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On May 29, 1861, Dorothea Dix offered help in setting up hospitals for the Union Army. From the article:
"Dorothea Lynde Dix
Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887) was an author, teacher and reformer. Her efforts on behalf of the mentally ill and prisoners helped create dozens of new institutions across the United States and in Europe and changed people’s perceptions of these populations. Charged during the American Civil War with the administration of military hospitals, Dix also established a reputation as an advocate for the work of female nurses. Her own troubled family background and impoverished youth served as a galvanizing force throughout her career, although she remained silent on her own biographical details for most of her long, productive life.
Dorothea Dix’s Early Life
Dorothea Dix was born in Hampden, Maine, in 1802. Her father Joseph was an itinerant Methodist preacher who was frequently away from home, and her mother suffered from debilitating bouts of depression. The oldest of three children, Dorothea ran her household and cared for her family members from a very young age. Joseph Dix, though a strict and volatile man prone to alcoholism and depression, taught his daughter to read and write, fostering Dorothea’s lifelong love of books and learning. Still, Dorothea’s early years were difficult, unpredictable and lonely.
At 12 Dorothea moved to Boston, where her wealthy grandmother took her in and encouraged her interest in education. Dix would eventually establish a series of schools in Boston and Worcester, designing her own curriculum and administering classrooms as a teenager and young woman. In the 1820s Dix’s poor health made her teaching increasingly sporadic, forcing her to take frequent breaks from her career. She began to write, and her books—filled with the simple dictums and morals that were thought to edify young minds—sold briskly. By 1836, persistent health problems caused Dix to close her latest school for good.
Dorathea Dix: The Asylum Movement
That same year Dix traveled in England with friends, returning home months later with an interest in new approaches to the treatment of the insane. She took a job teaching inmates in an East Cambridge prison, where conditions were so abysmal and the treatment of prisoners so inhumane that she began agitating at once for their improvement.
Prisons at the time were unregulated and unhygienic, with violent criminals housed side by side with the mentally ill. Inmates were often subject to the whims and brutalities of their jailers. Dix visited every public and private facility she could access, documenting the conditions she found with unflinching honesty. She then presented her findings to the legislature of Massachusetts, demanding that officials take action toward reform. Her reports—filled with dramatic accounts of prisoners flogged, starved, chained, physically and sexually abused by their keepers, and left naked and without heat or sanitation—shocked her audience and galvanized a movement to improve conditions for the imprisoned and insane.
As a result of Dix’s efforts, funds were set aside for the expansion of the state mental hospital in Worcester. Dix went on to accomplish similar goals in Rhode Island and New York, eventually crossing the country and expanding her work into Europe and beyond.
Dorothea Dix:The Civil War
Dix volunteered her services one week after the Civil War (1861-1865) began. Shortly after her arrival in Washington in April 1861, she was appointed to organize and outfit the Union Army hospitals and to oversee the vast nursing staff that the war would require. As superintendent of women nurses, she was the first woman to serve in such a high capacity in a federally appointed role.
With supplies pouring in from voluntary societies across the north, Dix’s administrative skills were sorely needed to manage the flow of bandages and clothing as the war wore on. Still, Dix often clashed with army officials and was widely feared and disliked by her volunteer female nurses. After months of hard work and exhaustion, she was eventually ousted from her position, stripped of authority by the fall of 1863 and sent home.
Dorothea Dix’s Later Life
After the war, Dix returned to her work as a social reformer. She traveled extensively in Europe, evidently disenchanted with her experience during the war, and continued to write and offer guidance to what was now a widespread movement to reform the treatment of the mentally ill. Old hospitals were redesigned and rededicated according to her ideals, and new hospitals were founded in accordance with the principles she espoused. After a long life as an author, advocate and agitator, Dorothea Dix died in 1887 at the age of 85 in a New Jersey hospital that had been established in her honor. She is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts."
"Dorothea Lynde Dix
Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887) was an author, teacher and reformer. Her efforts on behalf of the mentally ill and prisoners helped create dozens of new institutions across the United States and in Europe and changed people’s perceptions of these populations. Charged during the American Civil War with the administration of military hospitals, Dix also established a reputation as an advocate for the work of female nurses. Her own troubled family background and impoverished youth served as a galvanizing force throughout her career, although she remained silent on her own biographical details for most of her long, productive life.
