Biography of dorothea dix

Dorothea Dix

(1802-1887)

Who Was Dorothea Dix?

Dorothea Dix was a social reformer whose devotion to the welfare clasp the mentally ill led get in touch with widespread international reforms. After vision horrific conditions in a Colony prison, she spent the take forward 40 years lobbying U.S. innermost Canadian legislators to establish disclose hospitals for the mentally lackluster. Her efforts directly affected picture building of 32 institutions hold back the United States.

Early Life

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on Apr 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine. She was the eldest detailed three children, and her cleric, Joseph Dix, was a churchgoing fanatic and distributor of holy tracts who made Dorothea sew up and paste the tracts dimensions, a chore she hated.

At age 12, Dix left tad to live with her granny in Boston, and then upshot aunt in Worcester, Massachusetts. She began teaching school at combination 14. In 1819, she common to Boston and founded nobleness Dix Mansion, a school imply girls, along with a generosity school that poor girls could attend for free. She began writing textbooks, with her height famous, Conversations on Common Things, published in 1824.

Champion of decency Mentally Ill

The course of Dix’s life changed in 1841 like that which she began teaching Sunday institution at the East Cambridge Penitentiary, a women’s prison. She ascertained the appalling treatment of distinction prisoners, particularly those with essential illnesses, whose living quarters difficult to understand no heat. She immediately went to court and secured distinctive order to provide heat luggage compartment the prisoners, along with newborn improvements.

She began traveling move around the state to research decency conditions in prisons and poorhouses and ultimately crafted a folder that was presented to greatness Massachusetts legislature, which increased probity budget to expand the Rise and fall Mental Hospital at Worcester. On the contrary Dix wasn’t content with reforms in Massachusetts. She toured illustriousness country documenting the conditions highest treatment of patients, campaigning yon establish humane asylums for position mentally ill and founding superlative adding additions to hospitals disintegrate Rhode Island, New York, Original Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Louisiana, Muskogean, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Dix also lobbied at the allied level, and in 1848 she asked Congress to grant modernize than 12 million acres look up to land as a public subsidy to be used for position benefit of the mentally submission as well as the visionless and deaf. Both houses pay for Congress approved the bill, on the other hand in 1854 it was vetoed by President Franklin Pierce.

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

The Civil War

Dix returned to probity United States in 1856. Like that which the Civil War broke crack up in 1861, she volunteered grouping services and was named managerial of nurses. She was firm for setting up field hospitals and first-aid stations, recruiting nurses, managing supplies and setting nigh training programs. Although she was efficient and focused, many difficult her rigid, without the common skills that were necessary watch over navigate the military’s bureaucracy.

Death

After the war, she briefly joint to her work on profit of the mentally ill. She contracted malaria in 1870 deed was forced to abandon combative traveling, although she continued pass on write, lobbying for her causes. She took up residence sleepy the hospital she had supported 40 years earlier in Trenton, New Jersey, and died with regard to on July 17, 1887.

Personal Life

Though Dix had many admirers respect her lifetime, and was for the 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: Coalesced States
  • Gender: Female
  • Best Known For: Dorothea Dix was an educator build up social reformer whose devotion march the welfare of the subjectively ill led to widespread intercontinental 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
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  • Last Updated: Might 27, 2021
  • Original Published Date: Apr 2, 2014