-
Early Life
At age 14, she began teaching school. In 1819, she founded the Dix Mansion in Boston which was a school for girls. She also founded a charity school that poor girls could attend for free. -
Publishing A Book
She began writing textbooks, with her most famous, Conversations On Common Things, published in 1824. She wrote other books regarding the mentally ill. Some examples are On The Behalf Of The Insane, Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline in the United States. -
Women's Prison
The course of Dix’s life changed in 1841, when she started teaching Sunday school at the East Cambridge Jail, a women's prison. She discovered the condition of the prisoners, particularly ones with mental illness. Their living quarters had no heat and were in bad condition. She went to court and secured an order to provide heat for them. -
Conducting Reaearch
Dix visited jails all over Massachusetts to conduct a social research project. She collected data on the number of prisoners in overcrowded facilities. She also learned that the mentally ill were chained in prison cells, and other patients suffered from the cold. -
Important changes
She traveled to 14 different countries. She saw the conditions of the hospitals and was disgusted. She made a change of the agricultural design by making a therapeutic room setting for the curable insane and not curable. -
Congress Grant
Dix lobbies at the Federal level, and in 1848 she asked Congress to grant approximately 12 million acres of land as a public endowment to be used in benefit of the mentally ill as well as the blind and deaf. Both houses of congress approved the bill. It was later vetoed by Franklin Pierce. -
Trip to Europe
Discouraged by the setback, she later traveled to Europe. She discoverd large differences between public and private hospitals as well as other countries. She recommended reform in serveral different countries and Pope Pius X ordered construction of a hospital for the mentally ill after hearing her report about it. -
The Civil War
Dorothea arrives in Washington later that evening. She was to organize and outfit the union hospitals to oversee the amount of nursing staff the war would require. She was the first woman to serve in a high capacity in a federally appointed role. -
The Civil War Ends
Once the war ends, she goes back to finding ways to make the living conditions and treatments better for the mentally ill. With the new immigrants she gained more success. She eventually went back to work. -
Dorothea goes back to work
In 1887, she had returned to her work on hospitals. She tried to save money for those that were destroyed. She tried to change the hospital conditions.