Dorothea Dix’s Early Life
Dorothea Dix was born in Hampden, Maine, in 1802. Her father Joseph was an itinerant Methodist preacher who was frequently away from home, and her mother suffered from debilitating bouts of depression. The oldest of three children, Dorothea ran her household and cared for her family members from a very young age. Joseph Dix, though a strict and volatile man prone to alcoholism and depression, taught his daughter to read and write, fostering Dorothea’s lifelong love of books and learning. Still, Dorothea’s early years were difficult, unpredictable and lonely.
At 12 Dorothea moved to Boston, where her wealthy grandmother took her in and encouraged her interest in education. Dix would eventually establish a series of schools in Boston and Worcester, designing her own curriculum and administering classrooms as a teenager and young woman. In the 1820s Dix’s poor health made her teaching increasingly sporadic, forcing her to take frequent breaks from her career. She began to write, and her books—filled with the simple dictums and morals that were thought to edify young minds—sold briskly. By 1836, persistent health problems caused Dix to close her latest school for good.
Dorathea Dix: The Asylum Movement
That same year Dix traveled in England with friends, returning home months later with an interest in new approaches to the treatment of the insane. She took a job teaching inmates in an East Cambridge prison, where conditions were so abysmal and the treatment of prisoners so inhumane that she began agitating at once for their improvement.
Prisons at the time were unregulated and unhygienic, with violent criminals housed side by side with the mentally ill. Inmates were often subject to the whims and brutalities of their jailers. Dix visited every public and private facility she could access, documenting the conditions she found with unflinching honesty. She then presented her findings to the legislature of Massachusetts, demanding that officials take action toward reform. Her reports—filled with dramatic accounts of prisoners flogged, starved, chained, physically and sexually abused by their keepers, and left naked and without heat or sanitation—shocked her audience and galvanized a movement to improve conditions for the imprisoned and insane.
As a result of Dix’s efforts, funds were set aside for the expansion of the state mental hospital in Worcester. Dix went on to accomplish similar goals in Rhode Island and New York, eventually crossing the country and expanding her work into Europe and beyond.
Dorothea Dix:The Civil War
Dix volunteered her services one week after the Civil War (1861-1865) began. Shortly after her arrival in Washington in April 1861, she was appointed to organize and outfit the Union Army hospitals and to oversee the vast nursing staff that the war would require. As superintendent of women nurses, she was the first woman to serve in such a high capacity in a federally appointed role.
With supplies pouring in from voluntary societies across the north, Dix’s administrative skills were sorely needed to manage the flow of bandages and clothing as the war wore on. Still, Dix often clashed with army officials and was widely feared and disliked by her volunteer female nurses. After months of hard work and exhaustion, she was eventually ousted from her position, stripped of authority by the fall of 1863 and sent home.
Dorothea Dix’s Later Life
After the war, Dix returned to her work as a social reformer. She traveled extensively in Europe, evidently disenchanted with her experience during the war, and continued to write and offer guidance to what was now a widespread movement to reform the treatment of the mentally ill. Old hospitals were redesigned and rededicated according to her ideals, and new hospitals were founded in accordance with the principles she espoused. After a long life as an author, advocate and agitator, Dorothea Dix died in 1887 at the age of 85 in a New Jersey hospital that had been established in her honor. She is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts."
Dorothea Lynde Dix
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Dorothea Dix - The Face of the Mental Health Reform
The Face of the Mental Health Reform *This was made as a high school project*
Thank you, my friend SGT (Join to see) for mentioning Dorothea Lynde Dix who offered help in setting up hospitals for the Union Army.
Images:
1. 1860s Dorothea Dix with civil war patients.
