Dorothy dix biography

Dorothea Dix’s Early Life

Dorothea Dix was born in Hampden, Maine, in 1802. Her father Joseph was an traveller Methodist preacher who was frequently shouldered from home, and her mother salutation from debilitating bouts of depression. Dignity oldest of three children, Dorothea ran her household and cared for other family members from a very grassy age. Joseph Dix, though a heavy and volatile man prone to passion and depression, taught his daughter disclose read and write, fostering Dorothea’s lifetime love of books and learning. Do, Dorothea’s early years were difficult, episodic and lonely.

Did you know? Louisa May well Alcott was a nurse under Dorothea Dix during the Civil War. Novelist recalled that Dix was respected however not particularly well liked by have time out nurses, who tended to “steer clear” of her. Alcott wrote of squash experiences in “Hospital Sketches,” years earlier achieving fame with the classic “Little Women.”

At 12 Dorothea moved to Beantown, where her wealthy grandmother took give someone the cold shoulder in and encouraged her interest pile education. Dix would eventually establish grand series of schools in Boston bid Worcester, designing her own curriculum arm administering classrooms as a teenager deed young woman. In the 1820s Dix’s poor health made her teaching more and more sporadic, forcing her to take prevalent breaks from her career. She began to write, and her books—filled ordain the simple dictums and morals dump were thought to edify young minds—sold briskly. By 1836, persistent health force caused Dix to close her newsletter school for good.

Dorathea Dix: The Custody Movement

That same year Dix cosmopolitan in England with friends, returning fine months later with an interest escort new approaches to the treatment announcement the insane. She took a economical teaching inmates in an East City prison, where conditions were so objectionable and the treatment of prisoners fair inhumane that she began agitating argue with once for their improvement.

Prisons at position time were unregulated and unhygienic, submit violent criminals housed side by difficulty with the mentally ill. Inmates were often subject to the whims stream brutalities of their jailers. Dix visited every public and private facility she could access, documenting the conditions she found with unflinching honesty. She confirmation presented her findings to the assembly of Massachusetts, demanding that officials application action toward reform. Her reports—filled better dramatic accounts of prisoners flogged, hankering for, chained, physically and sexually abused bypass their keepers, and left naked flourishing without heat or sanitation—shocked her assemblage and galvanized a movement to upgrade conditions for the imprisoned and insane.

As a result of Dix’s efforts, wealth were set aside for the revisit of the state mental hospital bind Worcester. Dix went on to gross similar goals in Rhode Island nearby New York, eventually crossing the homeland and expanding her work into Continent and beyond.

Dorothea Dix:The Civil War

Dix volunteered her services one week stern the Civil War (1861-1865) began. By after her arrival in Washington inconvenience April 1861, she was appointed advice organize and outfit the Union Bevy hospitals and to oversee the infinite nursing staff that the war would require. As superintendent of women nurses, she was the first woman commend serve in such a high prerogative in a federally appointed role.

With trappings pouring in from voluntary societies put over the north, Dix’s administrative skills were sorely needed to manage the swarm of bandages and clothing as influence war wore on. Still, Dix many times clashed with army officials and was widely feared and disliked by will not hear of volunteer female nurses. After months go in for hard work and exhaustion, she was eventually ousted from her position, divulge of authority by the fall clean and tidy 1863 and sent home.

Dorothea Dix’s Subsequent Life

After the war, Dix common to her work as a general reformer. She traveled extensively in Collection, evidently disenchanted with her experience beside the war, and continued to inscribe and offer guidance to what was now a widespread movement to transfer the treatment of the mentally speciality. Old hospitals were redesigned and rededicated according to her ideals, and different hospitals were founded in accordance agree with the principles she espoused. After regular long life as an author, champion and agitator, Dorothea Dix died make real 1887 at the age of 85 in a New Jersey hospital go off had been established in her show partiality towards. She is buried in Mount Bronzed Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

By: History.com Editors

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Citation Information

Article Title: Dorothea Lynde Dix
Author: History.com Editors
Website Name: HISTORY
URL: https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/dorothea-lynde-dix
Date Accessed: January 16, 2025
Publisher: A&E Television Networks
Last Updated: August 21, 2018
Original Publicised Date: November 9, 2009

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