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Eastern State Penitentiary

Eastern State Penitentiary was designed to intimidate prisoners by its appearance. Today a historical society runs tours of the prison, as well as a haunted house around Halloween.

The pretty woman who stood before the all-male audience seemed unlikely to provoke controversy. Tiny and timid, she rose to the platform of the Massachusetts Legislature to speak. Those who had underestimated the determination and dedication of Dorothea Dix, however, were brought to attention when they heard her say that the sick and insane were "confined in this Commonwealth in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, beaten with rods, lashed into obedience." Thus, her crusade for humane hospitals for the insane, which she began in 1841, was reaching a climax. After touring prisons, workhouses, almshouses, and private homes to gather evidence of appalling abuses, she made her case for state-supported care. Ultimately, she not only helped establish five hospitals in America, but also went to Europe where she successfully pleaded for human rights to Queen Victoria and the Pope.

Dorothea Dix, a tireless crusader for the treatment of the mentally ill, was made the Superintendent of Nurses for the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war, she retired to an apartment in the first hospital that she had founded, in Trenton, New Jersey.

The year 1841 also marked the beginning of the superintendence of Dr. John Galt at Eastern Lunatic Asylum, in Williamsburg, Virginia, the first publicly supported psychiatric hospital in America. Warehousing of the sick was primary; their care was not. Dr. Galt had many revolutionary ideas about treating the insane, based on his conviction that they had dignity. Among his enlightened approaches were the use of drugs, the introduction of "talk therapy" and advocating outplacement rather than lifelong stays.

In addition to the problems in asylums, prisons were filled to overflowing with everyone who gave offense to society from committing murder to spitting on the street. Men, women, children were thrown together in the most atrocious conditions. Something needed to be done - but what?

Until the 19th century, juveniles offenders were passed into the custody of their parents. During the time of prison and asylum reform, juvenile detention centers like the House of Refuge in New York were built to reform children of delinquent behavior.

After the War of 1812, reformers from Boston and New York began a crusade to remove children from jails into juvenile detention centers. But the larger controversy continued over the purpose of prison - was it for punishment or penitence? In 1821, a disaster occurred in Auburn Prison that shocked even the governor into pardoning hardened criminals. After being locked down in solitary, many of the eighty men committed suicide or had mental breakdowns. Auburn reverted to a strict disciplinary approach. The champion of discipline and first national figure in prison reform was Louis Dwight. founder of the Boston Prison Discipline Society, he spread the Auburn system throughout America's jails and added salvation and Sabbath School to further penitence.

After several bad starts, America finally enjoyed about a decade of real reform. Idealism, plus hope in the perfectibility of institutions, spurred a new generation of leaders including Francis Lieber, Samuel Gridley Howe and the peerless Dix. Their goals were prison libraries, basic literacy (for Bible reading), reduction of whipping and beating, commutation of sentences, and separation of women, children and the sick.

By 1835, America was considered to have two of the "best" prisons in the world in Pennsylvania. Astonishingly, reformers from Europe looked to the new nation as a model for building, utilizing and improving their own systems. Advocates for prisoners believed that deviants could change and that a prison stay could have a positive effect. It was a revolutionary idea in the beginning of the 19th century that society rather than individuals had the responsibility for criminal activity and had the duty to treat neglected children and rehabilitate alcoholics.

In reality it became clear that, despite intervention by outsiders, prisoners were often no better off, and often worse off, for their incarceration. Yet, in keeping with the optimistic spirit of the era, these early reformers had only begun a crusade to alleviate human suffering that continues today.

Medicating the mentally ill is nothing new - Benjamin Hornor Coates, M.D. was working wonders with narcotics way back in 1752.
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Listen up to this radio broadcast about the story of Sing Sing, one of America's most notorious prisons which actually began during the time of reform.
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Prison and Asylum Reform [ushistory.org]

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Eastern State Penitentiary Eastern State Penitentiary was designed to intimidate prisoners by its appearance. Today a historical society runs tours of the prison, as well as a haunted house around Halloween. The pretty woman who stood before the all-male audience seemed unlikely to provoke controversy.

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Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887) was an author, teacher and reformer. Her efforts on behalf of the mentally ill and prisoners helped create dozens of new institutions across the United States and in Europe and changed people's perceptions of these populations. Charged during the American Civil War with the administration of military hospitals, Dix also established a reputation as an advocate for the work of female nurses. Her own troubled family background and impoverished youth served as a galvanizing force throughout her career, although she remained silent on her own biographical details for most of her long, productive life.

Dorothea Dix's Early Life

Dorothea Dix was born in Hampden, Maine, in 1802. Her father Joseph was an itinerant Methodist preacher who was frequently away from home, and her mother suffered from debilitating bouts of depression. The oldest of three children, Dorothea ran her household and cared for her family members from a very young age. Joseph Dix, though a strict and volatile man prone to alcoholism and depression, taught his daughter to read and write, fostering Dorothea's lifelong love of books and learning. Still, Dorothea's early years were difficult, unpredictable and lonely.

