PEORIA MAGAZINE January 2023

S P O T L I G H T

‘SO NO OTHER HUMAN WOULD SUFFER AS YOU’

The heartbreaking story of Rhoda Derry, and of the Peorian who came to her rescue

BY PHIL LUCIANO

T he lore of Rhoda Derry is tragic and disturbing. Her reality was worse. A young beaut y, she supposedly lost her mind to love. According to sensational headlines, the mother of her betrothed objected to the romance and cast a bewitching curse that pushed Derry into decades of tormenting madness. According to official records, Derry’s insanity went largely untreated amid the lackluster to nonexistent mental health care of the 19th century. She ripped out her eyes and bashed out her teeth while languishing 40-plus years in a cramped cage. She would spend just the last two years of her life in soothing care, thanks to the reform approach of Dr. George Zeller, head of the Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane in Bartonville. Though experienced with severe cases of insanity, Zeller was floored by Derry’s forlorn state. As he recalled in his autobiography, “For inhumanity, nothing has even been heard to equal the treatment afforded this poor girl.”

A ‘HAPPY AND HEALTHY’ BEGINNING Rhoda Derry came into the world on Oct. 10, 1834 in Fayette County, Ind., the youngest of nine children of Jacob and Rachel Derry. The household would later move to farmland in Adams County, Illinois, in Lima Township, about 10 miles north of Quincy along the Mississippi River. There are scant official records of her youth or family. A 1904 report at the Bartonville asylumnoted her father and mother as “physically healthy.” Newspapers exploited Zeller’s open door policy, which encouraged publicity of the asylum’s groundbreakingly compassionate care. Before and after Derry’s death, reporters so often wrote of her case that readers statewide knew her by the nickname “Rhody.” The Rock Island Argus and Daily Union of Nov. 21, 1906 reported, “There was a time more than a half century ago when Rhody was as young and rosy and happy and healthy as any girl in Illinois.” According to the Quincy

This headstone (photo by Ron Johnson) marks the grave of Rhoda Derry at the former Peoria State Hospital. It reads: ‘THEY BUILT THIS PLACE OF ASYLUM SO THAT NO OTHER HUMAN WOULD SUFFER AS YOU. YOU TAUGHT US TO LOVE AND FEEL COMPASSION TOWARD THE LESS FORTUNATE. MAY YOU FIND PEACE AND WARMTH IN GOD’S ARMS’

36 JANUARY 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE