WHO WAS DOROTHEA DIX?
Dorothea Dix was a young lady who was born in Hampden,Maine and grew up in Worcester,Massachusetts. Dorothea Dix was the eldest of three kids. Her father was a religious fanatic and distributor of religious tracts. Her father made her stitch and paste the tracts together. At the age of 12 Dix left her home to live with her grandmother in Boston and then left later to live with her aunt in Worcester, Massachusetts. At the age of 14 she began teaching school. In 1819, Dix returned to Boston where she found the Dix Mansion, an all girls school. There was also a charity school that poor girls could attend for free. She began writing her most famous, Conversations on Common Things that was published in 1824. In 1841,Dix life changed, She began teaching Sunday school at the East Cambridge Jail, a prison for women. When Dix saw how the prisoners lived she was shocked especially when it came to the mentally ill. She immediatly went to court to provide heat and other improvements. Dix then began traveling the world to research conditions in prisons and poorhouses. Dix made a document about her research and then presented it to the Massachusetts legislature. She then traveled more and established other hospitals for the mentally ill. In 1848, Dix had asked Congress to grant more than 12 million acres of land to build the hospitals for not only mentally ill but for the blind and deaf. Both houses of congress approved the bill, But then in 1854 president Franklin Peirce vetoed the bill. Dix then went to Europe. She recommended reforms in many countries also meeting with Pope Pius IX, after hearing her report he personally ordered construction of a new hospital for the mentally ill. In 1856, Dix finally traveled back to the United States. When the Civil War broke in 1861, she volunteered her services and was named superintendent of nurses. After the war, She was briefly returned working on the behalf of the mentally ill. 1870, Dix contacted malaria and was forced to stop aggressive traveling ,still she continued to write. Dix then took up residence at a hospital she founded 40 years earlier in Trenton, New Jersey she died on July 17, 1887.