On January 1, 1896, Superintendent Searcy wrote to Gov William Oates his response to the letter he received from Oates over the Andrew Sheffield case dated December 26, 1895. He probably included Andrew Sheffield’s letter as well.
Searcy wrote to Oates that he was glad he showed an interest in this case. Oates was not the first one who showed an interest. When Searcy took over from Dr. Peter Bryce, he also showed an interest. He told Oates that Sheffield had written numerous letters to politically influential people since she came to Bryce Hospital. Dr. Searcy wrote, “Some of them have been placed on file; numbers of them have been sent, until stopped by the request of her family.” He may have referred to the letter dated August 21, 1893, by Sheffield’s half-brother T.A. Street. Searcy told Oates that if he wanted to see the other letters on file, Searcy would gladly send them to him.
As for the diagnosis, Searcy said that Sheffield suffered from a constant “delusion of persecution” from officials and staff of the Alabama Insane Hospital since being admitted. Searcy was not accurate to Oates, though. In her official record, doctors did not describe her as delusional when she first got admitted to the Hospital. Searcy described Sheffield as the “most incorrigible and inapproachable woman I ever saw. I have made all sorts of advances to assure her of my kind and best intentions toward her, but have invariably met the most abrupt rebuffs, and most generally abuse and cursing.”
Sheffield did not get along with other patients either. He wrote to Oates, “No one can enter pleasantly her room without violent attack of abuse. At some intervals, and to some persons at intervals, she is approachable. She is very violent toward anyone in authority.” Searcy learned from others that she acted that way before being admitted to the Hospital.
Searcy accused Sheffield of not accepting other people’s opinions. He wrote to Oates, “Her accusations against the officers of the Hospital and her statements of abuse are utterly without foundation, in every instant of which I have heard. She misconstrues every statement made to her, to suit her point.”
Superintendent Searcy described Sheffield as the best example of a morally insane patient. Sheffield exhibited “such an inherently defective mental condition that the person cannot live outside of a house of restraint, without being a menace and a danger to themselves or others.” The problem with Searcy’s diagnosis is that the doctors did not in the surviving file diagnose Sheffield as morally insane. They did not commonly use the term “moral insanity.”
Searcy continued with his letter to Oates that Sheffield is “highly intelligent in most respects, she is bitterly insensible to all attempts at kindness to her, and hostile in her feelings towards all who have authority over her.” Assuring Oates, Sheffield lives in “a good comfortable room” in one of the “best wards.” Sheffield has good food like the other patients. At her insistence, Sheffield has a “seat and plate at a side table in the dining room.”
He concludes his letter to Oates by saying that Sheffield was “insensible to any kindness shown by me or others, and puts a wrong construction on it.” Sheffield is a constant danger to patients and staff. He implored Oates to inquire more about her by writing to her family. Her family doesn’t even write to her to further indicate to Oates how disagreeable she is. Searcy pointed to Judge T. A. Street, her half-brother, as an excellent source to learn more about her. He did mention to Oates that Sheffield “will probably give you any amount of correspondence. Something may at some time occasion her displeasure, when you will get her abuse. Of late she has been in her most pleasant mood.”
Dr. Searcy lastly wrote that Sheffield was kept “most of the time in the demented ward” (The back wards) where “she could not find patients to disaffect with her abuse of the officials, (she is exceedingly good at it.) and where she could not frighten others with her horrible tales.”
Dr. Searcy’s letter to Oates shows that Sheffield was aggressive toward hospital officials. The question is where she was because of an underlying mental illness or the fact that her family sent her there in the first place, and she was lashing out. What is clear, though, is that Sheffield was defensive and felt that Sheffield did not belong there. In Sheffield’s letter to Oates, Sheffield was adamant that she was not insane. Sheffield pointed to the fact that she was not diagnosed as insane when she was admitted. She believed that hospital officials were lying to outside interested parties about her insanity. This letter from Searcy proves her point. Her case file did not indicate that she was “moral insane.” Unfortunately for Sheffield, her plea for her sanity was not backed up by her family nor by any of the doctors at the Alabama Insane Hospital.
Citation:
Hughes, John S. The Letters of a Victorian Madwoman (University of South Carolina Press, 1993) 58 – 60.