Dorothea Dix

Dorothea Dix was born in 1802 to Joseph and Mary Bigelow Dix, due to her father being an alcoholic and her mother being “mentally retarded,” Dorothea and her brothers went to go live with her grandmother on her father’s side when she was 12. When Dorothea was 14 she was sent to go live with her Aunt Madame Duncan because she would not conform to living the rich lifestyle that her grandmother was providing for her. While living with her Aunt Dorothea’s second cousin Edward Bangs took a liking to Dorothea and fell in love with her. Edward asked Dorothea to marry him and just to appease Edward Dorothea said yes. Edward helped Dorothea get her first school going in 1816. After Dorothea’s father died in 1821 Dorothea returned Edwards engagement ring and set out to start her own elementary school for girls with the blessing and support of her grandmother. Between 1821 and 1831 Dorothea taught poor and neglected young children and wrote books. Dorothea took time off to tend to her health that wasn’t doing so well.

In my last blog I spoke bout Dorothea’s quest to help the mentally ill from being put in to jails or being kept at home by families that could not properly take care of them.  Edward Bangs her second cousin and former fiancé was her biggest advocate. Dorothea started this quest after she went to an East Cambridge jail to teach Sunday school to the inmates. At the Jail Dorothea found mixed in with the prostitutes, drunks, and criminals; retarded individuals as well as the mentally ill. She was told when asked why the mentally ill were in with the jailhouses that they didn’t feel heat or cold. After Dorothea’s visit to the jails she went to visit other jails and found that their conditions were the same and so she gathered data from all the jails and almshouses and presented it to the Massachusetts Legislature. Dorothea won over the legislature with her findings and her presentation and the funds for Worcester State Hospital were brought together.  In 1848 Dorothea wrote a “Memorial Soliciting a State Hospital for the Protection and Cure of the Insane” and presented it to the State of North Carolina. In 1849 when North Carolina started its Medical Society they started to build the Dorothea Dix Mental Hospital. According to an article in “This Month in North Carolina” the hospital was finally finished in 1856 and ready to admit its first patients. Dorothea advocated for many states and in total played a major role in the funding of 32 mental hospitals.

Dorothea didn’t stop her life with the advocating for mental hospitals, when she was 59 in 1861 Dorothea Dix forced herself on the Union Army as a nurse and worked for free through the war. Dorothea Dix died in 1887 in Trenton, New Jersey, where she was living as a guest in one of the Mental Institutions she helped to establish.


http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newnation/4748  North Carolina Digital History
http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/nchistory/jan2006/thismonthimage1.html  This Month North Carolina History
http://www.archive.org/stream/memorialtolegisl00dixd#page/28/mode/2up Internet Archive
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/dorotheadix.html  Webster Dictionary Online