Preview

Dorothea Dix's Life And Work

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
440 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Dorothea Dix's Life And Work
Dorothea Dix once said, "in a world where there is so much to be done, I felt strongly impressed that there must be something for me to do." In the 19th century, when Dorothea Dix was born and lived during, many changes were occurring in the United States. The War of 1812, then the Mexican-American War, and the Civil War all occurred during Dorothea Dix's lifetime, which likely had a large impact on her outlook on the United States and her visions for her own future. Dorothea Dix was a powerful, passionate woman, who change the world through her work in insane asylums and through her work as the head of nurses in the Civil War. Dorothea Dix's ancestry shows much of the woman she later became in her life. Dorothea's grandfather, Elijah Dix,

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Dorothea Puente was an American serial killer who was assumed to have killed up to nine people. Puente was born on 1929 in Redlands California. She was no stranger to criminal justice system when she began killing. Her life of crime began when she was caught trying to forge checks and was sentenced to one year in jail. In 1960 she was arrested for operating a brothel and sentenced to ninety days in jail. Shortly after her release she was arrested and charged with vagrancy and sentenced to 90 more days in jail. After her release Puente would spend time in local bars searching for elderly men who receive social security benefits. She would then forge their signature in order to steal their benefits. She was eventually caught and charged with…

    • 205 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women in the nineteenth century were beginning to liberate themselves. Thus, when the Civil War came along, many women were not content to sit home and set up fund-raisers for the cause. According to the book “Century Of The Struggle” by Elenor Flexner “The influx of women into teaching and their entrance into government offices data from Civil War. Thousands more broke away from stove and laundry tub to look for work in the cities or to do the heavy manual labor required to keep the family homestead going as recorder by Anna Howard Shaw”(106). As a result women began to unchain there chains and began to become fearless. Mrs. Flexner gives us some great examples of women that help and contributed the soldiers during the Civil War (110); for instance: Dorothea Dix known for her work in reforming prisons and insane asylums, at the age of sixty, head of the nursing service in the Union army hospitals(110). The “Mothers” Bickerdyke and Clara Barton, who saw the…

    • 1651 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Dorothea Dix grew up in Massachusetts, but was born in Hampden Maine.Her early years were hard and very lonely because her father was an Methodist preacher. She had to take care of the house and her family because her mother was mentally ill and her father was usually away.Dorothea was the oldest of three children. When Dorothea was 12 years old she moved to Boston to live with her grandmother. In Boston and Worcester she established a lot of schools.Dorothea loved to read books and learn. She was a teacher, author and reformer. She left her 24 year career of teaching and started nursing at age 39. In march of 1841 Dix went to court about how mentally ill were treated like prisoners. They were chained in small dark spaces, filthy and abused.…

    • 201 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Education, religion, and the condition of the poor were all aspects of society that women felt morally obliged to improve. Dorothea’s action in asylum reform portrays how women of the time maneuvered through the legal world of men in order to gain social reform. Although, Dorothea returned to America in 1837, it was not until 1841 when invited by Reverend John T. G. Nichols to teach a Sunday school in the East Cambridge jail in New England, did Dorothea begin her…

    • 263 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Dorothea Lange was a photographer from the United States who became well known for her photographic journalism on farmers during the Great Depression. Before I go into detail about her work as a photographer, I will offer background to her past. Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn was born on May 26, 1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey. She was born to Heinrich Nutzhorn and Johanna Lange, second generation German immigrants who resided at 1041 Bloomfield street. Her only sibling was a younger brother named Martin. When her father left their family when she was only 12 years old, she dropped her middle name and inherited her mother’s maiden name. At seven years of age, Dorothea…

    • 1456 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 1841, Dorothea Dix taught Sunday School at a women’s prison, and noticed the horrible conditions they were living in. She went around to other prisons, observing their living conditions, before making a document and presenting it to the Massachusetts legislature. This made the prison budgets larger, but Dorothea continued going around the states and establishing mental asylums. She even traveled to Europe, and met with Pope Pius IX, and convinced him to construct a new hospital for the mentally ill.…

    • 81 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, November 9, 1922. Her mom hired her friend, Geneva Williams, as Dorothy's disciplinary while she was growing up. Williams was not nice to and did not like Dorothy. Dorothy's parents were Ruby Dandridge, her mom, and George Butler.…

    • 298 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Reforms in prisons and insane asylums began to take flight in America as Dorothea Dix, an American reformer, began advocating for safe places for the mentally unstable to reside. Her pursuit of such an institution began in 1941. Dix helped to form five phychiatric hospitals in America. Phychiatric hospitals were given a bad reputation when some hospitals were not treating the patients, rather their main concern was giving the mentally unstable a place to stay where they would not be a disturbance to the rest of society. Also during this time, prisons were holding anyone who had commited massive crimes to those who were unworthy of arrest. Men, women, and children were all detained the same prisons despite the severity of their crimes. Because…

