(May 20th)
Mrs Mary Lincoln admitted today – from Chicago – Age 56 – Widow of ex-President Lincoln – declared insane by the Cook County Court May 19th – 1875.
Patient Progress Reports for Bellevue Place Sanatorium.
Incarcerated in an insane asylum after committal proceedings instigated by her own son, Mary Lincoln resolves to tell her own story in order to preserve and to prove her own sanity. Details of her first encounters with Abraham Lincoln, their courtship, marriage and troubled relationship are interspersed with disturbing accounts of the ‘treatment’ and behaviour of the women around her as she fights to be released from the sanatorium.