This petition is one of several petitions filed by Susan Wray in response to her husband's 1848 suit for divorce on the grounds of adultery. Susan complained that "no provision whatever exists for her support, while the suit shall be pending & until all the matters & things in controversy shall be finally settled." Although the court has awarded Susan alimony in the amount of $650, and four hundred dollars in lawyer's fees, it has been twenty months and she has spent the money. Since there is no provision made for her future support, Susan asks for additional payments. Several related petitions reveal that Susan had been committed to a lunatic asylum, and was still there as of 1850. The Chancellor's decree to Susan's plea: "If there could have existed any doubt on the subject previous to the unfortunate occurrence, which caused this suit the present undisputed insanity of Mrs Wray, now an inmate of a lunatic asylum, the testimony of the eminent Superintending physician of that institution; and the particular form and manifestation of her lunacy, demonstrate to my mind at least, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that for many years prior to the institution of this suit, she has not been a morally responsible being; and that probably at the time of her marriage her mind was disordered-- that this fatal infirmity was progressive in its character and gradually increased until all her facilities and perceptions, reason, will and moral sense, became the helpless instruments of insane impulse and delusion."
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Repository: Montgomery County Courthouse, Montgomery, Alabama
