E. P. Packard, The Prisoners’ Hidden Life, or Insane Asylums Unveiled. Chicago: A. B. Case, 1868.

This autobiography describes the experience of Packard, who was declared insane by her husband, a Presbyterian minister, because she expressed religious beliefs he thought “dangerous to the spiritual interests of his children and the community.” Packard was held in the Jacksonville (Illinois) Insane Asylum for three years. She describes her stay in the worst ward: “It is not possible for me to conceive of a more fetid smell… This awful scent was owing to neglect in the management of the Institution. The patients here were never washed all over, although they were the lowest, filthiest class of prisoners. They could not wait on themselves any more than an infant, in many instances, and none took the trouble to wait upon them. The accumulation of this defilement about their persons, their beds, their rooms, and the unfragrant puddles of water through which they would delight to wade and wallow in, rendered the exhalations in every part of the hall, almost intolerable.” As much a call for equal rights for women as it was an expose of insane asylums of the day, Packard also published a complete text of her insanity trial.