Dorothea Dix was born on April 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine. She moved in with her grandmother in-between the ages of 10 and 12. By age of 14, Dorothea was on her own and teaching school in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1821, Dorothea established her own school in Boston. She ran it successfully until 1834, when an illness overcame and forced her to give it up. She soon started studying conditions of the insane asylums, prisons, and alms houses. She started this in Massachusetts, and it eventually spread to many states, Canada, and Europe. What she saw was appalling, men and women chained to walls of tiny, dark fetid rooms. She saw many ill-clothed and ill-fed. People were treated brutally if they were even noticed at all. She had many people broadcast what she had found, by sending in her reports on paper. On her investigations, she traveled a total of 10,000 miles from 1842-1845. Her results were gradual, but they improved conditions little by little. New asylums were built in many states, and many others were improved without being rebuilt. A week after the attack on Fort Sumter, Dorothea volunteered her services to the Union and received the appointment in June 1861. This placed her in charge of all women nurses working in army hospitals. Serving in this position without pay throughout the entire war, Dix quickly molded her vaguely defined duties. She convinced skeptical military officials, that women could perform the work correctly, and acceptably, and then she recruited women. Dorothea recruited women who were plain looking and older than 30. She made a dress code of modest black or brown skirts and forbade hoops and jewelry. With these strict requirements, a total of over 3,000 women served as union army nurses. Dorothea Dix was called "Dragon Dix" by some, because she was stern. She clashed frequently with the military officials and occasionally she ignored administrative details. Under her leadership, army nursing was markedly improved. After war, she went back to study the insane. She traveled then widely through Europe and Japan. She died on July 17, 1887, in a hospital that she had founded in Trenton, New Jersey.

By:Courtney Welborn

May 8th, 2000

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