PEORIA MAGAZINE January 2023

Weekly Herald of Nov. 30, 1906, “It is said she was a very beautiful girl before she became insane.” Though some coverage was objective, often leaning on interviews with Derry kin, some prose would turn purple, such was the journalism of the day. That Rock Island report painted her as a “horrible remnant of humanity,” “terrible travesty of human form” and “piteous human wreck.” ‘ALL AT ONCE POOR RHODY CHANGED FROM A MERRY GIRL TO A RAVING MANIAC’ The cause of her woes? The newspa per did not say, aside from this vague conjecture: “It was when she was still a robust young woman of hardly 23 years of age when some hereditary taint in her blood, some remote dis order transmitted by some long dead and gone ancestor perhaps, suddenly manifested itself, and all at once poor Rhody changed from a merry girl to a raving maniac.” Officially, the asylum listed her cause of death as “general paralysis of the insane,” suggesting a long-term brain infection. Documents also noted elements of “witches” surrounding Derry, which might’ve hinted at a hereditary malady – or at the folklore regarding her insanity. Asylum records noted that “her mother believed in witches and used to shoot at imaginary witches around the house.” That witchcraft angle was reported without attribution in multiple news paper accounts. The Quincy Weekly Herald blared the headline: “Witches Stole Rhody’s Reason: The Weird Life Story of Unfortunate Rhoda Derry.” A ROMANCE GONE WRONG According to that tale – repeated elsewhere – the teenageDerry had fallen in lovewith a youngCharles Phenix, their relationship heading toward marriage. But his mother, for reasons unclear, objected and put a curse on Derry. “All through her insanity, she claimed she was bewitched by an old woman,

The Utica crib. Photo courtesy of the Peoria State Hospital Museum

a neighbor, named Phenix,” the paper reported. Days after the curse, Derry sup posedly told her family that she had spotted Satan lurking in physical form – “something like a wild beast, which she believed was the ‘old scratch.’” Later, while visiting a sister, Derry “said she could seeMrs. Phenix in the corner and that she believed that the old woman would torment her as long as she lived and that her pleasure was forever done.” For whatever reason, the relationship with Charles Phenix ended. Also, for whatever reason, RhodaDerrywentmad. TREATMENT WORSE THAN THE DISEASE At the time, Illinois was in the rudi mentary stages of caring for peoplewith mental and emotional challenges. In 1851, the Illinois State Hospital for the Insane opened in Jacksonville. Five years later, with Derry’s condition deteriorating, her father took her there. “In 1856, she became unmanageable,” reported the Quincy Weekly Herald. “She was taken to Jacksonville and while there the authorities could not keep the doors of her room locked, nor could they keep her tied with ropes. They would lock the doors at night, but in the morning Rhoda would be out in the yard walking about. When asked who let her out, she said Mrs. Phenix. When the keeper of the asylumbrought her back, she said she was not insane,

but she did not know what was the matter with her. She was like the man referred to in the New Testament who lived among the tombs.” Although the asylum was said to be benevolent, it had no answers for anyone with issues so severe and no system of long-term care. After two years, according to state law, “incurables” were to be sent home to their families. Thus, Derry returned to Adams County in 1858. Two years passed. She did not improve, suffering from constant “spel ls” fol lowed by “a beautiful song” and “a solemn prayer” in which she would ask God “to forgive her,” according to Quincy’s Herald. At the time, the only remaining option for the “incurable” was an almshouse, or county poorhouse – a last-chance residence for the destitute, but little

else, certainly no care. ‘SEND HER ALONG. GOD BLESS HER’

— Dr. George Zeller Few cases were as dire. Zeller’s autobiography described Derry’s alarming behavior -- tearing off her clothes, eating anything she could grab and harming herself – along with the almshouse’s draconian methods of restraint, keeping her inside a cage like box known as a Utica crib.

JANUARY 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE 37