Dorothea_Dix

Dorothea Lynn Dix Dorothea Dix, born in 1802 in Hampden, Maine, was an American woman activist who during the mid eighteen hundreds lobbied endlessly for the poor and mentally ill citizens of America for the prison and mental institutions as we know today. Essentially, Dix created the mental asylum system which before her work was simply the prison system, for the mentally ill. Dix, as a child was neglected and resented in the home for her gifted intelligence even at a young age. For this, she ran away at age twelve and lived with her grandmother, and soon after in 1816, with her aunt in Massachusetts. Unusually mature and intellectually gifted at age 14, Dix opened a private school in Worcester. Her pedagogical techniques were demanding and rigid, as they were expected in that day to be, and her school was successful. By 1821, she was again residing with her grandmother in Boston. There she opened a private school which was also open to young girls. Believing the work of a teacher must include community service, she ran a free evening school for poor children, one of the first in the nation. She wrote a number of books for children and parents. Her best known, Conversations on Common Things, published in 1824 and much reprinted, was designed to help parents answer their children's questions such as: "Why do we call this day Monday' Why do we call this month January' What is tin' Does cinnamon grow on trees'" The answers given demonstrated Dix's extensive knowledge of the natural world. Though Dix received little formal education, her appetite for knowledge was insatiable. She attended public lectures, read widely, and made a point of keeping company with knowledgeable people. She studied literature, history and the natural sciences with a special emphasis on botany and astronomy. As a teacher she did her intellectual homework before embarking on any project, a practice she continued and developed with originality in her later work as a reformer. Her quest for knowledge soon became that of religion as well. She so thrived on the experience of learning things that Dix eventually turned to the Church in order to help teach incapacitated women in prison, a task she was asked for aid in by a ministerial student. Dix decided it was better if she taught the class herself, however upon visiting the prison, she soon understood how meek the accommodations were. The jails were uncleanly, unheated, unsegregated; non-criminals and criminals shared the same rooms as mentally-ill children as well. Dix was able to receive a court order with the ability to heat the jails and make other minor, quick improvements. From this point on, Dix knew what she had to do. She had a system for going about this work after a few years and it was very predictable and extremely effective. She would visit jails and prisons taking notes and recording the same details of how unfit the prisons were for the mentally insane and feeble-minded, approach a large business owner and politician with her findings and then proceed to have them lobby and pass legislation in order to provide well heated, care-taking accommodations for these people. Dix did all of this at a time where women were certainly not treated as equals, and it was completely unheard-of for women to even travel by themselves, let alone approach and challenge legislation. Soon Dix was traveling all over Massachusetts, collecting data such as how many prisoners were crammed into a room and the prisons' conditions themselves. Much of the time, Dix was shocked to see how poor these conditions were, sometimes nauseatingly so. The mentally ill were looked upon as possessed or devil-worshipers, as mental illness was still a very foreign and understood affliction in the mid-eighteen hundreds. They were oftentimes found chained the basement or to walls, living in their own filth and feces without heat. Most jails were very cold and poorly ventilated, oftentimes not feeding or allowing the mentally ill time to exercise properly. These people were malnourished, living in their own filth, in the cold, and with other criminals as well. Dix was often so nauseated by the smells that she would need to take frequent breaks outside to regain her composure. Dix, in 1843 crafted her first memorial to these people in order to gain public exposure to the problem. She approached Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, Director of the Perkins School for the Blind, also a strong advocate for the mentally ill to present this to the Massachusetts legislature. The memorial first met with criticism and denial, but independent observations soon supported the truth of her claims. The legislature allocated funds for a large expansion of the State Mental Hospital at Worcester. A major victory for Dix and for the insane poor of Massachusetts, the act was also a stimulus for wider efforts. Even before completion of her work in Massachusetts, Dix had begun investigating conditions in the jails and almshouses of other states. In 1844 she presented a memorial to the New York State legislature, and in 1845 two more to New Jersey and Pennsylvania lawmakers. Her pattern in each state was the same. She traveled extensively to collect data, and then prepared a memorial bearing her carefully documented findings, to be delivered by a friendly and well-known political figure, pleading for funding for better accommodations for the mentally ill. For over a decade her memorials were presented in state after state, often with gratifying results. Hospital after hospital was erected, along with additions and improvements made to existing facilities. By the late 1840s Dix was formulating a creative and ambitious plan to assure proper facilities and treatment for the insane poor in the long term. She proposed in 1848 that a federal land-grant of twelve and a half million acres be set aside as a public endowment, the income to be used for the benefit of the blind, deaf, mute and insane. For the next six years she lobbied for her plan and secured passage from both sides of Congress. President Millard Fillmore favored the act, but it did not reach his desk before his term was over. Succeeding President Franklin Pierce vetoed the bill. Dix then moved to England to rest and live her live out as her physical health was finally catching up to her. She soon learned of the similar disparity in England and an even larger problem of how the rich and poor had completely segregated hospitals. Dix set out again to change the way a country managed their mentally ill and hospitals. After much back and forth between the States and England, Dix finally retired at the age of seventy-nine. When Dix again took up work for the mentally ill, she found prospects for success now dimmed by massive immigration, a swelling population of the insane poor and much depleted state treasuries. Hospitals earlier built were now overcrowded, understaffed and in disrepair, well on the way to becoming as poor as the jails they had replaced. By the middle of the twentieth century some writers unjustly blamed Dix for the custodialism of the hospitals she had helped found. In fact, she hated custodialism and had argued strongly that the mentally ill should be provided therapy, books, music, recreation and, above all, meaningful work. She had embraced a holistic approach to care and treatment. Depressed by deteriorating accommodations and programs for the insane, she did not talk about her work; nor would she cooperate with those who inquired about her life and career. She died in 1887 and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Works Cited Dix, Dorothea Lynde. Conversations on Common Things, or Guide to Knowledge. Boston: Munroe and Francis, 1829. Print. Dix, Dorothea Lynde. Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline in the United States. [Whitefish, MT]: Kessinger, 2007. Print. Gollaher, David. Voice for the Mad: the Life of Dorothea Dix. New York: Free, 1995. Print. Marshall, Helen E. Dorothea Dix: Forgotten Samaritan. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1937. Print. Tiffany, Francis. Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix. [Whitefish, MT]: Kessinger, 2006. Print.