2. U.S. #1844 1983 1¢ Dorothea Dix Great Americans Issue Date September 23, 1983.
3. 1868 Dorothea Lynde Dix. Oil on canvas, 1868, by Samuel Bell Waugh. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
Dorothea Dix - The Face of the Mental Health Reform
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nvioHrxuq0
Background from anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/ [login to see] [login to see] /anb [login to see] 697-e-1500181
Dorothea Lynde Dix, (04 April 1802–17 July 1887)
Andrew G. Wood
Published in print: 1999 Published online: February 2000
Dix, Dorothea Lynde (04 April 1802–17 July 1887), social reformer, was born in Hampden, Maine (on the Penobscot River), the daughter of Joseph Dix, a minister, and Mary Bigelow. During her early years Dorothea shared a small cottage with her parents and two younger brothers. Because her family was quite poor, she often traveled to Boston to live with her grandparents. In 1816 she began a career as a teacher. Five years later Dix opened her own school for young women in Boston. During this early period of her life, Dix worked diligently, teaching during the day while reading and writing late into the evening. Included among her students were the daughters of influential Bostonian William Ellery Channing, who became one of her early supporters.
In 1827 Dix became severely ill with tuberculosis. In an effort to regain her health, she spent the spring and summer that year at Channing’s country retreat in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Following this, Dix dedicated herself to writing while also working to regain her health. Having already published a science textbook for young students titled Conversations on Common Things (1824), Dix subsequently produced other books, including Ten Short Stories for Children (1827), Meditations for Private Hours (1828), The Garland of Flora (1829), and The Pearl or Affection’s Gift: A Christmas and New Year’s Present (1829).
With her health still not fully restored, Dix again joined the Channing family for a vacation in the fall of 1830. This time they traveled to St. Croix. After an extended retreat, Dix returned to teaching in Boston in 1831. For the next five years she followed an exhaustive schedule, which now included caring for her aging grandmother. During this time she complained to her friend Anne Heath in Brookline, Massachusetts, “There is so much to do, I am broken on a wheel.” In the spring of 1836 she collapsed. Suffering frequent pain and hemorrhaging, she soon lost the use of a lung. In an effort to recover her strength once again, Dix sailed to Liverpool, England, where she stayed in the home of William Rathbone, a wealthy merchant and friend of Channing. Often bedridden and extremely weak, Dix stayed in Liverpool for a total of eighteen months.
In England Dix learned of the work of Philippe Pinel, a French doctor who had campaigned for prison reform during the late eighteenth century. She also became familiar with the efforts of William Tuke, Rathbone’s grandfather, who founded a sanctuary for the mentally ill in England called the Retreat at York. The careers of these two men soon would inspire her to investigate the plight of the insane in the United States.
After hearing of the death of her grandmother, Dix returned to Boston in 1837. Shortly thereafter, she received an inheritance that freed her from the need to work as a teacher. During the next few years Dix remained preoccupied with her health. Advised to avoid the New England winter, she spent time in Washington, D.C., and in Oakland, Virginia.
By 1841 Dix had regained her strength. That winter she visited a jail in East Cambridge, Massachusetts, after being invited to teach a Sunday school class. Having heard rumors of the horrible conditions that existed in the jail, she took the opportunity to inspect the facility herself. After listening to the concerns of a group of women prisoners, she asked to see where the “insane” were kept. Taken to a dark, underground cavern, Dix discovered a number of mentally ill women in cold, filthy cells.
Shocked by this experience, Dix consulted with her friend Channing. He advised her to talk with influential men in the community in order to arouse public opinion regarding the plight of the mentally ill. She visited with educator Horace Mann, abolitionist Charles Sumner, and the head of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, Samuel Gridley Howe. Gaining the support of these men, known at the time as “the three horsemen of reform” in Massachusetts, Dix began an eighteen-month tour of poorhouses and prisons in the state. During this time, she visited approximately 500 towns in search of the mentally ill. In many cases she found individuals kept in cages, chained to walls, or otherwise mistreated.
In support of Dix’s efforts, Howe published an article in the Boston Daily Advisor on 8 September 1841 that criticized the treatment of the mentally ill throughout Massachusetts. Along with other letters published around the same time, Howe’s description sparked significant public response. Encouraged, Dix decided to take up the cause of the mentally ill full-time. Two years later she composed the first of what would become several “memorials” to state legislatures throughout the country. In A Memorial to the Massachusetts Legislature (1843) she described what she had seen during her tour and called for immediate reforms. “Men of Massachusetts,” she wrote, “I implore. I demand pity and protection for these of my suffering, outraged sex.” With the support of Howe, Mann, and others, Dix’s petition was approved and a bill was passed that soon provided needed funds for the mentally ill at the Worcester State Hospital. After this first victory, she expanded her campaign to the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
On 10 April 1844 the Providence Journal printed an article by Dix describing the living conditions of Abram Simmons, an insane man held in a jail near Providence, Rhode Island. Titled “Astonishing Tenacity of Life,” Dorothea wrote describing Simmons’s cell:
Six to eight feet square, built entirely of stone and entered through two iron doors, excluding both light and fresh air, and entirely without accommodation of any description for warming and ventilating. The internal surface of the walls was covered with a thick frost … the only bed was a small sacking stuffed with straw. The bed itself was wet, and the outside covering was completely saturated with drippings from the walls and stiffly frozen.
