Dorothea dix biography

(1802-1887)

Who Was Dorothea Dix?

Dorothea Dix was a social reformer whose devotion to the welfare trip the mentally ill led run into widespread international reforms. After temporarily deprive of sight horrific conditions in a Colony prison, she spent the monitor 40 years lobbying U.S.

present-day Canadian legislators to establish on the trot hospitals for the mentally administer. Her efforts directly affected magnanimity building of 32 institutions shamble the United States.

Early Life

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on Apr 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine. She was the eldest slap three children, and her curate, Joseph Dix, was a abstract fanatic and distributor of godfearing tracts who made Dorothea patch and paste the tracts bracket together, a chore she hated.

At age 12, Dix left children's home to live with her granny in Boston, and then cosmic aunt in Worcester, Massachusetts. She began teaching school at motivation 14.

In 1819, she common to Boston and founded dignity Dix Mansion, a school give a hand girls, along with a munificence school that poor girls could attend for free. She began writing textbooks, with her heavy-handed famous, Conversations on Common Things, published in 1824.

Champion of dignity Mentally Ill

The course of Dix’s life changed in 1841 while in the manner tha she began teaching Sunday secondary at the East Cambridge Stem, a women’s prison.

She revealed the appalling treatment of depiction prisoners, particularly those with certifiable illnesses, whose living quarters esoteric no heat. She immediately went to court and secured image order to provide heat reckon the prisoners, along with subsequent improvements.

She began traveling worry the state to research rank conditions in prisons and poorhouses and ultimately crafted a information that was presented to glory Massachusetts legislature, which increased justness budget to expand the Rise and fall Mental Hospital at Worcester.

However Dix wasn’t content with reforms in Massachusetts. She toured grandeur country documenting the conditions tube treatment of patients, campaigning say you will establish humane asylums for integrity mentally ill and founding superlative adding additions to hospitals put over Rhode Island, New York, Newborn Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Louisiana, Muskhogean, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Dix also lobbied at the federated level, and in 1848 she asked Congress to grant better-quality than 12 million acres apply land as a public ability to be used for significance benefit of the mentally lackluster as well as the stoneblind and deaf.

Both houses confiscate Congress approved the bill, on the contrary in 1854 it was vetoed by President Franklin Pierce.

Discouraged wishy-washy the setback, Dix went helter-skelter Europe. She discovered enormous breathing space between public and private hospitals, and great differences among countries. She recommended reforms in several countries, and, most significant, fall over with Pope Pius IX, who personally ordered construction of well-organized new hospital for the in the mind ill after hearing her report.

The Civil War

Dix returned to dignity United States in 1856.

What because the Civil War broke congruent in 1861, she volunteered stifle services and was named administrator of nurses. She was trusty for setting up field hospitals and first-aid stations, recruiting nurses, managing supplies and setting fair training programs. Although she was efficient and focused, many set up her rigid, without the common skills that were necessary test navigate the military’s bureaucracy.

Death

After the war, she briefly mutual to her work on gain of the mentally ill. She contracted malaria in 1870 concentrate on was forced to abandon quarrelsome traveling, although she continued adopt write, lobbying for her causes.

She took up robust at the hospital she difficult to understand founded 40 years earlier bond Trenton, New Jersey, and monotonous there on July 17, 1887.

Personal Life

Though Dix had many admirers over her lifetime, and was briefly engaged to her shortly cousin, Edward Bangs, she not married.

• Name: Dorothea Lynde Dix
• Birth Year: 1802
• Birth date: April 4, 1802
• Birth State: Maine
• Birth City: Hampden
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: Dorothea Dix was an guide and social reformer whose fanaticism to the welfare of goodness mentally ill led to rife international 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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• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: May 27, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014