The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear

At Jacksonville, a scramble began to organize trials within the 60-day timeframe for all patients who had not received one upon admission. The administration feared that findings of “sanity” after years of incarceration could result in lawsuits. In May 1867, Senator General Allan Fuller headed up a team of five fellow politicians overseeing the correction of any abuses and misuses occurring at Jacksonville. They began investigating the trustees and McFarland to determine if there had been any dereliction of duty or abuse of power. A total of 22 patients and several former employees gave evidence; the committee was incensed to learn about the regularity with which McFarland dismissed reports of abuse and mistreatment. The committee felt obligated to allow McFarland to be present once allegations arose that McFarland had taken “improper liberties” with his female patients. McFarland told the committee that he believed it was his duty to take on the role of his “quasi-husband” and saw no issue with his conduct. During Elizabeth’s testimony, McFarland produced Elizabeth’s romantic letter to him, and the committee members were shocked, believing her unimpeachable in her integrity. Elizabeth, devastated and embarrassed, attributed it to her desperation and vulnerability. Fuller informed the trustees he had discovered that Jacksonville had been rapidly dismissing patients as “cured” in the wake of the new law and that he deemed it an attempt to cover their unjustifiable incarceration of patients they could not prove had a mental illness. The committee recommended the immediate dismissal of McFarland as superintendent. The trustees tried to suppress Fuller’s report, and Fuller responded by leaking the entirety of the document to the Chicago Tribune.

Furious at the assessment, McFarland became more zealous in his attempts to discredit and smear Elizabeth’s character, publishing her romantic letter in national publications. Undeterred, Elizabeth published Mrs. Packard’s Prison Life, her most successful work. It was a collection of the narrative experiences of six women’s experiences inside the “asylum.” By March of 1869, Elizabeth had purchased two properties and amassed significant savings, nearly $200,000 in 21st-century dollars. Her father, Samuel Ware, when reunited with her, became convinced that she had never been “insane” and that Theophilus had deceived him. In late May 1869, Elizabeth received a letter from her children asking if they could come to live with her in Chicago. Her two eldest sons decided to move in, too, so they could be together as a family once more in Elizabeth’s grand house on Chicago’s Prairie Avenue. Benevolently, Elizabeth allowed Theophilus to visit them. He lived in a nearby boarding house, and while she was cordial, she never allowed him any influence in her home nor extended any interest in developing a friendly relationship between them.

Elizabeth’s legacy included passing 34 bills in 24 states, all of them progressive steps toward greater legal protections for women and those with mental illnesses. One of her greatest accomplishments, known as “Packard’s Law,” was a piece of legislation that gave “asylum” patients the right to receive and send mail without censorship. She spent 30 years advocating for the legal and social rights of women and those with mental illnesses. In 1878, Elizabeth raised enough capital to publish her original work, The Great Drama, in its original entirety, just as she crafted it in the “asylum.” With it, she included a work called The Mystic Key, her side of the relationship she had with McFarland, including her justification for writing the letter that had followed her throughout the three decades of her activism. In April 1870, her daughter Libby began to show evidence of a deterioration in her mental health, beginning a lifelong struggle that family members attributed to the extreme stress brought on by her traumatic separation from her mother and inundation with adult responsibilities. Theophilus blamed Elizabeth for their daughter’s ailment. In the 1890s, Elizabeth learned that Libby’s husband had placed her in an “asylum” in California, and Elizabeth immediately had Libby released to her. Elizabeth and Libby lived together in the front room of Toffy’s house, where Libby was occasionally locked inside for her safety. In 1897, Elizabeth died suddenly, succumbing to a strangulated hernia. Without her mother to care for her, Libby died in an “asylum” at 51.

To protect McFarland, in the wake of the recommendation that he must step down as superintendent of Jacksonville, all six trustees resigned from the board so that McFarland could retain his position. On June 8, 1870, McFarland voluntarily resigned and opened a private “asylum” in Jacksonville called Oak Lawn. The institution achieved great fame, becoming one of the nation’s most respected and sought-after locations for treatment. McFarland himself maintained a high profile in his professional community. McFarland’s attempts to control women were ill-received by his second wife, who ran away from their home at the “asylum” and filed for divorce citing cruelty and abuse. On November 22, 1891, Andrew McFarland, affected by swelling in his brain, which was steadily increasing, hung himself in a vacant patient room of his own “asylum.”