She then offered a portrait of Simmons himself. “In utter darkness, encased on every side by walls of frost, his garments [were] constantly more or less wet, with only wet straw to lie upon, and a sheet of ice for his covering, has this most dreadfully abused man existed through the past inclement winter.” She suggested that “his teeth must have been worn out by constant and violent chattering for such of length of time, night and day.” With this vivid account, Dix created new opportunities for mental health reform.
While in Providence, Dix visited the home of wealthy businessman Cyrus Butler to ask for money to help improve treatment of the mentally ill. To her surprise, Butler agreed to donate $40,000 to her cause. This allowed several hundred of the city’s “mentally incompetent” to be transferred to a new hospital. Following this success, Dix turned her attention to New Jersey, where she presented a memorial to the state legislature. The New Jersey lawmakers approved her proposal to establish a new state hospital in February 1845. A similar decree also gained the necessary votes in the Pennsylvania legislature the same year.
By the end of 1845, Dix had traveled approximately 10,000 miles, visiting eighteen state penitentiaries, 300 county jails, and more than 500 poorhouses in much of the U.S. Midwest and South, as well as in portions of eastern Canada. At this point, she had helped to establish six new hospitals for the mentally ill and had influenced the improvement of numerous other facilities. During the following three years she continued to lobby state legislatures on behalf of the mentally ill.
Beginning in 1848 Dix increasingly devoted her energy to reforms at the federal level. She began a new project that proposed that revenue collected from the sale of public land be used to establish a federal fund for the mentally ill, blind, deaf, and mute across the nation. Despite significant support for the measure, Congress turned down her request. Quickly, she appealed again. This time Dix more than doubled the amount of public domain requested. In her memorial to Congress, she described the conditions she had observed in jails, poorhouses, and other facilities, where inmates were “bound with galling chains, … lacerated with ropes, scourged with rods, and terrified beneath storms of profane execrations and cruel blows; now subject to gibes and scorn and torturing tricks, now abandoned to the most loathsome necessities, or subject to the vilest and most outrageous violations.” Recognizing her determination, Congress designated a special alcove in the Capitol library for Dix. Despite her persistence, however, approval of her proposal continued to be frustrated by political delays in Washington. With the opening of the 1850 Congress, Dix again increased the amount of land requested and worked to gain additional support. Further action was unsuccessful, however, until early 1854. At that time the Senate voted to approve Dix’s bill by a two-thirds majority. In August the House also passed the measure. When the bill reached the desk of President Franklin Pierce, he vetoed it. Asked why he disapproved of the legislation, Pierce said that he feared it would make the federal government responsible not only for the “indigent insane” but also “all the poor of the United States.” Although Pierce’s veto had killed Dix’s bill, it did not end her determination to champion the cause of the mentally ill.
Dix left for Liverpool in September 1854. In February of the following year she traveled to Scotland, where she resumed her reform campaign. Working constantly, Dix conferred with notable London doctors and visited several institutions in both Scotland and England. By April she had generated sufficient interest to persuade Queen Victoria to appoint a Royal Commission to investigate the condition of the mentally ill. Two years later, Parliament approved a law that allocated funds for the improvement of asylums in Scotland.
After her success in the United Kingdom, Dix then set her sights on the European continent. Beginning in June 1855, she traveled for approximately one year, visiting institutions in France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Germany. In Rome she appealed to Pope Pius IX, who later facilitated the creation of a new asylum. Cyrus Hamlin, a Turkish doctor who had hosted Dix in Constantinople, later conveyed his impression of her to biographer Francis Tiffany: “She had two objects in view, the hospitals and prisons. To these she seemed wholly devoted, although her conversation and her interest, embraced a vast variety of subjects … Miss Dix made the impression [of being] a person of culture, judgement, self-possession, absolute fearlessness in the path of duty, and yet a woman of refinement and true Christian philanthropy.” As with her experiences in Italy and Turkey, Dix’s talent as well as her tireless dedication brought about important changes in the treatment of the mentally ill in many of the countries she visited.
In the fall of 1856 Dix returned to New York. For the next five years she continued to work for mental health reform in the United States and Canada. In 1860 her earlier efforts in Washington finally bore fruit. Her bill, allocating funds for the New Jersey State Hospital in Trenton, passed both the House and Senate and was signed by President James Buchanan. That same year Dix’s lobbying prompted the Tennessee legislature as well as private donors in the state of Pennsylvania to provide significant sums dedicated to the treatment of the mentally ill.
In 1861 the outbreak of the Civil War temporarily suspended Dix’s advocacy for the mentally ill. On 10 June 1861 she was appointed superintendent of U.S. Army nurses. For the next few years Dix trained approximately 180 young women, including Louisa May Alcott, for medical duty during the war. One doctor testified to Dix’s dedication during this period by writing that she “was a very retiring, sensitive woman, yet brave and bold as a lion to do battle for the right and for justice. … She was very unpopular in the war with surgeons, nurses, and any others, who failed to do their whole duty.” As with her deep commitment to the cause of mental health reform, Dix’s service during the war won the respect of many. She received special recognition for her service during the war in December 1866 when Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton awarded her two national flags for “the Care, Succor, and Relief of the Sick and wounded Soldiers of the United States on the Battle-Field, in Camps and Hospitals during the recent War.”
Following the war, Dix resumed her career as an advocate for the mentally ill. Traveling the country as before, she continued to visit institutions and lobby state legislators. In Washington, Dix persuaded the visiting Japanese chargé d’affairs to help establish facilities for the mentally ill in his country. In late 1875 she was pleased to learn that an asylum had been built in Kyoto.
At the age of seventy-nine, Dix, who never married, took her final tour to parts of New England and New York. After this, she retired in Trenton, New Jersey, where, after a convalescence of five years, she died.
In her lifetime, Dorothea Dix brought about significant changes in the care of the mentally ill in North America and Europe. Her work influenced conceptions about those held in prisons and asylums by identifying mental illness as a medical rather than moral issue. Her efforts helped pave the way for improved treatment of the mentally ill as well as the creation of more than 120 new mental health facilities. As biographers Charles Schlaifer and Lucy Freeman wrote, “It was Dorothea Lynde Dix who lifted the status [of the insane] from that of wounded beasts who were brutalized, chained, thrown food as though they were vicious dogs, and left to freeze in the cold, to that of troubled mortals who could be helped to regain their senses as they received understanding care that helped them reach the roots of their inner disturbances” (p. 161). Dix’s compassionate work and dedicated effort for over forty years helped open the eyes of many to the plight of the mentally ill. Her distinguished career as an advocate for reform has earned her an important place in history as well as the respect of people around the world.
Bibliography
Dix’s papers are at Houghton Library, Harvard University. Francis Tiffany’s Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix (1891) offers the first and most detailed biography of Dix, including a number of letters exchanged with her friends William Ellery Channing, Samuel Gridley Howe, Horace Mann, Anne Heath, Mrs. Hare, Daniel Tuke, Mr. and Mrs. William Rathbone, Mrs. Samuel Torrey, and others, as well as interviews with various people who knew her. Other biographies include Helen E. Marshall, Dorothea Lynde Dix: Forgotten Samaritan (1937); Rachael Baker, Angel of Mercy (1955); Dorothy Clark Wilson, Stranger and Traveler: The Story of Dorothea Lynde Dix, American Reformer (1975); and Charles Schlaifer and Lucy Freeman, Heart’s Work: Civil War Heroine and Champion of the Mentally Ill, Dorothea Lynde Dix (1991)."
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Images:
1. 1860s Dorothea Dix with civil war patients.
2. U.S. #1844 1983 1¢ Dorothea Dix Great Americans Issue Date September 23, 1983.
3. 1868 Dorothea Lynde Dix. Oil on canvas, 1868, by Samuel Bell Waugh. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
Dorothea Dix - The Face of the Mental Health Reform
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nvioHrxuq0
Background from anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/ [login to see] [login to see] /anb [login to see] 697-e-1500181
Dorothea Lynde Dix, (04 April 1802–17 July 1887)
Andrew G. Wood
Published in print: 1999 Published online: February 2000
Dix, Dorothea Lynde (04 April 1802–17 July 1887), social reformer, was born in Hampden, Maine (on the Penobscot River), the daughter of Joseph Dix, a minister, and Mary Bigelow. During her early years Dorothea shared a small cottage with her parents and two younger brothers. Because her family was quite poor, she often traveled to Boston to live with her grandparents. In 1816 she began a career as a teacher. Five years later Dix opened her own school for young women in Boston. During this early period of her life, Dix worked diligently, teaching during the day while reading and writing late into the evening. Included among her students were the daughters of influential Bostonian William Ellery Channing, who became one of her early supporters.
In 1827 Dix became severely ill with tuberculosis. In an effort to regain her health, she spent the spring and summer that year at Channing’s country retreat in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Following this, Dix dedicated herself to writing while also working to regain her health. Having already published a science textbook for young students titled Conversations on Common Things (1824), Dix subsequently produced other books, including Ten Short Stories for Children (1827), Meditations for Private Hours (1828), The Garland of Flora (1829), and The Pearl or Affection’s Gift: A Christmas and New Year’s Present (1829).
With her health still not fully restored, Dix again joined the Channing family for a vacation in the fall of 1830. This time they traveled to St. Croix. After an extended retreat, Dix returned to teaching in Boston in 1831. For the next five years she followed an exhaustive schedule, which now included caring for her aging grandmother. During this time she complained to her friend Anne Heath in Brookline, Massachusetts, “There is so much to do, I am broken on a wheel.” In the spring of 1836 she collapsed. Suffering frequent pain and hemorrhaging, she soon lost the use of a lung. In an effort to recover her strength once again, Dix sailed to Liverpool, England, where she stayed in the home of William Rathbone, a wealthy merchant and friend of Channing. Often bedridden and extremely weak, Dix stayed in Liverpool for a total of eighteen months.
In England Dix learned of the work of Philippe Pinel, a French doctor who had campaigned for prison reform during the late eighteenth century. She also became familiar with the efforts of William Tuke, Rathbone’s grandfather, who founded a sanctuary for the mentally ill in England called the Retreat at York. The careers of these two men soon would inspire her to investigate the plight of the insane in the United States.
After hearing of the death of her grandmother, Dix returned to Boston in 1837. Shortly thereafter, she received an inheritance that freed her from the need to work as a teacher. During the next few years Dix remained preoccupied with her health. Advised to avoid the New England winter, she spent time in Washington, D.C., and in Oakland, Virginia.
By 1841 Dix had regained her strength. That winter she visited a jail in East Cambridge, Massachusetts, after being invited to teach a Sunday school class. Having heard rumors of the horrible conditions that existed in the jail, she took the opportunity to inspect the facility herself. After listening to the concerns of a group of women prisoners, she asked to see where the “insane” were kept. Taken to a dark, underground cavern, Dix discovered a number of mentally ill women in cold, filthy cells.
Shocked by this experience, Dix consulted with her friend Channing. He advised her to talk with influential men in the community in order to arouse public opinion regarding the plight of the mentally ill. She visited with educator Horace Mann, abolitionist Charles Sumner, and the head of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, Samuel Gridley Howe. Gaining the support of these men, known at the time as “the three horsemen of reform” in Massachusetts, Dix began an eighteen-month tour of poorhouses and prisons in the state. During this time, she visited approximately 500 towns in search of the mentally ill. In many cases she found individuals kept in cages, chained to walls, or otherwise mistreated.