Did you know? Louisa May Alcott was a nurse under Dorothea Dix during the Civil War. Alcott recalled that Dix was respected but not particularly well liked by her nurses, who tended to "steer clear" of her. Alcott wrote of her experiences in "Hospital Sketches," years before achieving fame with the classic "Little Women."

At 12 Dorothea moved to Boston, where her wealthy grandmother took her in and encouraged her interest in education. Dix would eventually establish a series of schools in Boston and Worcester, designing her own curriculum and administering classrooms as a teenager and young woman. In the 1820s Dix's poor health made her teaching increasingly sporadic, forcing her to take frequent breaks from her career. She began to write, and her books-filled with the simple dictums and morals that were thought to edify young minds-sold briskly. By 1836, persistent health problems caused Dix to close her latest school for good.

Dorathea Dix: The Asylum Movement

That same year Dix traveled in England with friends, returning home months later with an interest in new approaches to the treatment of the insane. She took a job teaching inmates in an East Cambridge prison, where conditions were so abysmal and the treatment of prisoners so inhumane that she began agitating at once for their improvement.

Prisons at the time were unregulated and unhygienic, with violent criminals housed side by side with the mentally ill. Inmates were often subject to the whims and brutalities of their jailers. Dix visited every public and private facility she could access, documenting the conditions she found with unflinching honesty. She then presented her findings to the legislature of Massachusetts, demanding that officials take action toward reform. Her reports-filled with dramatic accounts of prisoners flogged, starved, chained, physically and sexually abused by their keepers, and left naked and without heat or sanitation-shocked her audience and galvanized a movement to improve conditions for the imprisoned and insane.

As a result of Dix's efforts, funds were set aside for the expansion of the state mental hospital in Worcester. Dix went on to accomplish similar goals in Rhode Island and New York, eventually crossing the country and expanding her work into Europe and beyond.

Dorothea Dix:The Civil War

Dix volunteered her services one week after the Civil War (1861-1865) began. Shortly after her arrival in Washington in April 1861, she was appointed to organize and outfit the Union Army hospitals and to oversee the vast nursing staff that the war would require. As superintendent of women nurses, she was the first woman to serve in such a high capacity in a federally appointed role.

With supplies pouring in from voluntary societies across the north, Dix's administrative skills were sorely needed to manage the flow of bandages and clothing as the war wore on. Still, Dix often clashed with army officials and was widely feared and disliked by her volunteer female nurses. After months of hard work and exhaustion, she was eventually ousted from her position, stripped of authority by the fall of 1863 and sent home.

Dorothea Dix's Later Life

After the war, Dix returned to her work as a social reformer. She traveled extensively in Europe, evidently disenchanted with her experience during the war, and continued to write and offer guidance to what was now a widespread movement to reform the treatment of the mentally ill. Old hospitals were redesigned and rededicated according to her ideals, and new hospitals were founded in accordance with the principles she espoused. After a long life as an author, advocate and agitator, Dorothea Dix died in 1887 at the age of 85 in a New Jersey hospital that had been established in her honor. She is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887) was an author, teacher and reformer. Her efforts on behalf of the mentally ill and prisoners helped create dozens of new institutions across the United States and in Europe and changed people's perceptions of these populations.

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Dorothea Dix was a teacher that had a curious mind, but had to close her school in 1836 because of health issues. The same year Dix closed her school, she traveled to England with friends and returned with an interest in advanced treatments for the "insane". She seized a job teaching inmates in an East Cambridge prison, learning of the horrid conditions and inhumane treatment of prisoners and immediately pushed for improvement.
Prisoners were chained and placed in cages. Adults and children were jailed together. There was little food and inmates were locked in damp, dark cells. A large amount of them were imprisoned because they couldn't pay their debts no matter the amount. Most people that were "insane" were whipped and beaten for how they acted. Dix toured several more prisons in Massachusetts and sent in a report to the state legislature detailing the horrible conditions. The lawmakers were shocked and voted to build new mental hospitals. Not only that, Dix was able to convince people to outlaw cruel punishments, stop sending people in for debts, and helping create a special justice system for children.

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November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony voted in a political election, even though women did not have the privileged to vote. Two weeks after she voted she was arrested and a year later was found guilty of illegal voting.

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In 1869 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. These two women along with Lucretia Mott were furiated by the inequality women faced. Women could not vote, hold offices, any wages they earned belonged to their dowry, land that belonged to single women became their husbands after marriage, and there was no law against women getting beat by their husbands. Mott and Stanton had enough and decided to host a women's rights movement in New York.
This women's rights movement was named The Seneca Falls Convention. The Declaration of Sentiments, the proposal for women's rights, was modeled after the Declaration of Independence. It demanded equality for women in the voting booth, church, work and school. This convention was the beginning of the women's rights movement. Later, New York passed laws allowing women to keep property and wages. Massachusetts and Indiana passed liberal and divorce laws. Although this women's rights movement was extremely effective, the right for women to vote would not pass until 1920.