Elizabeth Scholfield, "An Insane Person"

Elizabeth Scholfield (1815-1871) caught my attention due to a rather large probate file in which the descriptor, “an insane person”, follows every use of her name. Because my grandfather, Henry Sommer, was a psychiatrist and superintendent of what was then known as an insane asylum, I grew up hearing about mental illness, treatments for mental illness, and institutionalization. (In case you missed it in my previous blog about Ellwood Conrad Jones, I find the subject of mental illness fascinating!) I had to know more about the unfortunate Elizabeth Scholfield.

Elizabeth Scholfield, born March 16, 1815 in Newton Township, Muskingum County, Ohio, was the fifth of William C. and Hannah (Redmond) Scholfield’s ten children. William was an early settler in Newton Township, making the first of eleven land purchases which eventually totaled more than 500 acres in Newtown Township, in 1808. William’s parents, Thomas and Rebecca (Carver) Schofield had lived just outside of Philadelphia, and been members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers, and although Thomas was read out of Meeting, Quaker records show that Rebecca and the children continued to attend Meeting faithfully.

It’s not known whether William remained a Quaker. Despite the influx of Quakers to Muskingum County in the early 1800’s, there is no record that a Friends’ meeting was ever established, although that would not preclude the possibility that William and Hannah ran their household according to Friends’ principles. In the manner of Friends, William prospered. When he died on November 22, 1829, he left his widow and children well-provided for, as evidenced by the inventory of his possessions which included luxury items such as silver spoons, silver sugar tongs, a looking glass, and a “clock and case”. In good Quaker fashion, William willed that “all [emphasis added] my children that are minors be given a good english [sic] education”, meaning daughters as well as sons.

Evidence that William’s wish for his children’s education was carried out can be seen in the firm signatures of Elizabeth and her younger sister Isabel on three separate legal documents signed between  January 10, 1844 and May 13, 1845. These documents pertained to the settlement of William’s estate following his widow Hannah’s death on December 23, 1843.

 Hannah’s probate file shows that Elizabeth was a practical and independent woman, as well as an educated one. At an auction of her mother’s estate on April 19, 1844, Elizabeth purchased several cooking utensils, a churn, and a cow. She also purchased a “set of cups and saucers with green flowers”, something of beauty and, perhaps, of sentimental value. Hannah left a considerable estate to be divided among her children: She died possessed not only of fine personal items, but also a large amount of prime land, and monies totaling $1993.79, the equivalent of $55,446.67 in 2019. At thirty years of age, Elizabeth was probably resigned to, but quite capable financially of taking care of herself.      

One of dozens of Muskingum County court documents describing Elizabeth as "an insane person"

   Elizabeth’s probate file contains an appraisal made December 27, 1853 of “Sertain [sic] articles of property [to be auctioned] belonging to the said Elizabeth” that suggests how the spinster Elizabeth Scholfield spent her days, what her skills and interests were, as well as the overall quality of her life. Elizabeth must have been a weaver, since loom spools, reeds, shuttles, and a set of carpet gears for a loom were listed. She very likely sewed as well, and might have made the “home made quilt and bed coverlet” as well as the “3 quilts” using colors in the “1 lot of sewing thread” that went up for auction. However, it is items such as the linen sheets and “towls”, the “table cloth with edging”, the window curtains, the six Windsor chairs, and the two sets of cups and saucers that suggest Elizabeth enjoyed a comfortable and genteel existence until something changed her life forever.

Slightly than a year after being  deemed competent enough to sign documents pertaining to her father’s estate,  Elizabeth Scholfield was declared insane. She would spend the remaining 25 years of her life in custodial care. Attorney Robert Moore was appointed by the court to handle Elizabeth’s finances, and to see she was properly cared for, a job he seems to have done diligently and dutifully.

The Ohio Lunatic Asylum, Columbus, Ohio, about1850

To date, no court record has been found to explain why Elizabeth was declared insane. Even if such a record still exists, it would remain, by the laws of the State of Ohio, forever sealed, so what happened will never be known for certain. Was Elizabeth just a very eccentric woman whose behavior was occasionally, but remarkably, odd and which worsened over time? Or was she stark, raving mad like Mrs. Rochester in Jane Eyre, violently attacking her family and setting fires? Did an accident, such as a blow to the head, permanently impair Elizabeth’s judgment and behavior? Did she suffer from epilepsy, a neurological disorder which was believed to be a form of madness? In the absence of any official record, we can only speculate about the actual cause of Elizabeth’s mental illness.