In support of Dix’s efforts, Howe published an article in the Boston Daily Advisor on 8 September 1841 that criticized the treatment of the mentally ill throughout Massachusetts. Along with other letters published around the same time, Howe’s description sparked significant public response. Encouraged, Dix decided to take up the cause of the mentally ill full-time. Two years later she composed the first of what would become several “memorials” to state legislatures throughout the country. In A Memorial to the Massachusetts Legislature (1843) she described what she had seen during her tour and called for immediate reforms. “Men of Massachusetts,” she wrote, “I implore. I demand pity and protection for these of my suffering, outraged sex.” With the support of Howe, Mann, and others, Dix’s petition was approved and a bill was passed that soon provided needed funds for the mentally ill at the Worcester State Hospital. After this first victory, she expanded her campaign to the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
On 10 April 1844 the Providence Journal printed an article by Dix describing the living conditions of Abram Simmons, an insane man held in a jail near Providence, Rhode Island. Titled “Astonishing Tenacity of Life,” Dorothea wrote describing Simmons’s cell:
Six to eight feet square, built entirely of stone and entered through two iron doors, excluding both light and fresh air, and entirely without accommodation of any description for warming and ventilating. The internal surface of the walls was covered with a thick frost … the only bed was a small sacking stuffed with straw. The bed itself was wet, and the outside covering was completely saturated with drippings from the walls and stiffly frozen.
She then offered a portrait of Simmons himself. “In utter darkness, encased on every side by walls of frost, his garments [were] constantly more or less wet, with only wet straw to lie upon, and a sheet of ice for his covering, has this most dreadfully abused man existed through the past inclement winter.” She suggested that “his teeth must have been worn out by constant and violent chattering for such of length of time, night and day.” With this vivid account, Dix created new opportunities for mental health reform.
While in Providence, Dix visited the home of wealthy businessman Cyrus Butler to ask for money to help improve treatment of the mentally ill. To her surprise, Butler agreed to donate $40,000 to her cause. This allowed several hundred of the city’s “mentally incompetent” to be transferred to a new hospital. Following this success, Dix turned her attention to New Jersey, where she presented a memorial to the state legislature. The New Jersey lawmakers approved her proposal to establish a new state hospital in February 1845. A similar decree also gained the necessary votes in the Pennsylvania legislature the same year.
By the end of 1845, Dix had traveled approximately 10,000 miles, visiting eighteen state penitentiaries, 300 county jails, and more than 500 poorhouses in much of the U.S. Midwest and South, as well as in portions of eastern Canada. At this point, she had helped to establish six new hospitals for the mentally ill and had influenced the improvement of numerous other facilities. During the following three years she continued to lobby state legislatures on behalf of the mentally ill.
Beginning in 1848 Dix increasingly devoted her energy to reforms at the federal level. She began a new project that proposed that revenue collected from the sale of public land be used to establish a federal fund for the mentally ill, blind, deaf, and mute across the nation. Despite significant support for the measure, Congress turned down her request. Quickly, she appealed again. This time Dix more than doubled the amount of public domain requested. In her memorial to Congress, she described the conditions she had observed in jails, poorhouses, and other facilities, where inmates were “bound with galling chains, … lacerated with ropes, scourged with rods, and terrified beneath storms of profane execrations and cruel blows; now subject to gibes and scorn and torturing tricks, now abandoned to the most loathsome necessities, or subject to the vilest and most outrageous violations.” Recognizing her determination, Congress designated a special alcove in the Capitol library for Dix. Despite her persistence, however, approval of her proposal continued to be frustrated by political delays in Washington. With the opening of the 1850 Congress, Dix again increased the amount of land requested and worked to gain additional support. Further action was unsuccessful, however, until early 1854. At that time the Senate voted to approve Dix’s bill by a two-thirds majority. In August the House also passed the measure. When the bill reached the desk of President Franklin Pierce, he vetoed it. Asked why he disapproved of the legislation, Pierce said that he feared it would make the federal government responsible not only for the “indigent insane” but also “all the poor of the United States.” Although Pierce’s veto had killed Dix’s bill, it did not end her determination to champion the cause of the mentally ill.
Dix left for Liverpool in September 1854. In February of the following year she traveled to Scotland, where she resumed her reform campaign. Working constantly, Dix conferred with notable London doctors and visited several institutions in both Scotland and England. By April she had generated sufficient interest to persuade Queen Victoria to appoint a Royal Commission to investigate the condition of the mentally ill. Two years later, Parliament approved a law that allocated funds for the improvement of asylums in Scotland.
