Dorothea Dix

She had an ardent admirer in her second cousin Edward Bangs who had proposed marriage to her. She was engaged to him for some time though she broke off the engagement later on to focus on her social work. She never married.

She lived a long and productive life, most of which was spent in serving the society. She died in 1887 at the age of 85.

The United States Postal Service honored her by issuing a Dorothea Dix Great Americans series postage stamp in 1983.

Dix opened a school in Boston in 1821. This school was primarily for children of wealthy parents though she used to teach poor and neglected children in her free time. However, she also began to suffer from poor health which affected her teaching.

When she was not well enough to teach, she would remain in her room and write textbooks and devotional books for children. Her book ‘Conversations on Common Things’ was published in 1824.

She started teaching again in 1831 and established a school for girls. For the next five years she continued teaching but by the end of 1836 she began to feel very ill. Her health was so poor that she had to quit teaching and go to England to recuperate.

She returned to America in 1841 and took a job of teaching inmates in an East Cambridge prison. She was shocked by what she saw there—the mentally unstable were kept with the hardened criminals, there was no heating, the place was stinking and the living conditions were horrible.

Appalled by what she witnessed she went to the legislature of Massachusetts and demanded that the living conditions of the insane be reformed. She presented to the legislature a report she had made after researching on the horrible conditions the inmates were kept in.

Described as "the most effective advocate of humanitarian reform in American mental institutions during the nineteenth century", Dix was a woman who played a key role in establishing mental hospitals in various places in America including New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Maryland.