How Did Dorothea Dix Contribute To Social Reform

Dorothea Dix was a social reformer looking to help make the conditions in mental and prison institutions better and more suited for human beings. I think she belongs in the American History Hall of Fame because she helped save the lives of many people around the United States. She fought for the lowest of the low, the criminals and the insane, to make their lives better.
Dorothea Lynde Dix was born April 4, 1804 in her hometown of Hampton, Missouri to her parents Joseph Dix and Mary Bigelow. Her parents were the leading people that lead her into the field of social reform because they both had issues with their mental health. Her father was a Methodist with a slight drinking habit and her mother was slowly losing her mental health. Her father was an abusive alcoholic, but …show more content…
She decided to go work with the women inmates at age 39 reporting what she saw and what they told her. Her reports included many dramatic accounts of prisoners being starved, chained, physically and sexually abused, and not being clothed and left in the heat or in the cold. She said to a writer “the inmates did not see neither heat nor cold.” She learned that they were all stuffed into one room. Most of the time five to a room and they were poorly feed and treated even worse than animals. She then started her long career in helping and fighting for the rights of the mentally ill and jail inmates because she felt that it was not right that they were treated so badly as if they were not even human like the rest of the population.
She got the word out with the help of many people. At first she went to her friend that had a position in the newspaper to write on her behalf. Samuel Gridley Howe wrote an article in the Boston Daily Advisor on September 8 1841 that criticized the treatment of the mentally ill for Dorothea. Because of Mr. Howe’s nice gesture, the public started listening to her ideas and ways to fix the problem of

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How Did Dorothea Dix Contribute To Social Reform

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