Dix, Dorothea. "Dorothea Dix Speaks on Behalf of Insane Persons, 1843." Http://wadsworth.cengage.com/. 1843. Accessed January 12, 2015. http://wadsworth.cengage.com/history_d/templates/student_resources/0030724791_ayers/sources/ch11/11.4.dix.html.
About two years since leisure afforded opportunity and duty prompted me to visit several prisons and almshouses in the vicinity of this metropolis. I found, near Boston, in the jails and asylums for the poor, a numerous class brought into unsuitable connection with criminals and the general mass of paupers. I refer to idiots and insane persons, dwelling in circumstances not only adverse to their own physical and moral improvement, but productive of extreme disadvantages to all other persons brought into association with them. I applied myself diligently to trace the causes of these evils, and sought to supply remedies. As one obstacle was surmounted, fresh difficulties appeared. Every new investigation has given depth to the conviction that it is only by decided, prompt, and vigorous legislation the evils to which I refer, and which I shall proceed more fully to illustrate, can be remedied. I shall be obliged to speak with great plainness, and to reveal many things revolting to the taste, and from which my woman's nature shrinks with peculiar sensitiveness. But truth is the highest consideration. I tell what I have seen--painful and shocking as the details often are--that from them you may feel more deeply the imperative obligation which lies upon you to prevent the possibility of a repetition or continuance of such outrages upon humanity. If I inflict pain upon you, and move you to horror, it is to acquaint you with sufferings which you have the power to alleviate, and make you hasten to the relief of the victims of legalized barbarity.
Springfield. In the jail, one lunatic woman, furiously mad, a State pauper, improperly situated, both in regard to the prisoners, the keepers, and herself. It is a case of extreme self-forgetfulness and oblivion to all the decencies of life, to describe which would be to repeat only the grossest scenes. She is much worse since leaving Worcester. In the almshouse of the same town is a woman apparently only needing judicious care, and some well-chosen employment, to make it unnecessary to confine her in solitude, in a dreary unfurnished room. Her appeals for employment and companionship are most touching, but the mistress replied "she had no time to attend to her."
Dorothea Dix wrote this and spoke to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1843 on behalf of those who were imprisoned for being insane and without proper treatment. Her goal was to reform the prisons by creating a place for the insane to be separate from the criminal. She was a leader of the prison reform movement. Her goal here was to convince those in the Legislature to create laws that would provide care to the insane. Her letter describes the horrid conditions of those that were mentally insane, how they were beaten and chained. They were abused because they had problems that weren't properly addressed.
No comments:
Post a Comment