Dorothea Dix correspondence

Summary: Dorothea Dix's papers consist of correspondence from Miss Dix to various people, as well as some correspondence in which Miss Dix was concerned, but not directly involved. Dix was an advocate for social welfare, particularly supporting the establishment and maintenance of mental hospitals for the mentally ill, disabled, or poor. She was instrumental in the proposed legislation of the "Bill for the Benefit of the Indigent Insane." During the Civil War, Dix was appointed Superintendent of Army Nurses. Much of the correspondence concerns Dix's efforts to bring lifeboats and other help to Sable Island in Nova Scotia, an area known for shipwrecks and where many with mental illnesses were sent, sometimes against their will. These papers are part of the historic psychiatry material in the Menninger Archives.

Biog. Sketch (Full): Dorothea Lynde Dix, the first of three children born to Joseph and Mary Bigelow Dix, was born on 4 April 1802 in Hampden, Maine. The family did not remain in Maine for many years, as it was still contested territory particularly during the War of 1812. They moved briefly to Vermont and then to Worcester, Massachusetts. Her mother was not well, and her father was drinking heavily, so Dorothea and her younger brothers Joseph and Charles moved in with their grandmother in Boston.

Dix began teaching children when she was 15 years old. In 1836 she came down with tuberculosis and, at her doctor's suggestion, lived in England for a few years to recover. When she returned to Massachusetts in 1841, she began visiting jails in Boston and throughout the state, horrified over the treatment of prisoners--including those who were mentally ill--in these jails. Winning legislative support (she was friends with both the governor and his attorney general), the Worcester State Hospital was expanded. Dix then continued visiting jails throughout the United States, traveling to every state east of the Mississippi. In 1854 her efforts helped a bill pass in Congress to set aside land for a national mental hospital, but President Franklin Pierce vetoed this bill.

Dorothea then traveled to Europe, supposedly to recuperate from ongoing illness and exhaustion, though she continued traveling and visiting jails, advocating for the mentally ill. After the Civil War started in the United States, Dix became the Superintendent of Union Army Nurses, a role for which she was ill-suited. She continued her efforts for the mentally ill, and in 1881 a New Jersey state hospital opened in Trenton because of her work.

Dorothea Dix admitted herself to the Trenton hospital and died there six years later, on 17 July, 1887.

Associated materials: Dorothea Lynde Dix Papers (MS Am 1838). Houghton Library, Harvard University.