Dorothea Dix and the English Origins of the American Asylum Movement

Abstract

In January 1843, Dorothea Lynde Dix, an obscure, middle-aged Boston spinster, known, if at all, as a schoolteacher and sometime author of re- ligious books, submitted a sensational petition to the Massachusetts Gen- eral Court. In its pages she claimed to expose the appalling condition of pauper lunatics throughout the state, county by county, town by town. "I proceed, Gentlemen," she announced, "briefly to call your attention to the present state of Insane Persons confined within this Commonwealth, in cages, closets, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience!" (Dix, Memorial, 1843, 4). These words are from the opening of Dix's Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts, long recognized as the touchstone of the American asylum movement, and among the most power- ful documents ever written in the history of American social reform. Sam- uel Gridley Howe, who had just the month before won a seat in the lower house of the assembly, admiringly likened its impact to a discharge of "red- hot shot into the very hearts of the people" (Howe to Dix, n.d./January/ 1843, as quoted in Tiffany 1890, 89).