After her success in the United Kingdom, Dix then set her sights on the European continent. Beginning in June 1855, she traveled for approximately one year, visiting institutions in France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Germany. In Rome she appealed to Pope Pius IX, who later facilitated the creation of a new asylum. Cyrus Hamlin, a Turkish doctor who had hosted Dix in Constantinople, later conveyed his impression of her to biographer Francis Tiffany: “She had two objects in view, the hospitals and prisons. To these she seemed wholly devoted, although her conversation and her interest, embraced a vast variety of subjects … Miss Dix made the impression [of being] a person of culture, judgement, self-possession, absolute fearlessness in the path of duty, and yet a woman of refinement and true Christian philanthropy.” As with her experiences in Italy and Turkey, Dix’s talent as well as her tireless dedication brought about important changes in the treatment of the mentally ill in many of the countries she visited.
In the fall of 1856 Dix returned to New York. For the next five years she continued to work for mental health reform in the United States and Canada. In 1860 her earlier efforts in Washington finally bore fruit. Her bill, allocating funds for the New Jersey State Hospital in Trenton, passed both the House and Senate and was signed by President James Buchanan. That same year Dix’s lobbying prompted the Tennessee legislature as well as private donors in the state of Pennsylvania to provide significant sums dedicated to the treatment of the mentally ill.
In 1861 the outbreak of the Civil War temporarily suspended Dix’s advocacy for the mentally ill. On 10 June 1861 she was appointed superintendent of U.S. Army nurses. For the next few years Dix trained approximately 180 young women, including Louisa May Alcott, for medical duty during the war. One doctor testified to Dix’s dedication during this period by writing that she “was a very retiring, sensitive woman, yet brave and bold as a lion to do battle for the right and for justice. … She was very unpopular in the war with surgeons, nurses, and any others, who failed to do their whole duty.” As with her deep commitment to the cause of mental health reform, Dix’s service during the war won the respect of many. She received special recognition for her service during the war in December 1866 when Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton awarded her two national flags for “the Care, Succor, and Relief of the Sick and wounded Soldiers of the United States on the Battle-Field, in Camps and Hospitals during the recent War.”
Following the war, Dix resumed her career as an advocate for the mentally ill. Traveling the country as before, she continued to visit institutions and lobby state legislators. In Washington, Dix persuaded the visiting Japanese chargé d’affairs to help establish facilities for the mentally ill in his country. In late 1875 she was pleased to learn that an asylum had been built in Kyoto.
At the age of seventy-nine, Dix, who never married, took her final tour to parts of New England and New York. After this, she retired in Trenton, New Jersey, where, after a convalescence of five years, she died.
In her lifetime, Dorothea Dix brought about significant changes in the care of the mentally ill in North America and Europe. Her work influenced conceptions about those held in prisons and asylums by identifying mental illness as a medical rather than moral issue. Her efforts helped pave the way for improved treatment of the mentally ill as well as the creation of more than 120 new mental health facilities. As biographers Charles Schlaifer and Lucy Freeman wrote, “It was Dorothea Lynde Dix who lifted the status [of the insane] from that of wounded beasts who were brutalized, chained, thrown food as though they were vicious dogs, and left to freeze in the cold, to that of troubled mortals who could be helped to regain their senses as they received understanding care that helped them reach the roots of their inner disturbances” (p. 161). Dix’s compassionate work and dedicated effort for over forty years helped open the eyes of many to the plight of the mentally ill. Her distinguished career as an advocate for reform has earned her an important place in history as well as the respect of people around the world.
Bibliography
Dix’s papers are at Houghton Library, Harvard University. Francis Tiffany’s Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix (1891) offers the first and most detailed biography of Dix, including a number of letters exchanged with her friends William Ellery Channing, Samuel Gridley Howe, Horace Mann, Anne Heath, Mrs. Hare, Daniel Tuke, Mr. and Mrs. William Rathbone, Mrs. Samuel Torrey, and others, as well as interviews with various people who knew her. Other biographies include Helen E. Marshall, Dorothea Lynde Dix: Forgotten Samaritan (1937); Rachael Baker, Angel of Mercy (1955); Dorothy Clark Wilson, Stranger and Traveler: The Story of Dorothea Lynde Dix, American Reformer (1975); and Charles Schlaifer and Lucy Freeman, Heart’s Work: Civil War Heroine and Champion of the Mentally Ill, Dorothea Lynde Dix (1991)."
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