Around the time that Elizabeth became ill, a medical specialty that dealt with disorders of the mind was emerging. Its practitioners were known as “alienists”, because they dealt with patients who behaved in non-normative (alien) ways. Unable to look inside the brain, these early psychiatrists could only diagnose insanity on the basis of the patient’s observed or reported behaviors. Thus, they could only attribute the patient’s affliction to one of two causes--physical (a blow on the head), or “moral” (a matter of temperament and life choices). Physical causes of “insanity” were rare; the moral causes were almost limitless, but in the 19^th century included: intemperance, masturbation, overwork, domestic difficulties, excessive ambitions, faulty education, personal disappointments, marital problems, excessive religious enthusiasm, jealousy, and pride. At its most basic level, moral insanity stemmed from a violation of those “natural” and conventional behaviors dictated by Protestant Christianity and an emerging middle class.

Barring a serious injury, Elizabeth Scholfield’s behavior probably became erratic for no apparent reason, and then became ever more severe. Since Elizabeth’s family was educated and financially well-off, they likely had the knowledge, and certainly the means, to seek the advice of an alienist who could diagnose the problem and, hopefully, produce a cure. Given what we know of Elizabeth’s life to this point, the alienist would have seen several “moral” causes for her insanity. First, she was unmarried which, in her day, would be considered a personal disappointment, and which could, it was believed, result in sexual frustrations that played out in ways embarrassing to her family. Second, Elizabeth had lived at home with her mother for twenty-nine years. Suffering from the loss of a parent as well as a companion, she might have succumbed to severe and chronic depression. Finally, as sometimes happened to lonely, often ostracized single women, Elizabeth might have developed an excessive religiosity which made her at best a neighborhood nuisance and at worst a judgmental, vengeful menace.

The Muskingum County Infirmary, Zanesville, Ohio, about 1900

When I first discovered Elizabeth Scholfield’s thick probate file, I entertained the sinister possibility that she was a victim of familial greed. The names of her brothers-in-law, Edward Rose and Isaac Sniff, appear in several of the accounts filed with the court by Robert Moore, requesting money for delivering her to institutions. Early on in the guardianship, Moore recorded “going…to see Rose about her money”. Later, the brothers-in-law purchased several items of her personal property at auction. Did Edward and Isaac resent that a single woman should enjoy her own money and income from property when they had wives and children to provide for? Elizabeth might have preferred living alone, but in America in the 1840’s such a choice could be regarded as “unnatural”. Elizabeth might not have had to do anything more than to live on her own terms for her family and neighbors to label her as “peculiar” and to see her as threat to their social norms. If such were the case, every word and action of Elizabeth’s could be misinterpreted and become grounds for a declaration of insanity and eventual institutionalization, and once that happened, Elizabeth would have been powerless to change her situation. As Restoration playwright Nathaniel Lee said about his own committal to the notorious London asylum known as Bedlam: “They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, theyoutvoted me.”

While it makes for good theater to cast Elizabeth Scholfield as a victim of avarice, the idea in her case is pure fantasy. “To be sure,” writes Gerald N. Grob in The Mad Among Us, “there were allegations that sane persons were confined in hospitals because of the desire of families to control their estates…. While wrongful commitment was by no means unknown, it was relatively, rare. In the nineteenth century, confinement followed some form of extreme behavior, including violent, suicidal, and occasionally homicidal acts, hallucinations, excitement, agitation, delusions, and deep depression.”

It is thanks to Robert Moore’s careful record-keeping that we know something of the history of Elizabeth’s care and eventual institutionalization. Contrary to my initial suspicions, the probate record shows that Elizabeth’s family (including her in-laws) did the best that they could for her. For the first two years and three months of her recorded illness (May 1, 1846- August 28, 1848), Elizabeth was cared for by her brother William and sister-in-law Sarah Mary Sniff. The couple had married only six months previously (December 5, 1845), and the strain of this responsibility on the young couple’s marriage can only be imagined. It’s likely that Elizabeth’s condition steadily deteriorated, and necessitated the removal from their home and ultimately led to her being made a ward of the court.

William Maclay Awl, M.D.

