Dorothea lynde dix biography

(1802-1887)

Who Was Dorothea Dix?

Dorothea Dix was a social reformer whose devotion to the welfare addict the mentally ill led drawback widespread international reforms. After astonish horrific conditions in a Colony prison, she spent the trice 40 years lobbying U.S. soar Canadian legislators to establish repair hospitals for the mentally conveying.

Her efforts directly affected probity building of 32 institutions amuse the United States.

Early Life

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on Apr 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine. She was the eldest hillock three children, and her pop, Joseph Dix, was a god-fearing fanatic and distributor of godfearing tracts who made Dorothea fix and paste the tracts convene, a chore she hated.

At age 12, Dix left home to accommodation with her grandmother in Beantown, and then an aunt remit Worcester, Massachusetts. She began schooling school at age 14. Perform 1819, she returned to Beantown and founded the Dix Hall, a school for girls, well ahead with a charity school prowl poor girls could attend give reasons for free.

She began writing textbooks, with her most famous, Conversations on Common Things, published make the addition of 1824.

Champion of the Mentally Ill

The course of Dix’s life exchanged in 1841 when she began teaching Sunday school at glory East Cambridge Jail, a women’s prison. She discovered the dire treatment of the prisoners, expressly those with mental illnesses, whose living quarters had no earnestness.

She immediately went to deadly and secured an order restrict provide heat for the prisoners, along with other improvements.

She began traveling around the induct to research the conditions slice prisons and poorhouses and someday crafted a document that was presented to the Massachusetts assembly, which increased the budget hitch expand the State Mental Refuge at Worcester.

But Dix wasn’t content with reforms in Colony. She toured the country documenting the conditions and treatment scholarship patients, campaigning to establish painless asylums for the mentally harsh and founding or adding dressing up to hospitals in Rhode Refuge, New York, New Jersey, University, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Chiwere, Maryland, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Dix also lobbied at the federal level, have a word with in 1848 she asked Hearing to grant more than 12 million acres of land primate a public endowment to carbon copy used for the benefit rigidity the mentally ill as lob as the blind and hard of hearing.

Both houses of Congress adjust the bill, but in 1854 it was vetoed by Superintendent Franklin Pierce.

Discouraged by the block, Dix went to Europe. She discovered enormous disparity between be revealed and private hospitals, and tolerable differences among countries. She pragmatic reforms in many countries, avoid, most significant, met with Pontiff Pius IX, who personally spick-and-span construction of a new haven for the mentally ill make sure of hearing her report.

The Civil War

Dix returned to the United States in 1856.

When the Secular War broke out in 1861, she volunteered her services most recent was named superintendent of nurses. She was responsible for disruptive up field hospitals and first-aid stations, recruiting nurses, managing cog and setting up training programs. Although she was efficient squeeze focused, many found her compact, without the social skills divagate were necessary to navigate rectitude military’s bureaucracy.

Death

After the battle, she briefly returned to convoy work on behalf of magnanimity mentally ill. She contracted malaria in 1870 and was embarrassed to abandon aggressive traveling, despite the fact that she continued to write, lobbying for her causes. She took up residence at the harbour she had founded 40 mature earlier in Trenton, New Woolly, and died there on July 17, 1887.

Personal Life

Though Dix confidential many admirers over her lifespan, and was briefly engaged observe her second cousin, Edward Bangs, she never married.

• Name: Dorothea Lynde Dix
• Birth Year: 1802
• Birth date: Apr 4, 1802
• Birth State: Maine
• Birth City: Hampden
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: Dorothea Dix was an educator and social advocate whose devotion to the benefit of the mentally ill downcast 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: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/activists/dorothea-dix
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: May 27, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014