On December 30, 1895, Andrew Sheffield wrote a letter to Governor William Oates to explain in her own words what had happened and how she had gotten to the Alabama Insane Hospital. She mentioned that she only heard of him from his father, James L. Sheffield. James Sheffield would mention Oates’ name often due to their connection during the Civil War. She responded to Oates’s inquiry by saying, “The question arises, where shall I begin? The trouble with myself, is, that I have to say so much to express a little.” She continues, “In justice not only to myself, but to you also, I will make a truthful disclosure – stating positive facts to the best of my knowledge.”
Her story begins in the spring of 1880 in Marshall County. She agrees that she may have passed as someone who was insane. In that year, she experienced her first “disappointment in love.” She acknowledges that she did not prepare for it. Her “naturaly of a very high temperament – of a nervous and excitable nature” made it more challenging to cope with this. She writes, “I was not able to hold up under it – and was a raving and frantic – not with insanity – but from grief and trouble, heartbroken; and, the only cause I can assign for not being sent to the Hospital at that time was my fathers love for his child.” James Sheffield tried everything but sent her to the Alabama Insane Hospital (later Bryce Hospital) because he didn’t want “to throw me off at the mercy of others – and , stain my life with the Insane Asylum.” He sent Andrew on vacation to help her with her grief. He also gave her what she needed to calm her down. Doctors advised him to use chloral hydrate to sedate her. Unfortunately, Andrew became highly addicted to this opiate drug. She was “for four years a chloral drinker – drank it until it almost destroyed my life, and when taken from me at the end of four years I was no more than a walking skeleton, except that I was breathing.” During this time, she admits she did many things that made her friends, family, and even herself suspect she was of “unsound mind.” She acknowledges that “I don’t suppose that one could feel, or be perfectly natural under the influence of an opiate.”
During this troubling time, her father, James, faced a financial failure in his mercantile business in 1882. She wrote to Oates, “In his old age – his declining years, reduced to poverty thrown financialy on a level with the common herd.” She got addicted to chloral hydrate again to deal with the family stresses. She took it for a year before she lost access to the drug. In 1885, Major Solamon Palmer, a long-time friend of the Sheffields, gave James a job in the State Superintendent of Education office. In the fall of 1888, Andrew wrote, “my health failed – was in wretched health. My father wrote Dr. L. D. Lusk of Guntersville Ala to mind me, and, give me the best medical attention possible, he did so – but he was five miles away, and I was situated so that I could not call him in when needed.” The doctor she called was Dr. William May, who lived in Warrenton.
Her description of Dr. May was not very flattering. She told Gov. Oates that May was “a man devoid of gentlemanly principals – low traits of character and while I felt it derogatory [sic] to my high standing to have him attend me.” Despite this, she and her addiction to chloral hydrate kept him on the short list of available physicians. He prescribed her as much chloral hydrate, “much loved stuff,” that she wanted. James warned Dr. Lusk and Dr. May not to prescribe Andrew chloral hydrate, or he would prosecute them. His warning did not stop Dr. May. Of course, Dr. May wanted something in return for his generous prescription.
When he had her “where he wanted,” his words, according to her, he asked her to help him seek revenge against a neighbor, Mr. Richard Anderson. Dr. May wanted her to “applying the torch to my nearest neighbors dwelling.” Initially, she refused. She loved Anderson like a brother. They were childhood friends. She explained to Gov Oates, “Dr May and Mr. Richard Anderson had for years been at ‘daggers points’ and ‘armed to the teeth’ for each other.” Her refusal enraged Dr. May. She was so scared that she “locked doors to avoid him.” He threatened that if she refused, he would expose her publicly. He would come drunk to the house where he would, in rage, “several times drew his pistol from his pocket.” She begged him to “use it and I realy wanted him to kill me – he all this while keeping me well supplied with chloral.”
Dr. May prepared for this crime. He gave her the plan on how to burn down Anderson’s house. He planned the crime by “kindling on the back porch of my house – loosened a panel of Mr. Andersons garden fence.” He told her she needed to go alone “and apply the torch.” In a previous letter, Gov. Oates suspected that she had affection for Dr. May, which is why she attempted to commit this crime. She replied that “I was not devoted to him in the least; for realy he and myself were not and had not been for years, good friends.” She never liked him. She also said that Dr. May did not provide protection either. She could call upon her brother Judge Street and his son O. D. Street. Her father would also protect her. She did not mention what Dr. May was doing to her because she knew “what the result of an exposure of the matter would be – and I knew not who – would receive the load of lead.” After her attempt failed, she was promptly arrested for attempted arson and taken to a Guntersville jail. Her father came to see her in jail. He found out what happened by talking to her. He returned to Warrenton and confronted Dr. May in her sister’s house. During the confrontation, James Sheffield killed Dr. May.
She told Gov. Oates that her only reason for writing him was that she was not insane and did not want to be at Bryce Hospital. She would rather be at Wetumpka, the site of the state’s prison for women. She claimed that during her six years at the Alabama Insane Hospital, “superintendents and physicians agreeing with me that I was not an insane woman.” They just would not “declare the same to the outside world.” She desired “to be placed before the grand jury of Marshall Co.” She wanted the court to force assistant physicians Dr. Somerville, Dr. Bondurant, and Dr. Wright to appear. While she is not sure if Dr. Somerville, the physician who examined and admitted Andrew in 1890, would say she was sane. However, according to Andrew, Dr. Somerville would have to say that Dr. Bryce would have said she was sane.
She admitted that she did not want any sympathy. She wrote, “I know I’ll never get it – my age and sense would not admit of any plastering over – farther than I can say that had I wanted to have lived a disreputable life – I could have when young for when young, I passed for a very handsome woman.” She acknowledges that quite a few people think that she was insane. Her brother Judge Street for instance “made no inquiry as to my condition, taken no notice of me since my imprisonment here. All she asks of Gov. Oates is to write to Dr. Somerville, Dr. Bondurant, and Dr. Wright and inquire if she is insane or not and “have their word for it.” She wanted them under oath to tell the jury that she was sane going into Bryce Hospital. She said to Oates, “I do not want to go out of the Hospital, and sent back to it, no I do not – neither do I want to be tried and acquitted on the grounds of having been demented at the time the crime was committed.”
Andrew was convinced that she was sane. She acknowledged that chloral hydrate may have temporarily affected her reasoning. Yet, Andrew argued that she deserved prison for her arson attempt rather than Alabama Insane Hospital. The insanity label would mean that she was not able to act independently. She was fighting for a space of her own.
Citation:
Hughes, John S. The Letters of a Victorian Madwoman (University of South Carolina Press, 1993) 53 – 58.