The Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix

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The Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix
Wednesday, October 21, 2020 by Renee D. Warring

The Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix

This is the third blog in the series on “The History of Mental Hospitals in the United States.” The last blog was on the life of

Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride, a champion for “moral treatment”. He believed that people with mental illness should be treated humanely. The ideology was built on the assumption that kind treatment would appeal to the parts of their brains that remained rational, and thus bring about their recovery and eventual cure. “The Kirkbride Plan” was developed by him. It was a model for how asylums should be built and organized.

Dorothea Lynde Dix was an educator, and a social reformer who fought both in the United States and abound for the welfare of the mentally ill. She was born on April 4, 1802 in Hampden, Maine. Her father, Joseph Dix, was a traveling minister who distributed tracts. Her mother was Mary Bigelow. Historians believe that both of her parents were alcoholics and that her father was abusive. Dorothea was the oldest of three children. The family was poor.

Dorothea left home at the age of twelve to live with her grandmother in Boston. Later she moved in with an aunt who lived in Worcester, Massachusetts. While there, she became a teacher when she was fourteen.

In 1819 Dix went to Boston and founded Dix Mansion, which was a free school for poor girls. Dorothea fell ill with tuberculosis in 1827. Therefore, she spent the spring and summer of that year at the Channing’s family retreat in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. The disease continued to advance, so she returned to the retreat in the fall of 1830. When her health improved, Dix returned to Boston in 1831. Between 1831 to 1836 she suffered from pain and hemorrhaging, which caused her to lose the use of one of her lungs.

In 1841 she began teaching in Sunday School at the Cambridge jail, a women’s prison. The people there were treated very inhumanely, particularly those who had mental illness. There was no heat in their living quarters. Dix advocated for them by going to court to try and secure heat and other necessities of life for them. She was successful in her fight. Shortly after she succeeded in her fight for ladies, Dorothea began traveling around the state observing and documenting the conditions in other prisons and poor houses. She ultimately drew up a document which she presented to the Massachusetts legislature. As a result of her advocacy, the budget was increased for the state mental hospital. She yearned for more victories on the behalf of inhumanely treated mentally ill therefore, she went on a crusade around the country to advocate for the establishing of humanely run state mental hospitals. By the end of 1845, Dorothea had traveled approximatively 10,000 miles, visiting eighteen state penitentiaries, 300 county jails, and more than 500 poorhouses in U.S. Midwest and South, as well as in portions of eastern Canada. She had established hospitals for the mentally ill and had influenced the improvement of numerous other facilities. She passed away on July 17, 1887 in Trenton, New Jersey. As a result of her campaigning, a movement was started. The outcome of that movement was the establishment of hospitals in the following states; Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Signed Renee D. Warring.

Resources:

https://www.biography.com/activist/dorothea-dix

https://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-1500181

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/dorothea-dix

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