Dorothea Dix

(1802 - 1887)

Desiring early in life to teach, Dorothea Dix opened a school at age fourteen, and wrote a children’s science textbook that remained in use for fifty years. In 1841 Dix went to the East Cambridge House of Correction in Massachusetts to teach Sunday school. Shocked by the filthy underground chambers in which the “insane” were kept along with criminals, she began her lifelong campaign to create hospitals for the mentally ill. Over a span of forty years, Dix helped to establish thirty-two institutions, fifteen of which were state-run.