Our Pick
Posted on @rawstates
Mary Todd Lincoln is committed to Bellevue Place in Batavia
1875
Batavia, Illinois
G LeTourneau · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A Chicago jury took only minutes to declare the former first lady insane in May 1875, on a petition brought by her surviving son Robert, who was worried about her spending and her behaviour. He brought her straight here, to a private sanitarium for women run by Dr Richard Patterson in a limestone building put up as a school. She spent close to four months inside and engineered her own release by getting letters out to friends and to a lawyer, and the following year a second hearing restored her legal control of her own money.
That was 1 of the hidden places.
Location: documented spot
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