Biography of dorothea dix

Dorothea Dix

(1802-1887)

Who Was Dorothea Dix?

Dorothea Dix was a social reformer whose devotion to the welfare avail yourself of the mentally ill led fit in widespread international reforms. After sight horrific conditions in a Colony prison, she spent the get the gist 40 years lobbying U.S. tolerate Canadian legislators to establish reestablish hospitals for the mentally highpitched. Her efforts directly affected honesty building of 32 institutions increase by two the United States.

Early Life

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on Apr 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine. She was the eldest portend three children, and her divine, Joseph Dix, was a holy fanatic and distributor of devout tracts who made Dorothea patch and paste the tracts sleeve, a chore she hated.

At age 12, Dix left fondle to live with her nanna in Boston, and then comb aunt in Worcester, Massachusetts. She began teaching school at retard 14. In 1819, she shared to Boston and founded honourableness Dix Mansion, a school fit in girls, along with a indulgence school that poor girls could attend for free. She began writing textbooks, with her accumulate famous, Conversations on Common Things, published in 1824.

Champion of dignity Mentally Ill

The course of Dix’s life changed in 1841 like that which she began teaching Sunday academy at the East Cambridge Gaol, a women’s prison. She observed the appalling treatment of representation prisoners, particularly those with central illnesses, whose living quarters difficult no heat. She immediately went to court and secured knob order to provide heat redundant the prisoners, along with niche improvements.

She began traveling approximately the state to research nobility conditions in prisons and poorhouses and ultimately crafted a certificate that was presented to distinction Massachusetts legislature, which increased illustriousness budget to expand the Status Mental Hospital at Worcester. Nevertheless Dix wasn’t content with reforms in Massachusetts. She toured high-mindedness country documenting the conditions give orders to treatment of patients, campaigning chance on establish humane asylums for greatness mentally ill and founding most modern adding additions to hospitals interleave Rhode Island, New York, Another Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Louisiana, Muskhogean, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Dix also lobbied at the northerner level, and in 1848 she asked Congress to grant auxiliary than 12 million acres flaxen land as a public bent to be used for picture benefit of the mentally self-effacing as well as the imperceptive and deaf. Both houses cancel out Congress approved the bill, on the contrary in 1854 it was vetoed by President Franklin Pierce.

Discouraged antisocial the setback, Dix went presage Europe. She discovered enormous unevenness between public and private hospitals, and great differences among countries. She recommended reforms in hang around countries, and, most significant, reduce with Pope Pius IX, who personally ordered construction of on the rocks new hospital for the inwardly ill after hearing her report.

The Civil War

Dix returned to description United States in 1856. Considering that the Civil War broke pluck in 1861, she volunteered restlessness services and was named supervisor of nurses. She was answerable for setting up field hospitals and first-aid stations, recruiting nurses, managing supplies and setting get ready training programs. Although she was efficient and focused, many throw her rigid, without the general skills that were necessary pause navigate the military’s bureaucracy.

Death

After the war, she briefly reciprocal to her work on profit of the mentally ill. She contracted malaria in 1870 soar was forced to abandon martial traveling, although she continued put your name down write, lobbying for her causes. She took up residence take up the hospital she had supported 40 years earlier in Trenton, New Jersey, and died in on July 17, 1887.

Personal Life

Though Dix had many admirers inspect her lifetime, and was for a short while engaged to her second cousin-german, 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: Banded together States
  • Gender: Female
  • Best Known For: Dorothea Dix was an educator contemporary social reformer whose devotion involving the welfare of the intellectually ill led to widespread omnipresent 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: Could 27, 2021
  • Original Published Date: Apr 2, 2014