In a letter to Gov Joseph F. Johnston on July 17, 1897, Andrew Sheffield tried to make her case that she should be released from the Alabama Insane Hospital. She writes, “I have heretofore appealed to Ex. Gov’s Jones and Oates, and of no avail. I will now try you: from what I can gather from the newspapers, it seems that you are interesting yourself more in prisoners, and prison affairs.”
She gave Gov Johnston some background information. She mentioned that she is the daughter of the late Col. James L. Sheffield. He died at Montgomery in 1892. She writes, “The Spring of 1890 I was charged with Arson in first degree, adjudged insane; and sent to the Hospital to remain until recovered from what the incapacitated physicians of Marshall Co claimed to be insanity.” She told Gov. Johnston that she wrote to Gov. Oates about the case. Other than “Supt had sent him [Gov. Oates] a copy of my history as given at the Hospital,” she had not heard from Gov. Oates again. Supernatant Searcy after told Sheffield that he “did not ask that he or the physicians give their opinion as to my mental condition.” Sheffield did not know about the Gov Oates’ letter to Dr. Searcy dated Dec 26, 1895. Oates wanted “her case investigated & thoroughly tested as to her mental condition.” Gov Oates hand-wrote this at the bottom of the letter after the letter has been typed. Sheffield emphasized that Dr. Searcy and physicians told her that “I was not an insane woman when sent to the Hospital.” Yet, no existing written document exists to support this claim.
She then answered why she would prefer going to prison than staying at the Alabama Insane Hospital. She writes, “As a matter of course it will seem strange to you, (as would to many others,) that one should prefer a home in the Penitentiary, rather than in the Hospital.” She admitted that it seemed strange to her. She did not want to dismiss the Hospital outright. She writes that she “can say a great deal of good for it; it is a nice good home for a crazy woman who cannot be kept at home; and, a nice good home for a sane woman if sent here for insanity.” Yet, for her, she did not fit either of those categories. She “came to them for crime, and down into the lowest depths of prostitution and degradation.” She admitted she was guilty of the crime of attempted arson. Yet, this crime was not attempted “not of my own will.” She was not insane when she committed the crime, and neither did she commit the crime “through ignorance.” She admitted her “ignorance, at the same time, I’m not one of the dense—impenetrable—and unwholesome ignorance.”
She succinctly believed that if she was not insane, then she deserved jail time for her criminal attempt. She told Johnston, “I am not wanting to be removed from the Hospital, with a hope of gaining my freedom and liberty, no such thoughts enter my mind—I’m aware that I’m doomed to prison.” She feels that because her crime was not premeditated, she should serve a life sentence at Sprigness Farm, which was the prison for women in Wetumpka.
She goes on with the conditions she is living in. She described her fellow woman inmates as “filthy incurably insane .” “The crime for which I am charged,” she writes to Johnston, “has thrown me on the back wards with the filthy, dirty faced, browsy headed lunatics, nothing to hear but the unearthly shrieks of the maniacs.” She continues, “Nothing to see but the poor incurably insane beings, nothing for the mind or body to feast upon, deprived of books or papers, in fact deprived of every thing which might lighten confinement and pass the dreary hours.”
She hopes that Gov. Johnston could spring her from Bryce Hospital. Even though the Alabama Constitution does not give such power to pardon or remove her from Bryce Hospital. She writes, “I’ll acknowledge my ignorance in regard to law, but it does seem that if a Gov could pardon a man murderer undergoing a live sentence, that he could have a sane criminal removed from an Insane Asylum.” If Dr. Searcy refuses to let Andrew Sheffield go, she contends that Gov. Johnston should intervene. She wants to be placed in front of a grand jury and charged with what they charge. She wrote to Johnston, “I would gladly go into any county jail – and contend with all the filth and vermin which might be placed there, my meals served on a tin plate and iron fork, than remain locked in on the back wards of this Hospital, to be worried, agrevated and tormented by the crazy.” She reminds Gov. Johnston what it was like when he visited the Alabama Insane Hospital. He passed through “a ward off from the main part of the building, a desolate, gloomy, dismal place—entirely surrounded by a high brick wall.” She lives in a “cell on that ward, have not seen outside the walls for days, weeks, and months, and can’t say that I ever will unless sent out of the Hospital.”
She pleaded with Gov. Johnston to ask if he could spring her out of Bryce Hospital. She asked him if he does write to Superintendent Searcy about this, he should “have him and his assistants to spend their opinion as to my mental condition, and if they say to you, as they have boldly said within the walls of the prison, you will have no reason for not having me removed from the Hospital.”
Aside from telling another governor that she is sane, she described the condition she was in. She described being in the back ward, officially called the Annex or Ward No 14. The Annex was constructed initially for black inmates. She mentioned the noises coming from clearly more insane, using the terminally at the time, than her. What is quite interesting is her insistence on going to prison. Her attempt to burn down the neighbor’s house was not successful. She was intercepted before she could light the house on fire. It’s possible she feels guilty, and it’s a way to self-punish.
Citation:
Hughes, John S. The Letters of a Victorian Madwoman (University of South Carolina Press, 1993) 60 – 63