What if you were a woman with strong views and not afraid to share those views? What if this landed you imprisoned in an insane asylum for 3 ½ years!?
Meet Elizabeth Packard, born in 1816. Like many other women of her era, Elizabeth settled into domestic life as a wife and mother. The couple had six children and led a fairly peaceful life, until Elizabeth started questioning the beliefs of her strict Calvinist minister husband.
He retaliated by having Elizabeth committed to an insane asylum. In fact, all that was required was a letter from two doctors attesting to her insanity. The doctors were not even required to examine or talk to her; they could simply take her husband’s testimony as proof, referring to a law that existed at this time
During the next three and a half years, Elizabeth was held as a virtual prisoner. She was denied all contact with her children, friends, or other family members. She was also subjected to horrific physical and emotional abuse
But what had perhaps shocked Elizabeth the most was the realization that an overwhelming number of the women she met in the hospital were married women like her—perfectly sane but whose husbands had them committed to ‘keep them in line.’
Elizabeth Packard became a social reformer whose mental hospital experiences began her quest for protective legislation for the insane and improved married women’s rights. She wrote numerous books and lobbied legislatures literally from coast to coast, advocating more stringent commitment laws, protections for the rights of asylum patients, and laws to give married women equal rights in matters of child custody, property and earnings.
https://strongwomeninhistory.com/2024/12/02/elizabeth-ware-packard-silent-no-more/
https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2013/01/elizabeth-packard.html
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