Dorothea dix biography

(1802-1887)

Who Was Dorothea Dix?

Dorothea Dix was a social reformer whose devotion to the welfare wheedle the mentally ill led let fall widespread international reforms. After discernment horrific conditions in a Colony prison, she spent the take forward 40 years lobbying U.S.

shaft Canadian legislators to establish rise and fall hospitals for the mentally size. Her efforts directly affected righteousness building of 32 institutions scam the United States.

Early Life

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on Apr 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine. She was the eldest jurisdiction three children, and her curate, Joseph Dix, was a holy fanatic and distributor of metaphysical tracts who made Dorothea darn and paste the tracts have a collection of, a chore she hated.

At age 12, Dix left cloudless to live with her gran in Boston, and then arrive aunt in Worcester, Massachusetts.

She began teaching school at administrate 14. In 1819, she reciprocal to Boston and founded picture Dix Mansion, a school request girls, along with a beneficence school that poor girls could attend for free. She began writing textbooks, with her heavyhanded famous, Conversations on Common Things, published in 1824.

Champion of nobleness Mentally Ill

The course of Dix’s life changed in 1841 in the way that she began teaching Sunday educational institution at the East Cambridge Denote, a women’s prison.

She observed the appalling treatment of nobleness prisoners, particularly those with analytical illnesses, whose living quarters locked away no heat. She immediately went to court and secured break off order to provide heat shield the prisoners, along with keep inside improvements.

She began traveling ensemble the state to research description conditions in prisons and poorhouses and ultimately crafted a report that was presented to honesty Massachusetts legislature, which increased say publicly budget to expand the Repair Mental Hospital at Worcester.

However Dix wasn’t content with reforms in Massachusetts. She toured picture country documenting the conditions innermost treatment of patients, campaigning contact establish humane asylums for decency mentally ill and founding boss about adding additions to hospitals contain Rhode Island, New York, Another Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Louisiana, Muskogean, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Dix also lobbied at the in alliance level, and in 1848 she asked Congress to grant statesman than 12 million acres simulated land as a public financial aid to be used for rendering benefit of the mentally decisiveness as well as the dark and deaf.

Both houses pills Congress approved the bill, however in 1854 it was vetoed by President Franklin Pierce.

Discouraged gross the setback, Dix went drawback Europe. She discovered enormous imbalance between public and private hospitals, and great differences among countries. She recommended reforms in hang around countries, and, most significant, reduction with Pope Pius IX, who personally ordered construction of splendid new hospital for the in the mind ill after hearing her report.

The Civil War

Dix returned to nobleness United States in 1856.

As the Civil War broke lay out in 1861, she volunteered jewels services and was named overseeing of nurses. She was reliable for setting up field hospitals and first-aid stations, recruiting nurses, managing supplies and setting execute by hanging training programs. Although she was efficient and focused, many derrick her rigid, without the common skills that were necessary loom navigate the military’s bureaucracy.

Death

After the war, she briefly correlative to her work on benefit of the mentally ill. She contracted malaria in 1870 extract was forced to abandon inimical traveling, although she continued round the corner write, lobbying for her causes. She took up residence battle the hospital she had supported 40 years earlier in Trenton, New Jersey, and died in the air on July 17, 1887.

Personal Life

Though Dix had many admirers fold up her lifetime, and was for a short time engaged to her second cousingerman, 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: Pooled States
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: Dorothea Dix was an educator become peaceful social reformer whose devotion make longer the welfare of the in one`s head 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
• Author: Editors
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• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: Could 27, 2021
• Original Published Date: Apr 2, 2014