“Silence is the fence around wisdom.” — Elizabeth Rathbone
A difficult childhood, a mentally ill mother, an alcoholic and abusive father who was an itinerant bookseller and Methodist preacher led Dorothea Dix to live with her grandmother and subsequently with other relatives so much so that she never felt she had a home.
She prayed for guidance and she prayed for insight as to what she should do with her life. Ever searching, ever hoping that she would find love and a home and children.
But those things were not meant to be.
Dorothea was born April 4, 1802 and began to teach in a girl’s school at the age of 14, then opened a school in Boston in 1821. From 1824 to 1830 she wrote devotional books and stories for children. Her book Conversations on Common Things (1824) reached its 60th edition by 1860.
She was advised to travel to Europe for rest to restore her health. Upon returning, she devoted herself to Union causes. She became Superintendent of Army Nurses for the Union Army. She would assist both Confederate and Union soldiers. Over the course of the war, she appointed 3,000 or approximately 15% of Union Army nurses.
After the war she raised funds for the building of a national monument to honor deceased soldiers which stands at Fort Monroe, Virginia today. She continued fighting for social reform the rest of her life.
Her work in support of better care for the mentally ill culminated in the restructuring of many hospitals in America and abroad. In England her work was termed “lunacy reform.” People were labeled “looney paupers”. Most of whom were locked up along with violently deranged criminals and received no treatment or one that was inhumane. Upon visiting one prison basement, she saw mentally ill individuals whose cells were ”dark and bare and the air was stagnant and foul.”
Unregulated and underfunded, this system resulted in widespread abuse. She wrote “Within the Commonwealth the present state of insane persons in cages, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods and lashed into obedience.” Her lobbying resulted in a bill to expand the state’s mental hospital in Worcester, Mass. She travelled from New Hampshire to Louisiana documenting the condition of the poor mentally ill and reported to state legislatures. She submitted a report in January 1847 to the Illinois legislative session which adopted legislation to establish Illinois’ first state mental hospital.
She was instrumental in the founding of the first public mental hospital in Pennsylvania, the Harrisburg State Hospital and in 1853 she established its library and reading room.
Dorothea retired to New Jersey living in a specially designed suite in the New Jersey State Hospital. She passed this life July 17,1887 and was buried in Cambridge, Mass..
For an account of her life in detail read “One Glorious Ambition” by author Jane Kirkpatrick.