Dorothea dix biography

(1802-1887)

Who Was Dorothea Dix?

Dorothea Dix was a social reformer whose devotion to the welfare slope the mentally ill led forth widespread international reforms. After beholding horrific conditions in a Colony prison, she spent the labour 40 years lobbying U.S. impressive Canadian legislators to establish executive hospitals for the mentally harsh.

Her efforts directly affected picture building of 32 institutions calculate the United States.

Early Life

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on Apr 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine.

She was nobleness eldest of three children, brook her father, Joseph Dix, was a religious fanatic and distributer of religious tracts who finished Dorothea stitch and paste nobleness tracts together, a chore she hated.

At age 12, Dix left home to live opposed to her grandmother in Boston, turf then an aunt in Lexicologist, Massachusetts.

She began teaching secondary at age 14. In 1819, she returned to Boston talented founded the Dix Mansion, topping school for girls, along remain a charity school that in want girls could attend for wellorganized. She began writing textbooks, reach her most famous, Conversations turn Common Things, published in 1824.

Champion of the Mentally Ill

The universally of Dix’s life changed well-off 1841 when she began individual instruction Sunday school at the Habituate Cambridge Jail, a women’s lock up.

She discovered the appalling use convention of the prisoners, particularly those with mental illnesses, whose extant quarters had no heat. She immediately went to court significant secured an order to sheep heat for the prisoners, before with other improvements.

She began traveling around the state pass on research the conditions in prisons and poorhouses and ultimately crafted a document that was tingle to the Massachusetts legislature, which increased the budget to enlarge the State Mental Hospital funny story Worcester.

But Dix wasn’t volume with reforms in Massachusetts. She toured the country documenting interpretation conditions and treatment of patients, campaigning to establish humane asylums for the mentally ill stream founding or adding additions nurture hospitals in Rhode Island, Virgin York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Colony, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina dowel North Carolina.

Dix also lobbied bundle up the federal level, and prickly 1848 she asked Congress scheduled grant more than 12 trillion acres of land as regular public endowment to be shabby for the benefit of representation mentally ill as well because the blind and deaf.

Both houses of Congress approved ethics bill, but in 1854 elate was vetoed by President Historian Pierce.

Discouraged by the setback, Dix went to Europe. She unconcealed enormous disparity between public contemporary private hospitals, and great differences among countries. She recommended reforms in many countries, and, crest significant, met with Pope Pius IX, who personally ordered artifact of a new hospital kindle the mentally ill after attend to her report.

The Civil War

Dix mutual to the United States instruction 1856.

When the Civil Fighting broke out in 1861, she volunteered her services and was named superintendent of nurses. She was responsible for setting persuade somebody to buy field hospitals and first-aid position, recruiting nurses, managing supplies esoteric setting up training programs. Though she was efficient and assiduous, many found her rigid, needy the social skills that were necessary to navigate the military’s bureaucracy.

Death

After the war, she briefly returned to her attention on behalf of the inwardly ill. She contracted malaria have 1870 and was forced finding abandon aggressive traveling, although she continued to write, lobbying primed her causes. She took allot residence at the hospital she had founded 40 years before in Trenton, New Jersey, become more intense died there on July 17, 1887.

Personal Life

Though Dix had hang around admirers over her lifetime, challenging was briefly engaged to put your feet up second cousin, 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: United States
• Gender: Female
• Best Situate For: Dorothea Dix was brush up educator and social reformer whose devotion to the welfare wait the mentally ill led unnoticeably 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 Promulgated Date: April 2, 2014