As we celebrate our first post-lockdown July 4th holiday, thinking back upon the tumult of this past year, one can easily become immersed in either positivity or negativity; that our country abounds in helplessness, misery, hatred, insensitivity and racism or that it is blessed and should be heralded for the attention and dedication of so many to the loftiest of fixations: the betterment of the plight of others. I choose to celebrate the latter by spotlighting an American who is likely unknown to most of us, but who exemplifies all of the aspirations we celebrate as citizens of this great nation.
Dorothea Dix made it her life’s mission to fix her country’s attention on her crusade to help the suffering and, in so doing, moved our nation and our world forward. Here, adapted from a her story authored by Francis T. Miller, is Dorothea’s tale of leadership and citizenship born of compassion:
A girl of fourteen years, she found herself facing perhaps the most perilous of challenges—self-support. In addition, at her young age, she had foisted upon her the responsibility of caring for and supporting her two younger brothers.
“I know I can earn a living,” she assured herself. “I can teach the children who are younger than I. I will open a private school.”
The child schoolteacher stood before her little pupils with a resoluteness of purpose that inspired them. To give herself and older appearance, she lengthened her skirts and sleeves. Although scarcely older than the children she taught, her seriousness commanded their respect and affection.
At nineteen, this child teacher was the principal of a boarding school for the daughters of many prominent families of the time. Her strong moral influence had brought her both reputation and success.
The early burdens of life wore upon her. Her blue eyes, their warmth chilled by gray, as though sorrow had crept into her sunny skies, showed failing health, and those about her became greatly worried.
“I do not fear to die,” she said, “but I cannot bear the thought of leaving my little brothers. While I live, “ she pledged, “I will make myself useful to humanity.”
As she looked about her, she found many who were in deeper trouble than herself, some of them with burdens almost too great to bear. She found that there were afflictions in this world as great as physical sickness. There was mental sicknesses—as hideous in its torment and suffering as any bodily disease.
It was in the year 1841. This young woman was visiting the unfortunate in the House of Correction at East Cambridge, in Massachusetts, when the wretched moans of its inhabitants filled her ears. Imprisoned in a room, in filth and unspeakable horror, were human beings who had lost their reason, many through waywardness and dissipation. Her young heart burst in compassion for them in their misery, and in that compassion burned the fires of justice.
“It may be true that they have lost their reason,” she admitted, “but they are human beings, they are our fellow men and women, and we must protect them.”
“This will be my mission in life,” she decided, and with that decision, she began an investigation of the treatment of the mentally infirmed. She found that civilization looked upon the loss of reason as a curse, and upon its victims as wild beasts, to be chained and bound in irons. Her eyes rested upon sights which she did not know existed in a Christian world. She saw men and women in cages, closets, stalls and pens. Sometimes they were naked. Often they were cruelly beaten into submission. The gentle voice of this woman cried out in protest.
Hostility and abuse were the response that came back to her.
“It is all humbug,” declared political leaders.
A legislator, after attacking her statements on the floor of the House, declared that he and some of his committee would go to her and refute her allegations. As they entered her home, they were met with the gentle face and voice of this woman.
“We came to inquire about these allegations against our institutions,” the leader said coldly.
Dorothea, smiling, told him of her experiences. She described the misery and fearful sufferings that she had witnessed. As she appealed to the hearts of her visitors, the legislator, after sitting spellbound for more than an hour and a half, arose and stepping to her side exclaimed: “Madam, I bid you good night. I do not want, for my part to hear anything more. The others can stay if they wish to. I am convinced. You have conquered me out and out. If you’ll come to the House and talk there as you’ve done here, no one who isn’t a brute can withstand you. When a man is convinced, that’s enough. The Lord bless you.”
The heart of the nation was aroused. Thousands came to her support, while countless others denounced her. She became a political issue in Massachusetts, and the legislature, after heated debate, passed an appropriation to remove the mentally afflicted from the jails to institutions where they could receive treatment.
The life work of Dorothea Dix had now just begun. She traveled from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, and on and on until she had visited all of the states east of the Rocky Mountains. Everywhere her eyes rested upon the same inhuman conditions that she had found in Massachusetts. In the treatment of those mentally infirmed, civilization had become savage. She visited the prisons and almshouses. Her appeals to humanity were overpowering.
One day, while in Rhode Island, she went to see a millionaire who had no special fondness for benevolence. He tried to baffle her with commonplace generalities, which she met with kindness. At last, rising with commanding dignity, she announced the purpose of her visit.
The financier, hardened though he was by a life devoted to mere money-making, listened. Her low-voiced eloquence appealed to him.
“God will not hold us guiltless for the neglect of one of the least of His Creatures,” she declared.
“But what would you have me do?” inquired the rich man.
“Give fifty thousand dollars toward a new asylum for the mentally infirmed,” she answered.
“I will do it,” he replied.
His donation funded the first hospital in Trenton, New Jersey devoted to treating mental disorders. It was completed in1848.
