Jacksonville Illinois 1900

One of the newest collections published in CARLI Digital Collections is from MacMurray College. The collection features a book published in 1900 that is filled with fascinating images of nineteenth-century Jacksonville, Illinois. The book’s introduction states, “Jacksonville’s past is glorious. Its pages teem with such names as Hardin, Duncan and Yates, and it is here that these illustrious Illinoisans lie beneath the sod. In addition to the points mentioned there is an indescribable attractiveness about the city which impresses itself only upon those who come within its boundaries. Fifteen thousand residents can give testimony that as the home of culture, refinement and progressiveness, Jacksonville is the fairest city of the west.”

One page in this book in particular caught my eye: a sprawling, massive building towering above the trees on what appears to be the outskirts of town, with a caption of “Annex, Central Hospital for the Insane.” Known as the Illinois State Asylum and Hospital for the Insane at its opening in 1851, the Jacksonville Developmental Center was Illinois’ first state-run hospital for the mentally ill. The property covered 134 acres that now includes a public park. The Center closed its doors in late 2012, a cost-saving measure proposed by former Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s administration.

Perhaps the most famous former resident of the Asylum was Elizabeth Packard. When the asylum opened, the state passed a law that required a public hearing for anyone who was going to be committed against his or her will, but apparently there was an exception in cases where a husband wanted to commit his wife; he needed neither hearing nor consent. Packard spent three years in the asylum before her children were able to spring her. After that she narrowly won a court case—against her husband—proving she was sane, and she subsequently wrote several books and founded the Anti-Insane Asylum Society.

Written by Anne Shelley, Illinois State University

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