Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on April 4, 1802 in Hampden, Maine. Her parents were Joseph and Mary Dix. Her father was a traveling preacher and alcoholic. Her mother was emotionally unstable and unable to handle the family responsibilities. Because her mother was unable to take care of her family alone, Dorothea cared for her two younger brothers and assisted with household chores. The pressure of taking care of the family took its toil on Dorothea. When she was twelve, she ran away from home. She lived with various relatives in Worcester, Massachusetts.
When she was fourteen, Dorothea opened a school for children and taught there for three years. Dorothea was an excellent student and continued to study while teaching school. She was interested in science and wrote a textbook entitled, “Conversations on Common Things,” which was about the natural world. She was also very religious and always tried to help others less fortunate than she. In addition to running the first school she opened, she started a charity school for poor children named “The Hope.” Dorothea wrote books for the school children. In five years, she had written eight books. The responsibilities of running both of these schools made her ill and she traveled to England to recover.
While in England, she met Samuel Tuke, a Quaker who had built a hospital for mental patients. Tuke believed in the humane treatment of the mentally ill and advised that they be given books to read and allowed to listen to music. Tuke told Dix, “Just because a person may be insane upon one subject, does not necessarily mean that he will be insensible to human kindness.” Tuke’s humane treatment of mental patients was usual during this time. Many of the mental patients were kept in prisons alongside criminals, in filthy conditions or left on the street to fend for themselves.
When Dix visited Boston’s East Cambridge Jail, she saw scantily clad mental patients living alongside the criminals in cold, filthy cells. Dix was outraged at the conditions and voiced her concerns for the mental patients. The jailer responded to her by saying the lunatics could not feel the cold. This incident was the turning point in Dix’s life. She visited jails and poorhouses around the U.S. and documented her findings. In her report to the Massachusetts state legislature in December, 1842, she said,
“I have come to present to you the strong claims of suffering humanity. I come as the advocate of the helpless, forgotten, insane men and women held in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens; chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience. I beg, I implore you to put away the spirit of selfishness and self-seeking. Lay off the armor of local strife and political ambition. Forget, I beg you, the earthly and perishable, the thought without mercy. Gentlemen, I commit you to a sacred cause!”
She enlisted public officials to present her reports. As a result of her reports published in the “Boston Advertiser” and the “Boston Courier,” many states passed laws, provided funding and built hospitals for the humane care of mental patients. In 1845, she successfully campaigned to establish New Jersey’s first mental hospital in Trenton. From 1845 to 1848, she traveled across the U.S. investigating the treatment of mental patients and advising government officials about how to improve conditions. In support of her cause, railroad and steamboat companies paid for all her travel expenses.
Dix expanded her crusade for the humane treatment of mental patients to France, Russia, Scotland and Turkey. She was able to encourage the Pope to improve the treatment of mental patients in Italy. During the Civil War, Dix served as superintendent of nurses for the Union army. She maintained clean and efficient field hospitals. After the Civil War, Dix continued campaigning for the reform of mental-patient care throughout the rest of her life.
On July 17, 1887, Dix died in her apartment located at the Trenton hospital she had campaigned to establish. She is buried at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. The American flag and the standard of the Corps of Army Nurses fly over her grave. Her tombstone simply reads: Dorothea L. Dix. Today’s humane treatment of mental patients is the result of the efforts of Dorothea Dix. She is remembered as a great humanitarian and the “most distinguished woman America has ever produced.”
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