The Personal Sorrows of Patrick Henry

 

It is not generally known that during the time when he was becoming one of the leading Patriot leaders of Virginia Patrick Henry was under severe pressure in his personal life. Henry’s wife Sarah began to show signs of mental illness after the birth of her sixth child (some speculate that this was post-partum depression). Patrick Henry’s mother wrote a letter in which she stated, “We feel Sarah is losing her mind after the birth of Neddy.”

Sarah's doctor strongly recommended that she be sent to the new Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg. Built in 1773, this was the only facility in Virginia at the time devoted to the care of the mentally ill. Patrick Henry refused to send his wife to the asylum and decided to keep her confined to the basement of the family home. This may actually have been a kindness, for although the new hospital was created with the best of intentions the treatments were harsh.  Patients were bled, blistered, subjected to pain, shock, and terror. They were dunked in water and restrained.

Sarah’s behavior was reputed to be unmanageable, and she was confined in a cellar room, bound in a straitjacket and attended by a servant. This secret was kept from the public. After several years of confinement, Sarah died in the spring of 1775 at the age of thirty-seven. She may have killed herself.

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