DOROTHEA DIX -- A REMARKABLE WOMAN

Early in the 1800s, the first mental asylums in the United States were built. They were nothing like asylums of today. Many inmates were people the family simply wanted out of the way. And it was easy to get someone committed.

We would be in trouble because a woman who read novels qualified as insane. A wife who didn’t obey her husband, for instance could be lobotomized. If you were ill or handicapped, zap, you’re committed.

If you weren’t insane when you were committed, I’m sure you soon would be. Treatment methods didn’t include anything close to humane. They ranged from steam baths to “steam away the madness” to cold water sprays. Patients were treated as things rather than humans.

This was invented as a tranquilizer chair to
keep patients from harming themselves until quiet.
Would being strapped into this calm you?

Thank goodness for Dorothea Lynde Dix! Dorothea achieved a remarkable amount of good works in her eighty-five years. Her efforts resulted in reform in the mental asylums and prisons.

Her efforts on behalf of the mentally ill and prisoners helped create dozens of new institutions across the United States and in Europe and changed people’s perceptions of these populations. Her own troubled family background and impoverished youth served as a galvanizing force throughout her career, although she remained silent on her own biographical details for most of her long, productive life.

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born in Hampden, Maine, on April 4, 1802. Joseph Dix, her father, was an itinerant Methodist preacher who was frequently away from home, and her mother suffered from debilitating bouts of depression. Both her parents were alcoholics. Dorothea was the eldest of three children and ran her household and cared for her family members from a very young age. Joseph Dix, though a strict and volatile man, taught his daughter to read and write, fostering Dorothea’s lifelong love of books and learning. Still, Dorothea’s early years were difficult, unpredictable and lonely.

One of the first asylums in
the United States, early 1800s

 When she was twelve, Dorothea sought refuge with her wealthy grandmother to escape her alcoholic parents. There, her grandmother encouraged her interest in education. At the age of fourteen, Dorothea established the first of a series of schools in Boston and Worcester, designing her own curriculum and administering classrooms. In the 1820s Dorothea’s poor health made her teaching increasingly sporadic, forcing her to take frequent breaks from her career. She began to write, and her books—filled with the simple dictums and morals that were thought to edify young minds—sold briskly. By 1836, persistent health problems caused Dorothea to close her latest school for good. It has been suggested that Dorothea suffered from major depressive episodes, which contributed to her poor health. From 1824 to 1830, she wrote mainly devotional books and stories for children. Her Conversations on Common Things (1824) reached its sixtieth edition by 1869. Her book The Garland of Flora (1829) was, along with Elizabeth Wirt’s Flora's Dictionary, one of the first two dictionaries of flowers published in the United States. Other books of Dix's include Private Hours, Alice and Ruth, and Prisons and Prison Discipline.

Patient restraint

Dorothea visited every public and private facility she could access, documenting the conditions she found with unflinching honesty. She then presented her findings to the legislature of Massachusetts, demanding that officials take action toward reform. Her reports—filled with dramatic accounts of prisoners flogged, starved, chained, physically and sexually abused by their keepers, and left naked and without heat or sanitation—shocked her audience and galvanized a movement to improve conditions for the imprisoned and insane.

Even orderly asylums were overcrowded

As a result of Dorothea’s efforts, funds were set aside for the expansion of the state mental hospital in Worcester. She went on to accomplish similar goals in Rhode Island and New York, eventually crossing the country and expanding her work into Europe and beyond. Her plea was to provide moral treatment for the mentally ill, which consisted of three values: modesty, chastity, and delicacy

Doctors discussing a frontal lobotomy

 After a long life as an author, advocate and agitator, Dorothea Dix died in 1887 at the age of 85 in her suite at a New Jersey hospital that had been established in her honor. She is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Dorothea Lynde Dix accomplished far more than I have space to relate. If you’d like to learn more about this fascinating woman, here’s a YouTube video. 

The heroine of my latest release, THE RANCHER’S PERFECT BRIDE, finds herself in a difficult situation. Zenobia Stanton’s stepfather promises to have her committed to an insane asylum unless she marries the man of his choice—a lecherous womanizer she despises. Rather than accept either situation, she becomes a mail-order bride to a rancher in Montana Territory. She wants to be a perfect bride. Unfortunately, she can’t cook or clean or do laundry. Also, Zenobia is prone to incidents. I hope you’ll read and enjoy this book. You can purchase THE RANCHER'S PERFECT BRIDE  at http://a.co/5ORxMym. 

Sources:

https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/dorothea-lynde-dix  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Dix