Born on April 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine (then still part of Massachusetts), Dorothea Dix left her unhappy home at the age of twelve to live and study in Boston with her grandmother. By the age of fourteen she was teaching in a school for young girls in Worcester, Massachusetts, employing a curriculum of her own devising that stressed the natural sciences and the responsibilities of ethical living. In 1821 she opened her own school in Boston. In 1824 she published a science textbook entitled Conversations on Common Things, and in 1825 she edited Hymns for Children. Dix╒s books included Evening Hours, 1825, Meditations for Private Hours, 1828, and The Garland of Flora, 1829. She continued her school and its successor until 1836, when increasingly serious bouts with tuberculosis forced her to abandon teaching and leave Boston.
After nearly two years in England Dix returned to Boston, still a semi-invalid, and found to her amazement that she had inherited a sum of money sufficient to support her comfortably for life. But her Calvinist beliefs enjoined her from inactivity. Thus in March 1841, when a young clergyman asked her to begin a Sunday school class in the East Cambridge House of Correction, she accepted the challenge. In the prison she first observed the treatment of insane and disturbed persons, who were thrown in with criminals, irrespective of age or sex. They were left unclothed, in darkness, without heat or sanitary facilities; some were chained to the walls and flogged. Profoundly shocked, and supported by Samuel Gridley Howe and others of her mind, she traveled for nearly two years throughout the state, observed the same conditions in institutions everywhere, and in January 1843 submitted to the Massachusetts legislature a detailed report of her thoroughly documented findings. Her dignity, feverish compassion, and determination, as well as the issue itself, moved the legislators; and despite public apathy, disbelief, and occasional active opposition, a bill was passed for enlargement of the Worcester insane asylum. She then moved on to Rhode Island and later New York.
In the next 40 years Dix inspired legislators in 15 U.S. states and in Canada to establish state hospitals for the mentally ill. Her unflagging efforts directly prompted the building of 32 institutions in the United States. She carried on her work even while on a convalescent tour of Europe in 1854╨1856, notably in Italy, where she prevailed upon Pope Pius IX to inspect personally the atrocious conditions she had discovered. Where new institutions were not required, she fostered the reorganization, enlargement, and restaffing, with well trained, intelligent personnel, of already existing hospitals.
In 1845 Dix published Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline in the United States to advocate reforms in the treatment of ordinary prisoners. In June 1861 she was appointed superintendent of army nurses for Civil War service. She was ill suited to administration, however, and had great difficulty with the post. The secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, was obliged to restrict her authority in October 1863, but she remained in the post until September 1866. After the war she returned to her work with hospitals; when she died on July 17, 1887, it was in a hospital in Trenton, New Jersey, that she had founded.
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