theophilus Packard. Over the next 20 years Elizabeth was a devoted mother and housewife who grew the family’s vegetables and sewed clothes for their six children.

To the outside world, it appeared to be a contented marriage, until Elizabeth started to publicly express her religious beliefs, which were at odds with her husband’s. Theophilus questioned her sanity and threatened to have her committed if she continued. Elizabeth continued, and Theophilus kept his promise, taking advantage of the law, which allowed a husband to have his wife committed, without either public hearing or her consent.

After three years in the Illinois State Asylum and Hospital for the Insane in Jacksonville, Illinois, Elizabeth was deemed incurable and released. Then, after getting the jury trial she’d been requesting for three years, Elizabeth was finally able to share her story with the world, and she began her remarkable career as a writer and social reformer.

In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the story of Elizabeth Packard’s life and interviews New York Times bestselling author Kate Moore, who has recently published a wonderfully detailed narrative account of Elizabeth Packard’s life, titled: The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: from Elizabeth Packard's 1866 book, Marital Power Exemplified in Mrs. Packard’s Trial.

Sources:

• The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear by Kate Moore
• "Declared Insane for Speaking Up: The Dark American History of Silencing Women Through Psychiatry," by Kate Moore. Time Magazine, June 22, 2021.
• "Marital Power Exemplified in Mrs. Packard's Trial, and Self-Defence from the Charge of Insanity" by Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard
• "Elizabeth Packard: Nineteenth-Century Crusader for the Rights of Mental Patients," by Myra Samuels Himelhoch and Arthur H. Shaffer, Journal of American Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Dec., 1979), pp. 343-375.
• "Badass Elizabeth Series," Packed with Packards Blog.

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