Some months later Dorothea, now a broken-down invalid, weakened by her travels and labors, stood before Congress. For six years she had pleaded with the government for better laws for the mentally infirmed, and at last her wisdom and humanity conquered the minds of our elected United States officials.
It was 1854. Before Congress was a legislation titled the Bill for the Benefit of the Indigent Insane. It would require the set aside of 12,225,000 acres of public land—about 20,000 square miles to be apportioned among the states to be dedicated for the care of the mentally afflicted, allowing the odd 225,000 acres for the deaf. The bill swept through the Senate with more than a two-thirds majority, and passed the House by a plurality of fourteen votes.
Dorothea wept with thanksgiving.
“I must resist the deep sympathies of my heart,” said President Pierce, as he returned the bill to the Senate without his signature and bearing his veto, arguing that social welfare was the responsibility of the states.
The worn woman was crushed by this defeat. She departed our country for Europe in hopes of recovering her energy and strength. But her life mission still weighed both heavily and heavenly upon her, and almost immediately after her arrival in Scotland, she began to work on establishing a movement to reform that country’s “lunacy laws.” Some officials resented her intrusion and moved to oppose her. Refusing to give up, Dorothea turned toward London for help. Encouraged by British politicians who wished to increase Whitehall’s reach into Scotland, Dorothea conducted investigations of Scotland’s “madhouses.” Her work resulted in the formation by Parliament of the Scottish Lunacy Commission to oversee reforms.
Dorothea visited the British colony of Nova Scotia in 1853 to study its care of the mentally ill. During her visit, she traveled to Sable Island to investigate reports of mentally ill patients being abandoned there. Such reports were largely unfounded. While on Sable Island, Dix assisted in a shipwreck rescue. Upon her return to Boston, she led a successful campaign to send upgraded life-saving equipment to the island. The day after supplies arrived, a ship was wrecked on the island. Thankfully, because of Dix’s work, 180 people were saved.
By 1854, the conquest of civilization by an invalid American woman was now well begun. That year she investigated the conditions of mental hospitals in Scotland, and found them to be fraught with unseemly conditions. In 1857, after years of work and opposition, reform laws were finally passed. Dix took up a similar project in the Channel Islands, finally managing the building of an asylum after thirteen years of agitation.
When she traveled to Italy in 1856, Dix once again found disrepair and maltreatment in the prison facilities where the mentally infirmed were housed. After being shunned by officials, she sought an audience with the pope. A few days later, Dorothea stood before Pope Pius IX and appealed to his beneficence. He expressed himself surprised and shocked at the details of her recital, and, on the following day he fell unawares on the officials and personally investigated the conditions of the mentally affirmed being held in Rome’s prisons, which he found to be only too true. The result was the purchase of land and the establishment of a retreat for the mentally afflicted of the great metropolis of the ancient civilization.
Cries of distress from all parts of Europe now called Dorothea from Rome. In Athens, Constantinople, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Paris, Florence—everywhere she carried the new light of science to those who were suffering under the shadow mental afflictions.
In 1860, the gloom of a great civil war fell upon her beloved America and Dorothea returned from Europe. As the cannon boomed, under the flag that she loved, Dorothea carried the compassion of her heart to the wounded and dying and offered her life to her country. In 1861, she was appointed Superintendent of Army Nurses by the Union Army. As superintendent, Dix implemented the Federal army nursing program, in which over 3,000 women would eventually serve.
It was through her efforts, after the war, that many monuments were erected to Union soldiers who had fallen on the field or perished in the prison pens or hospital wards.
It was this woman who brought to the army and navy compassion for the heroes who had become insane in the service.
It was this good Samaritan whose name ran through every state in the Union, across Canada, and around the world—appealing to the universal heart of humanity.
And yet, this great woman, whose soul was overflowing with love for all humanity, was herself a homeless wanderer. This life spent for the happiness of others was poured out in loneliness and suffering.
One day, a white-haired lady of about eighty years of age, plainly dressed, and bent by the weight of years, retired to the mental hospital at Trenton, New Jersey.
“This is my first-born child,” she said, “It is here that I want to die.”
Five years later, on July 17, 1887, this beneficent life passed away so quietly that the world hardly knew she was gone. Those for whom she had labored did not know, and could not grieve for the one that had achieved so much for them. Over her lifeless form they could not grieve; they were in darkness that knows no grief.
But there is One who knows and One who loves, and to those all-embracing arms she passed with the tender words: “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and ye gave Me food; I was thirsty and ye gave Me drink; I was a stranger and ye took Me in; naked and ye clothed Me; sick and in prison and ye visited Me.”
And as the light of His face falls upon her, we can hear the echo of the voice of Him who gave His life to save humanity: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”
This July 4th, I can think of no better reflection of how we as Americans can be the best that we can be than to remember this story of the heroism of peace—the story of Dorothea Lynde Dix, one of our noblest Americans.
Have an AWE-full 4th of July Weekend!
William “Bill” Bacque