Biography
Elizabeth Packard was committed to the Jacksonville Insane Asylum in Illinois on June 18, 1860 by her husband, the Reverend Theophilus Packard, after she disputed his Calvinist theology and insisted on her own religious views. An Illinois statute then in force allowed a husband to commit his wife on his word alone, without the public hearing the law required in every other case. She was held for three years. After her release her husband confined her in their own house, and in 1864 she won a jury trial that declared her sane. She spent the rest of her life campaigning for the legal rights of married women and for reform of the commitment laws, founding the Anti-Insane Asylum Society and winning personal liberty statutes in several states that became known as Packard laws. (Recorded as Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard)