According to Moore's "accounty for taking care of and looking after Elizabeth Scholfield”, immediately after his appointment, he began writing “letters to Dr. [William Maclay] Awl in relation to Elizabeth”. William Awl was a highly respected physician who dedicated his life to the improvement of medical care for those individuals marginalized by society: prisoners, the blind, and the mentally ill. Dr. Awl believed that with benevolent treatment, exercise, and good nutrition insanity was curable in at least eighty percent of the cases. A founder of the Ohio Medical Association and of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane, he successfully lobbied the state legislature, and in 1837, the Ohio Lunatic Asylum was established at Columbus, with Awl as its first superintendent. By corresponding with Awl, Moore and Scholfields were reaching out to the best of Ohio’s alienists to help Elizabeth regain her sanity.

In August 1848, Robert Moore was “hunting a home for her among her kinfolks”, and found one with her sister Isabella and brother-in-law Isaac Sniff. The Sniff home might have only been intended as a temporary refuge; by the end of October Elizabeth had been moved to Columbus. Despite Moore’s reported extensive correspondence with Dr. Awl, Elizabeth was not taken immediately to the Ohio Lunatic Asylum but instead was taken to the Franklin County Poor House. Perhaps her behavior had become so deranged that the Sniffs had to remove her immediately from their home, and perhaps there was no available space at the asylum. Awl probably knew the poor house superintendent and physician, Dr. C. F. Schenck who, the previous year, had become a trustee of the newly chartered Willoughby Medical College of Columbus, where lectures on psychiatry were part of the required curriculum, a first in the nation. Awl might have recommended Elizabeth to Schenck’s temporary care, which cost the family “$18 per month payable in advance for medical treatment, boarding, washing, and attendance.”          

Around February 1, 1849, Elizabeth was transferred from the Franklin County Poor House to the Ohio Lunatic Asylum, where she was enumerated, along with 293 other inmates, in the 1850 U.S. census. A series of receipts in the probate file show Moore promptly paid $13 per month “for the maintenance of and attendance upon Elizabeth Scholfield an inmate of the Ohio Lunatic Asylum”. Clothing, or at least “better” clothing, required an additional payment of $2.        

"Elizabeth Scholfield, 40, Insane" is enumerated on line 4

Despite Awl’s optimism about the curability of insanity, the reality was that many, if not most, of those committed to asylums were chronically ill. That Elizabeth Scholfield was one of those with a chronic condition is seen by the fact that she spent nearly half of her life in some of kind of asylum. The recognition that Elizabeth would never recover meant that additional monies would be needed to pay for her care for an unknowable length of time. Robert Moore began to sell some of Elizabeth’s real estate in April 1851, and in January 1854 her personal property was auctioned off. The need to conserve her money probably also prompted the decision to move her to the newly established Muskingum County Infirmary. Not only would she be closer to her family, the monthly charges would be lower than at the Franklin County institution. On May 26, 1851, Elizabeth’s brother-in-law, Edward Rose, “remove [sic] her from asilom [sic] from Columbus to the poore [sic] house [Infirmary] in Muskingum County”, a service for which he charged eleven dollars.

Nine years later, Elizabeth Scholfield, listed as insane, was enumerated in the 1860 U.S. census along with “paupers”, “idiots”, “deaf mutes” and other mentally ill inmates of the Muskingum County Infirmary. The infirmary charged just under eleven dollars per month for “keeping” Elizabeth. Institutional care did not include any kind of “treatment”, nor  much in the way of decent clothing. On one occasion, Moore paid the merchant Duvall $4.66 for “2 Calico dresses, 2 Shimies, 3 Gimham Aprons, Sun Bonnet & Handkerchief, 1 Pair Yarn Stockings, 1 Pair cotton Stockings, 1 Quilted Skirt.”

Robert Moore seems to have done his best to provide for Elizabeth’s care and some comfort through prudent management of her funds. However, his careful accounts show that Elizabeth’s money, which had totaled $983.53 (the equivalent of $25,680 in 2019) when institutionalization began, was running out. On January 17, 1862, Robert Moore, Esq. filed his Final Account as Elizabeth Scholfield’s guardian. A receipt from the Muskingum County Infirmary for the last $117.78 of her money is included in the probate file. Elizabeth either was made a ward of the county, or her family decided to assume the responsibility of paying for her institutional care themselves. As far as the probate record goes, the case was closed.

Elizabeth lived at the infirmary for nine more years. She was last enumerated there in the 1870 U.S. census, and we can assume that is where she died on September 27, 1871. Her body was brought “home” and she is buried near her parents and several siblings in the Uniontown Methodist Cemetery in Fultonham. A sizable gravestone marks her grave. For the first time in many years, the name of Elizabeth Scholfield appeared without the words, “an insane person".

Elizabeth gravestone, Uniontown Methodist Cemetery