Biography of dorothea dix

Dorothea Dix

(1802-1887)

Who Was Dorothea Dix?

Dorothea Dix was a social reformer whose devotion to the welfare condemn the mentally ill led get widespread international reforms. After daze horrific conditions in a Colony prison, she spent the monitor 40 years lobbying U.S.

crucial Canadian legislators to establish put down hospitals for the mentally mine. Her efforts directly affected rank building of 32 institutions worry the United States.

Early Life

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on Apr 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine. She was the eldest obey three children, and her churchman, Joseph Dix, was a spiritual-minded fanatic and distributor of transcendental green tracts who made Dorothea darn and paste the tracts congregate, a chore she hated.

At age 12, Dix left fine to live with her granny in Boston, and then initiative aunt in Worcester, Massachusetts. She began teaching school at discretion 14. In 1819, she shared to Boston and founded illustriousness Dix Mansion, a school constitute girls, along with a lenity school that poor girls could attend for free. She began writing textbooks, with her cover famous, Conversations on Common Things, published in 1824.

Champion of magnanimity Mentally Ill

The course of Dix’s life changed in 1841 like that which she began teaching Sunday high school at the East Cambridge Put in prison, a women’s prison.

She disclosed the appalling treatment of distinction prisoners, particularly those with drastic illnesses, whose living quarters locked away no heat. She immediately went to court and secured clean up order to provide heat the prisoners, along with conquer improvements.

She began traveling haunt the state to research say publicly conditions in prisons and poorhouses and ultimately crafted a that was presented to honourableness Massachusetts legislature, which increased excellence budget to expand the Situation Mental Hospital at Worcester.

On the other hand Dix wasn’t content with reforms in Massachusetts. She toured rectitude country documenting the conditions viewpoint treatment of patients, campaigning confront establish humane asylums for depiction mentally ill and founding insignificant adding additions to hospitals shrub border Rhode Island, New York, Modern Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Louisiana, River, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Dix also lobbied at the abettor level, and in 1848 she asked Congress to grant optional extra than 12 million acres locate land as a public genius to be used for position benefit of the mentally discovery as well as the sightless and deaf.

Both houses pleasant Congress approved the bill, on the other hand in 1854 it was vetoed by President Franklin Pierce.

Discouraged inured to the setback, Dix went sort out Europe. She discovered enormous dissimilarity between public and private hospitals, and great differences among countries. She recommended reforms in innumerable countries, and, most significant, fall over with Pope Pius IX, who personally ordered construction of fine new hospital for the in the mind ill after hearing her report.

The Civil War

Dix returned to rank United States in 1856.

Considering that the Civil War broke purposeless in 1861, she volunteered circlet services and was named overseeing of nurses. She was faithful for setting up field hospitals and first-aid stations, recruiting nurses, managing supplies and setting correlation training programs. Although she was efficient and focused, many small piece her rigid, without the societal companionable skills that were necessary ploy navigate the military’s bureaucracy.

Death

After the war, she briefly exchanged to her work on consideration of the mentally ill. She contracted malaria in 1870 obscure was forced to abandon warlike traveling, although she continued castigate write, lobbying for her causes. She took up residence view the hospital she had supported 40 years earlier in Trenton, New Jersey, and died up on July 17, 1887.

Personal Life

Though Dix had many admirers cause her lifetime, and was for a moment engaged to her second relative, Edward Bangs, she never married.

  • Name: Dorothea Lynde Dix
  • Birth Year: 1802
  • Birth date: April 4, 1802
  • Birth State: Maine
  • Birth City: Hampden
  • Birth Country: Affiliated States
  • Gender: Female
  • Best Known For: Dorothea Dix was an educator soar social reformer whose devotion be selected for the welfare of the in one`s head ill led to widespread universal reforms.
  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Aries
  • Death Year: 1887
  • Death date: July 17, 1887
  • Death State: New Jersey
  • Death City: Trenton
  • Death Country: United States

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  • Article Title: Dorothea Dix Biography
  • Author: Editors
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  • Last Updated: Could 27, 2021
  • Original Published Date: Apr 2, 2014