DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX.

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ford, Conn. (1824); and the Worcester, Mass., Asylum (1830), were founded on the theories of Pinel and Tuke. These efforts, however, were but tentative. They were conducted privately by a few leaders who were far in advance of public sentiment. The people had yet to be aroused to the horrors of the madhouse as they existed in every community; and until they should be so aroused the authorities could not be forced to act.

The wretched condition of the indigent insane in Washington, into which Caleb Cushing so casually inquired on the floor of the House, was similar to that of the indigent insane throughout the land; but in Mr. Cushing's own State a delicate girl was to be brought face to face with these horrors, and was to preach the gospel of reform with such persistence and tact that legislature after legislature was to yield to her persuasive eloquence, and even Congress was to be moved to begin the greatest charitable institution the nation has ever created.

III.

On March 28, 1841, Dorothea Lynde Dix, then a volunteer teacher in the Sunday school maintained by Harvard Divinity School students at the East Cambridge, Mass., house of correction, found among the prisoners a few insane persons, with whom she talked. She noticed that there was no stove in their room; and the keeper, on being appealed to, said it would not be safe to have a fire. Miss Dix appealed to the court, and warmth was provided. Miss Dix enlisted Dr. S. G. Howe and Charles Sumner, who were induced to visit the East Cambridge jail, where a raving, blaspheming maniac and a gentlewoman with mind but slightly obscured had been penned together for months in a jail poorly ventilated and noisome with filth. From the Berkshire Hills to the tip of Cape Cod Miss Dix pursued her investigations, until she had accumulated a tale of horrors. She proved that insane persons in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts were "confined in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens; chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.2

A storm of vituperation followed the publication of this memorial. Miss Dix, however, knew that the facts she had printed could not be successfully contradicted. To her aid came Dr. William E. Channing, Horace Mann, John G. Palfrey, and especially Dr. Luther V. Bell, of the McLean Asylum, who was able to show by his own experience the good results of humane treatment of the insane. It was fortunate for Miss Dix-and more fortunate for Massachusetts-that Dr. Howe happened to be a member of the legislature to which she appealed. Her memorial was referred to a committee of which he was the chairman, and the immediate result was the enlargement of the Worcester

'Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix, by Francis Tiffany, 1890, p. 73 et seq. The description is from Sumner's letter to Howe.

2 Miss Dix's first memorial, January, 1843.

Asylum so as to accommodate the insane that were scattered among the county jails. From Massachusetts Miss Dix went to Rhode Island, where from private sources she secured the money necessary to take the insane from local jails and place them in a well-equipped asylum.

The crusade now became broader in its scope. Miss Dix saw that what was needed was to call in the power of public taxation to support and care for the insane in State institutions. Her next struggle was in New Jersey, and the asylum at Trenton was the first State insane asylum founded, in 1845, through her quiet, persistent investigations and her simple, direct, forcible presentation of facts that could not fail to create a revolution in public sentiment.' While her friends in the New Jersey legislature were building on the foundations her investigations had laid, Miss Dix had been at work in Pennsylvania, and at Harrisburg had conducted a campaign no less effective than that at Trenton. An entirely new State institution for the insane at Harrisburg was the result. Thus the year 1845 brought her fourth success and placed the foundation of a second State institution to her credit.

During the nine years from 1845 to 1854, Miss Dix was successful with the legislatures of Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mis. souri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Maryland, and besides was instrumental in securing the building of new asylums at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and St. Johns, Newfoundland. The Rev. Francis Tiffany, in his comprehensive life of Miss Dix, has portrayed this remarkable woman, with her sweet, rich, low voice and perfect enunciation, in which love and power were blended; her quiet but always tasteful style of dress; her rich, wavy, dark-brown hair brought down over the cheek and carried back behind the ears; her face lit with alternately soft and brilliant blue-gray eyes, their pupils so large and dilating as to cause them often to be taken for black; a bright, almost hectic, glow of color on her cheeks, with her shapely head set on a neck so long, flexile, and graceful as to impart an air of distinction to her carriage. Personally she never cared to appear in public. She made no addresses, held no meetings. "To come to close quarters of eye, conscience, and heart with impressionable and influential minds, to deliver her burden as from the Lord to them, and let it work on their sensibility and reason-this was her invariable method." Everywhere the insane were neglected, abused, and beaten; so that when once the public was aroused by the presentation of the facts, and the results of the special investigations made by Miss Dix were placed in the hands of the real leaders in the legislatures, no legislative lethargy, no cheese-paring parsimony were able to withstand

1 The Trenton Asylum was called Miss Dix's first-born child. Forty-two years after its establishment she returned to its friendly roof, and there, amid friends and in apartments set apart for her use by the trustees, she passed her last hours of weariness and pain. She died July 17, 1887.

THE FIVE MILLIONS ACRES BILL.

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the onslaught. How severe was the task of making these investigations from Canada to Florida, those who know the conditions of travel before the war can best appreciate.1

IV.

In 1848, Miss Dix sent to Congress a memorial for a grant of 5,000,000 acres of the public domain, the proceeds of the sale of which were to be set apart as a perpetual fund for the care of the indigent insane. The fund so created was to be divided among the thirty States in proportion to their respective population. To secure the passage of the bill seemed to Miss Dix the crown to be struggled for. The project did not then seem sc chimerical as it looks in the retrospect. Congress had distributed among the States moneys received from the sale of public lands; and in 1845, 134,704,982 acres had been given to the new States for purposes of education and internal improvement. In view of these facts, Miss Dix's request seems not over large. In the Senate the bill was referred to a committee consisting of Messrs. Benton, Dix, Hannegan, Bell, and Davis of Massachusetts. The rising tide of opposition to the giving away of the public domain made the politicians wary of the scheme, and the bill went but slowly. By the courtesy of Congress a special alcove in the Library of Congress was set apart for Miss Dix's especial use, and there she appeared daily to urge the cause of the more than nine thousand idiots, epileptics, and insane scattered throughout the United States in jails, poorhouses, and private dwellings, bound with chains, stormed at and beaten, and left in filth and loneliness. In spite of President Polk's declaration that he would veto every land bill that did not provide for a provisional payment to the United States, Miss Dix relied on the friendship of Mrs. Polk and VicePresident Dallas for help in the last extremity. The bill, however, did not succeed at that session, and in 1850 Miss Dix was again on hand. This time she included the indigent blind and deaf and dumb, asking for 10,000,000 acres for the insane and a quarter of a million for the other unfortunates. A favorable report was made; the bill was passed in the House, and went over to the short session. On February 11, 1851, the bill came up in the Senate, and after a short struggle was passed by a vote of 36 to 16. In the House, twice the rules were suspended to concur in the Senate amendments; but the Congress ended with a disagreement still pending. Meanwhile, in the Southern, Western, and Middle States, Miss Dix was obtaining legislative action that was denied by Congress.

1 Dorothea Lynde. Dix was born at Hampden, Me., April 4, 1802. Although Gen. John A. Dix always addressed her as sister, there was no relationship between them. At the age of 14 she began to teach school. She was frequently compelled to give up work by reason of ill health, and in 1836 she went to England to recover from a complete physical collapse. She was never strong.

2 The amount asked for was afterwards increased to 12,225,000 acres.