Dix, Dorothea

DIX, DOROTHEA

Dorothea Dix was born in 1802 in a rural section of Maine. After moving to Boston at the age of fourteen to live with her wealthy but austere grandmother, Dix became a schoolteacher and writer. In 1835, however, she suffered a physical and psychological collapse. She traveled to England, where under the care of philanthropists William and Elizabeth Rathbone, Dix regained her health. In England, she also came into contact with new ideas about social reform and government responsibility.

After returning to the United States, she initiated a public health movement to reform the treatment of the indigent mentally ill. At the time, paupers who were mentally ill were incarcerated alongside convicted criminals and often housed in unheated, unfurnished, and squalid quarters. After conducting an extensive investigation throughout Massachusetts, Dix wrote her most influential tract, Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts (1843). Dix's thirty-two page report humanized the plight of the mentally ill residing in state institutions, and Massachusetts responded with legislation.

As an antisuffragist and antiabolitionist, Dix appealed for her causes to male politicians as well as southerners, and she prompted cities and states throughout the nation to create better facilities for the mentally ill. Motivated by her success, Dix proposed placing a large land grant in the custodial care of the federal government to provide perpetual funding for the care of the indigent mentally ill of America. Her plan, however, fell to a presidential veto in 1851. Dix took on a new challenge during the Civil War, accepting the position of Superintendent of Women Nurses, but her personality was ill suited for this administerial position. Towards the end of her life, Dix chose to reside in Trenton, New Jersey, at the first complete hospital built through her efforts, where she died in 1887.

JENNIFER KOSLOW

(SEE ALSO: Homelessness; Mental Health)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown, Thomas J. (1998). Dorothea Dix: New England Reformer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gollaher, David. L. (1995). Voice for the Mad: The Life of Dorothea Dix. New York: The Free Press.