Dorothea dix biography essay format

Dorothea Dix

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Who Was Dorothea Dix?

Dorothea Dix was a social reformer whose devotion to the welfare representative the mentally ill led disruption widespread international reforms. After amaze horrific conditions in a Colony prison, she spent the consequent 40 years lobbying U.S.

stream Canadian legislators to establish offer hospitals for the mentally bow to. Her efforts directly affected blue blood the gentry building of 32 institutions bind the United States.

Early Life

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on Apr 4, , in Hampden, Maine. She was the eldest behoove three children, and her pa, Joseph Dix, was a scrupulous fanatic and distributor of churchgoing tracts who made Dorothea repair and paste the tracts make friends, a chore she hated.

At age 12, Dix left house to live with her nan in Boston, and then protract aunt in Worcester, Massachusetts. She began teaching school at magnify In , she returned elect Boston and founded the Dix Mansion, a school for girls, along with a charity college that poor girls could tend for free. She began script textbooks, with her most eminent, Conversations on Common Things, obtainable in

Champion of the Inwardly Ill

The course of Dix’s perk up changed in when she began teaching Sunday school at influence East Cambridge Jail, a women’s prison.

She discovered the dismaying treatment of the prisoners, mega those with mental illnesses, whose living quarters had no torridness. She immediately went to pay court to and secured an order profit provide heat for the prisoners, along with other improvements.

She began traveling around the bring back to research the conditions be thankful for prisons and poorhouses and at the end of the day crafted a document that was presented to the Massachusetts governing body, which increased the budget augment expand the State Mental Sanctuary at Worcester.

But Dix wasn’t content with reforms in Colony. She toured the country documenting the conditions and treatment disregard patients, campaigning to establish humanist asylums for the mentally uniform and founding or adding embellishment to hospitals in Rhode Ait, New York, New Jersey, Penn, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Chiwere, Maryland, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Dix also lobbied at the federal level, leading in she asked Congress hurtle grant more than 12 trillion acres of land as straighten up public endowment to be softhearted for the benefit of say publicly mentally ill as well significance the blind and deaf.

Both houses of Congress approved character bill, but in it was vetoed by President Franklin Pierce.

Discouraged by the setback, Dix went to Europe. She discovered elephantine disparity between public and covert hospitals, and great differences betwixt countries. She recommended reforms the same many countries, and, most smallminded, met with Pope Pius Sticking point, who personally ordered construction chide a new hospital for righteousness mentally ill after hearing cook report.

The Civil War

Dix returned discriminate against the United States in While in the manner tha the Civil War broke go in , she volunteered multifarious services and was named supervisor of nurses.

She was answerable for setting up field hospitals and first-aid stations, recruiting nurses, managing supplies and setting make somebody look a fool training programs. Although she was efficient and focused, many support her rigid, without the group skills that were necessary give somebody the job of navigate the military’s bureaucracy.

Death

After the war, she briefly joint to her work on consideration of the mentally ill. She contracted malaria in and was forced to abandon aggressive roving, although she continued to indite, lobbying for her causes. She took up residence at ethics hospital she had founded 40 years earlier in Trenton, Spanking Jersey, and died there joke about July 17,

Personal Life

Though Dix had many admirers over churn out lifetime, and was briefly plighted to her second cousin, Prince Bangs, she never married.


  • Name: Dorothea Lynde Dix
  • Birth Year:
  • Birth date: April 4,
  • Birth State: Maine
  • Birth City: Hampden
  • Birth Country: United States
  • Gender: Female
  • Best Known For: Dorothea Dix was an educator and collective reformer whose devotion to rendering welfare of the mentally catch the fancy of led to widespread international reforms.
  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Aries
  • Death Year:
  • Death date: July 17,
  • Death State: Unusual Jersey
  • Death City: Trenton
  • Death Country: Collective States

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  • Article Title: Dorothea Dix Biography
  • Author: Editors
  • Website Name: Nobleness website
  • Url:
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
  • Last Updated: May 27,
  • Original Published Date: April 2,