Living alone in rural northern Alabama, she had conducted an affair with her doctor who was supplying her with the opiate chloral hydrate to which she was addicted. When she was arrested for attempting to burn down the house of a neighbor who was feuding with the doctor, her prominent family had her forcibly committed to Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa in order to avoid a sensational trial. Sheffield's letters commence where this family drama ends. The letters, nearly one hundred in all, span her thirty years of confinement. The early letters document this extremely intelligent woman's vigorous efforts, through pleas to various governors, to win her release and transfer to the women's penitentiary.
Later letters focus more on the details of life in a Victorian insane asylum in the deep South.
Her letters help us better understand the full range of behavior among women in the Victorian South and the limits of Southern womanhood near the end of the nineteenth century. They are also unique in providing valuable information on life inside a mental hospital at the turn of the century from a patient's perspective. John S. Hughes is assistant professor of history at the University of Texas. He holds a Ph.D. in American legal and medical history from Rice University. Critical Aspects of the Nineteenth-Century Experience.