Research project for HISTH 1301

1. 1
KatherineDullen
Lone Star– Kingwood
HonorsCollege

2. 2
“Women Trouble”
“Female Disease”
“Imaginary Female Trouble”
Dangerous Minds. https://dangerousminds.net/comments/list_of_reasons_for_admission_to_an_insane_asylum

3. 3
Research
Questions
• What behaviors led to
institutionalization in the 19th
century?
Thesis & Methodology
In Americaduring the 19th century, many womenwere institutionalizedfor exhibiting
behaviorsthat defiedsocietalexpectationsratherthan true insanity.
• How was a woman’s sanity
determined duringthis time?
• Michel Foucault “MadnessandCivilization”(1961)
• Benjamin Reiss “TheatersofMadness:InsaneAsylumsandNineteenth
CenturyAmericanCulture” (2008)
• Elizabeth Packard “ThePrisoners’HiddenLife”(1868)

4. 4
The Cause
Women’s
Insanity &
Asylums
“In the end of the century, when women are warring against their
natural position in relation to the reproduction of the species;
while the competition of social and industrial life and the growing
desire to avoid any responsibility which interferes with material
advancement or social opportunity is so strong, it is not surprising
that we should find so many disturbances of the nervous
system…”
-H. A. Tomlinson (Superintendent of Saint Peter Hospital for the Insane)
County Asylum. Process print after a lithograph by K. Drake, ca. 1850/1855..
Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Mentally

5. 5
Elizabeth Parsons Ware Packard
• Born in 1816. Wife of Calvinist minister in her
community.
• Incarcerated June 18, 1860 in Jacksonville Insane
Asylum
• Wrote “ThePrisoners’HiddenLife,Or Insane
AsylumsUnveiled”(1868).
By Unknown author -
http://www.psychiatricsurvivorarchives.com/people.html, Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47409533

6. 6
Her “Obnoxious Views”
“I should be very glad to get rid of the
responsibility if I can do so honorably,
but I do not like to yield a natural right to
the dictation of bigotry and intolerance.”
“They could not answer them satisfactorily to themselves
or the class; and it was to extricate themselves from this
unpleasant dilemma, that they at once agreed that this
question was a result of the diseased brain.”
Frere, Pierre-Edouard. “Interior Scene With Woman Praying.” TheWalters, 1862.
https://art.thewalters.org/detai l/16819/interior-scene-with-woman-praying/
St. Cross Church, Winchester, Hampshire. Lithograph by A. Newman after J.
Johnson.. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

7. 7
Incarceration
“I can assure you there is no
jury in the country who would
pronounce you to be an
insane person, for you give
every evidence of intelligence
that any person can have.”
“…I passed an examination made by
our two doctors, both members of his
church and our bible class, and
opponents to me in argument,
wherein they decided that I was
insane, by simply feeling my pulse!”

8. 8
Inside the
Asylum
“This led me to suspect that there was a secret understanding
between the husband and the Doctor; that the subjection of the wife
was the cure the husband was seeking to effect under the specious
plea of insanity…Time after time have I seen these defenceless
women sent home only to be sent back again and again, for the sole
purpose of making them unresisting, willing slaves of their cruel
husbands.”
Claybury Asylum, Woodford, Essex: a dormitory. Photograph by the London & County
Photographic Co., [1893?].. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC
BY 4.0)
Metropolitan Lunatic Asylum, Kew: female patients exercising. Photograph.. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

9. 10
Asylums were used
as prisons for social
transgressions
Conclusions & Insights
A large number of
women in asylums
were not insane

10. 11
Historical Connections
Women are religiously oppressed
Gender roles define insanity
New insights onwomen’s impact on
religious reform
Gender stereotypes impact mental illness
stigmas

11. 12
Thank You!