Modern persecution, or insane asylums unveiled, as demonstrated by the Report of the Investigating Committee of the Legislature of Illinois / by Mrs .E. P. W. Packard.

  • Elizabeth Packard
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Modern persecution, or insane asylums unveiled, as demonstrated by the Report of the Investigating Committee of the Legislature of Illinois / by Mrs .E. P. W. Packard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    sistently spurned the mollient he offered to heal it, viz.: their mother was insane, and therefore must be locked up for her good. I have been told they would give expression to their feelings in language like the following, and it being so characteristic of their natures, I have no doubt of its truth. No, Georgie would say, mother is good enough now! and haven't 1 a right to my mother ? No, Elizabeth would say, mother is not crazy, and you know she is not! I do think Pa is possessed with a devil, to treat our good, dear, kind mother as he does. We know our dear mother is good, for she has never done anything wrong— she is kind to you, and she is kind to every body. The natural, unsophisticated natures of my children, ren- dered it very difficult for them to see the necessity of locking up a person, while they were doing good, and had never done any thing wrong! The philosophy of that kind of insanity, which required this to be done, was beyond their comprehension. And even the maturer minds of my oldest sons, Theophilus, then eighteen, and Isaac, sixteen, were equally slow in discovering this neces- sity. In fact, three years was too short a time for their father to convince these children of this painful necessity. At length, wearied with these fruitless efforts to get my children to sanction his cause, he finally resorted to the author- ity of the father to silence them into acquiescence to his views. He therefore forbade their talking upon the subject, and made it an act of disobedience on their part, to talk about their mother. This taught them to use hypocrisy and deceit, for Isaac and Elizabeth would watch their opportunity, in the absence of their father, to talk upon their favorite theme; and when Eliza- beth and Georgie could not evade this order by day, they would take the hours of sleep and talk in a whisper about me, after they had retired to their bed. 5