Dorothea dix biography summary page

(1802-1887)

Who Was Dorothea Dix?

Dorothea Dix was a social reformer whose devotion to the welfare of the mentally ill led to widespread international reforms.

After seeing horrific conditions in a Massachusetts prison, she spent the next 40 years lobbying U.S. and Canadian legislators to establish state hospitals for the mentally ill.

Dorothea dix hospital

Her efforts directly affected the building of 32 institutions in the United States.

Early Life

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on April 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine. She was the eldest of three children, and her father, Joseph Dix, was a religious fanatic and distributor of religious tracts who made Dorothea stitch and paste the tracts together, a chore she hated.

At age 12, Dix left home to live with her grandmother in Boston, and then an aunt in Worcester, Massachusetts. She began teaching school at age 14. In 1819, she returned to Boston and founded the Dix Mansion, a school for girls, along with a charity school that poor girls c