Elizabeth Packard: A Noble Fight

11 Shooting the Rattlesnakes

11 Shooting the Rattlesnakes Fol lo w ing he r def ea t in Connecticut in June 1866, Packard returned to her father’s home to ponder her next move. In late August, Samuel Ware died, having “repented of the wrongs . . . innocently done” to his daughter.1 He bequeathed $2,000 to charity, but left most of his $14,211estate to his three children in equal parts.2 Dispersal of the money was delayed when Packard’s stepmother contested the will.3 Thus, Packard returned to Chicago in late 1866 without her share of the inheritance, but apparently with substantial profits from sales of her books. She recorded that she sent her husband “a Christmas letter” that year saying that by “kind Providence” and her own diligent efforts she had been “so abundantly rewarded and successful” that she was in a position to assume “pecuniary responsibilities” for her family. She offered a home to both him and the children—with the condition that the property must be in her name. The family, she said, could choose the location for the home, except that it must be near a college that accepted both males and females.4 Packard recorded that Theophilus refused her offer “with indignant scorn,” but that she, nevertheless, began sending him “board money for the children” so that they could be kept together and not dispersed among family members. She reportedly also sent gifts and money directly to the children. To further ease his financial woes, she agreed to sign away her right of dower to their property in Mount Pleasant.5 Theophilus mentioned nothing about assistance from his wife, but recorded that he had “received liberal aid” from friends in the community. He also noted in his diary that “through the great mercy of God and in his wonderful Providence,” he was finally able to pay off the nearly $4,000 debt he had incurred a decade earlier.6 Andrew McFarland, likely with Packard in mind, had once reported that one patient with moral insanity could “cause more annoyance than scores of ordinary cases.” It was fortunate, he suggested, “if some imaginary call” sent such persons “abroad . . . as peripatetic reformers.” Such “a vagrant life,” he noted, tended to “dissipate . . . any intensities of feelings” and the sad individual would “eventually sink out of sight.”7 Unfortunately for McFarland, Elizabeth Packard’s career as a “peripatetic reformer” was only beginning, and she was not about to sink out of sight. Indeed, McFarland now stood in the crosshairs of her agenda for justice and reform as she prepared to carry her accusations of “foul conspiracy” to the Illinois state legislature. While Packard was in New England, Illinois had amended its commitment law, largely in reaction to publicity stirred by her case. The new law, approved in February 1865, required a jury trial for “women and infants” as it always had for men. It also provided that the person alleged to be insane must be present at any hearing or trial regarding his or her case.8 McFarland, of course, opposed this law and immediately called for its repeal.9 Packard, however, believed the new law was flawed because it included no penalties for noncompliance. She now turned to Cook County Judge James Bradwell for assistance. Both Bradwell and his wife, Myra, were not only woman’s rights advocates but were, like Sewall and Phillips in Massachusetts, politically astute lawyers Figure 9. Attorney James B. Bradwell. Courtesy of The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, Illinois. Shooting the Rattlesnakes 13 3 capable of exploiting legal and legislative channels. Within a few years, Myra Bradwell would earn recognition as founding editor of the influential Chicago Legal News and, later, as the first woman admitted to the bar.10 However, in the winter of 1866 it was apparently James, not Myra, Bradwell that Packard sought out for help in amending the law. Judge Bradwell was already concerned about irregularities in admissions at the Jacksonville asylum . In reviewing bills for support of indigent patients from Cook County, Bradwell evidently discovered that even some male patients had been admitted to the asylum without a trial.11 It appeared to him that McFarland had not altered procedures at the asylum to comply with the 1865 jury trial law.12 Employing the method she had used in Massachusetts and Connecticut, Packard reported that she worked with Bradwell and “other legal advisors” to draft a...