Library Collections: Document: Full Text

We are of the opinion that Mrs. Packard's case is a type of many other cases of false imprisonment, now there; and the simplest claims of justice and humanity demand that this Legislature extend to such, a fair trial.

A LOVER OF JUSTICE.
Springfield, Jan. 21,1867.

The Barbarous Law of 1851.

Under which so many had lost their personal liberty, during the sixteen years of its existence, reads thus:

"Married women and infants who, in the judgment of the medical superintendent (meaning the Superintendent of the Illinois State Hospital for the Insane,) are evidently insane or distracted, may be entered or detained in the hospital at the request of the husband of the woman, or the guardian of the infant, without the evidence of insanity required in other cases."

The sixty days of grace which Dr. McFarland was allowed by this law to prepare for these trials, were faithfully improved by him. He sent off hosts of sane patients, who had been unjustly confined there, under the specious plea that they were suddenly cured!

Indeed, the "Personal Liberty Bill" became a universal panacea for the sudden cure of these, his sane patients!

For this knowing Superintendent understood full well that in case he retained these sane patients until the verdict of a jury liberated them, it might not only reflect upon his intelligence and veracity as a Superintendent, but also give this host of witnesses a passport to the confidence of the public in their testimony against him.

The verdict of one jury at Kankakee, on Mrs. Packard's case; was all he chose to grapple with in the present state of public sentiment towards him!

Therefore, these oppressed ones were sent into the world, without being allowed even the privilege of having his brand of insanity first obliterated from them, by the much coveted verdict of sanity from an intelligent jury of their country.

And again, if this host of injured ones were found by the jury to be sane, while their personal liberty was suspended on the single testimony of this one man, the public would at once conclude either that Dr. McFarland did not know a sane from an insane person, or had been criminally indifferent on this momentous point, or he had been perversely wicked in allowing sane persons to be imprisoned for sinister purposes, while he was growing rich with the money the oppressors of these victims were lavishly bestowing upon him to induce him to conceal their crimes under his lying testimony that they were insane persons when he knew they were not insane.

And when it is once known that a public officer can be hired to tell a lie, under such circumstances, his ruin must be inevitable, by the verdict of the people.

Such quick destruction Dr. McFarland knew must be his unavoidable doom, if he allowed the investigation these, his victims, desired, and being so used to treating his patients with injustice he could add this act to this long list without scruple, mentally pleading self-defense as his justification.

But to procure his own self-defense at the expense of his injured victims' right to this same privilege, must be recorded as a crime in that book whose records recognize no respect of persons in judgment.

This politic plan of this artful sinner, proved a success so far as to suspend, for the time being, the verdict of the people against him; for when it was found by the verdict of the jury that no sane patients were found in the institution sixty days from the passage of the bill, the natural conclusion would be that no sane persons were allowed in the asylum as patients.

But the subsequent report of the Investigating Committee unravelled this mystery, by showing that there had been double the number of discharged patients on the plea of recovered during this period than other previous periods.

And another most striking fact was developed by the report of this Investigating Committee, showing that this "Personal Liberty Bill" was an imperative necessity, as an protection against false commitments, which fact is expressed in their own report as follows:

"From a careful examination of the papers on file, it did appear that since 1865 there had been one hundred and forty-eight admitted without the proper legal evidence of insanity; and the security required by law! That there should be so large a proportion of the admissions in violation of law, shows a carelessness without excuse and deserving of censure.

Now if one hundred and forty-eight were found on record as admitted during these two years alone, and this too in violation of the law, how many must then have been admitted during the fourteen previous years, when the law for the a mission of married women and infants expressly stated, that such might be admitted without evidence of insanity!

Who, who is to be held responsible at God's bar, for the false imprisonment of this host of innocent victims of this barbarous law?

"Who does not see that the law for admission should have a penalty attached to enforce it, since the law of 1865 required a trial, but as there was no penalty to enforce it until the "Personal Liberty Bill" was passed, it was merely a dead letter in practice.