    • 203 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    “Orem was born in July 15, 1914 in Baltimore, Maryland” (Nickle, n.d.). Dorothea E. Orem started off her career by achieving her first nursing diploma from the Providence Hospital School of Nursing. Following this, she studied at the Catholic University of America to work towards her Bachelors of Science in Nursing, as well as her Master’s of Science in Nursing (MSN). “Her earliest years in nursing were spent in practice at Providence Hospital, Washington, D.C. (1934-1936, 1942) and St. John's Hospital, Lowell, Massachusetts (1936-1937)” (Nickle, n.d.). As impressive as it is to hold a MSN, Dorothea E. Orem did not stop there. “She was given Honorary Doctorates of Science from Georgetown University in 1976 and Incarnate Word College in 1980…Honorary…

    • 280 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The age of reform, during the 1800s, was a time of transformation for the greater good. Quite a few people had done immense things during this time, but the people I admire the most are Horace Mann and Dorothea Dix, two extravagant reformers of the age of reform.…

    • 372 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Dorothy Dix Thesis

    • 108 Words
    • 1 Page

    Good post! I enjoyed reading your progress on your thesis. It is a very nice topic to research and write about it that I think you have a lot of sources on it. Women’s role in the Civil War was significant because they served as nurses and spies, and most of them fought bravely that the weapons were easy to use during that time of period. I think Dorothy Dix, a marvelous woman in the world, inspired from the Civil War women and their efforts. You can add it in your thesis to impress your female audience, if you want to.…

    • 108 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    By most accounts, Bessie Smith was a rough, crude, violent woman. She was also one of the greatest Blues singers of the 1920s. The road that took her to the title “Empress of the Blues” was not an easy one. It was certainly not one of the romantic "rags to riches" tales that Horatio Alger made popular during her time. For a young black woman from the South the journey was anything but easy, and it would require a special kind of person, and Bessie Smith was definitely that. She was a woman who fought for what she believed in and backed down to no one. She had a boundless determination, which sometimes became a flaming hot temper, and no one was exempt from it. Yet these same experiences and temperament also expressed great loyalty to those around her. The entire range, with all its passion, was expressed in her songs, and the way she sang them.…

    • 1744 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    She was born on April 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine (History.com). Her family had difficulties because her father was an alcoholic and her mother suffered from depression (History.com). Dix did what she could to take care of the household and her two other siblings (History.com). At age twelve, Dorothea Dix went to live with her grandmother in Boston (History.com). Her grandmother was wealthy and helped Dix find her passion: teaching (History.com). She had a second cousin named Edward and he wanted to help her get started by looking for suitable places to teach (faculty.webster.edu). When Dix was eighteen, he asked her to marry him, but she turned him down (faculty.webster.edu). According to Jenn Bumb, an author for faculty.webster.edu, Dorothea Dix opened schools in Boston and Worcester and gave young girls, rich and poor, a chance to have a strong education. Dix designed her own curriculum and wrote textbooks for her students (History.com). Dix devoted so much energy into her school, and when her grandmother got sick, she spent time taking care of her (History.com). In 1836, Dix dedicated so much time to helping her grandmother and working with her students that she grew tired (History.com). According to Jenn Bumb, Dorothea Dix showed symptoms of the disease we now call tuberculosis. Her doctor told her to take time off work and go on a trip (faculty.webster.edu). After pursuing her dream as a teacher for several years, she became too sick and tired to continue, so traveled to Europe…

    • 1078 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dorthea Dix’s early life, humanitarian acts, and later life have contributed to the way mankind views the mentally ill today. To begin with, she was born on April 4, 1802 in Hampden, Maine. Dorothea was the first of three children; daughter of Joseph Dix and Mary Bigelow Dix (Bumb,…

    • 1276 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The accomplishments of Barton often were not things that were typically different from what an average woman was doing. Many of reasons for the changed viewpoint of women were the actions that many women accomplished rather than the actions of one person. In fact there were many other people during the Civil War were pioneering for rights of women. Such women through their actions in the medical field created a new avenue for other women to pursue a career in the medical field. It can be said that what changed the societal norms was not one person but a collective effort and was their own dedication in building up there position in society by starting to work. In antebellum society (pre-civil war) women did not work “outside the home”. In order for women to be taken seriously within society they needed to prove that they were capable of filling in for the men during the Civil War. By 1831 women comprised nearly forty thousand workers in the textile workforce. There were many more women working in industry rather than occupations such as nursing and teaching. Women establishing their place in positions that were typically filled by men helped to demonstrate what women could do. Many of the men thought that tending to the sick was a good job for women because it was just an extension of the role and experiences that a women had while tending to her family. Getting positions that men thought that women could not handle would have been an even stronger statement about the power of women. Taking the jobs that the men thought would be more appropriate for women would make an impact. With only 2,000 women in the nursing field and forty thousand in the textile industry, the industry would be more likely to demonstrate the importance of women in the work force and help change the perception of women, as they showed that there work was necessary. Clara Barton’s accomplishments may have inspired…

    • 2202 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays