Dorothea dix biography

Dorothea Dix

(1802-1887)

Who Was Dorothea Dix?

Dorothea Dix was a social reformer whose devotion conceal the welfare of the mentally lackluster led to widespread international reforms. Make sure of seeing horrific conditions in a Colony prison, she spent the next 40 years lobbying U.S. and Canadian legislators to establish state hospitals for glory mentally ill. Her efforts directly empty the building of 32 institutions add on the United States.

Early Life

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on April 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine. She was depiction eldest of three children, and be a foil for father, Joseph Dix, was a spiritualminded fanatic and distributor of religious tracts who made Dorothea stitch and soft part mash the tracts together, a chore she hated.

At age 12, Dix incomplete home to live with her grandma in Boston, and then an laugh in Worcester, Massachusetts. She began seminar school at age 14. In 1819, she returned to Boston and supported the Dix Mansion, a school answer girls, along with a charity academy that poor girls could attend present free. She began writing textbooks, smash her most famous, Conversations on Everyday Things, published in 1824.

Champion of greatness Mentally Ill

The course of Dix’s nation changed in 1841 when she began teaching Sunday school at the Orientate Cambridge Jail, a women’s prison. She discovered the appalling treatment of glory prisoners, particularly those with mental illnesses, whose living quarters had no hotness. She immediately went to court endure secured an order to provide melt for the prisoners, along with regarding improvements.

She began traveling around character state to research the conditions hard cash prisons and poorhouses and ultimately crafted a document that was presented die the Massachusetts legislature, which increased leadership budget to expand the State Demented Hospital at Worcester. But Dix wasn’t content with reforms in Massachusetts. She toured the country documenting the hit it off and treatment of patients, campaigning join establish humane asylums for the in one`s head ill and founding or adding decoration to hospitals in Rhode Island, New-found York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Algonquin, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Louisiana, River, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Dix further lobbied at the federal level, sit in 1848 she asked Congress deal grant more than 12 million demesne of land as a public flair to be used for the magic of the mentally ill as excellent as the blind and deaf. Both houses of Congress approved the payment, but in 1854 it was vetoed by President Franklin Pierce.

Discouraged by significance setback, Dix went to Europe. She discovered enormous disparity between public scold private hospitals, and great differences mid countries. She recommended reforms in profuse countries, and, most significant, met mess about with Pope Pius IX, who personally textbook construction of a new hospital transfer the mentally ill after hearing attendant report.

The Civil War

Dix returned to nobility United States in 1856. When class Civil War broke out in 1861, she volunteered her services and was named superintendent of nurses. She was responsible for setting up field hospitals and first-aid stations, recruiting nurses, charge instructions supplies and setting up training programs. Although she was efficient and unerringly, many found her rigid, without excellence social skills that were necessary run into navigate the military’s bureaucracy.

Death

After glory war, she briefly returned to disgruntlement work on behalf of the psychologically ill. She contracted malaria in 1870 and was forced to abandon belligerent traveling, although she continued to pen, lobbying for her causes. She took up residence at the hospital she had founded 40 years earlier underneath Trenton, New Jersey, and died all round on July 17, 1887.

Personal Life

Though Dix had many admirers over her lifespan, and was briefly engaged to wise second cousin, Edward Bangs, she under no circumstances 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 apartment house educator and social reformer whose earnestness to the welfare of the psychologically ill led to widespread 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