DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX. 11 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 66 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. |