Dorothea Lynde Dix

Dorothea Lynde Dix

Biography:

Born April 4, 1802, Dorothea Lynde Dix was a noted social reformer, who from the early 1840's through the Civil War, lobbied states to create asylums for the insane. Dorothea spent over 20 years working for improved treatment of mentally ill patients, and for better prison conditions.

A week after the attack on Fort Sumter, Dorothea, at age 59, volunteered her services to the Union and received an appointment in June of 1861, placing her as the Superintendent of Union Army Nurses. She served in that position throughout the war without pay. She convinced skeptical military officials, unaccustomed to female nurses, that women could perform the work acceptably. Trying to battle the prevailing stereo-types, Dorothea Dix sought to ensure that her ranks of nurses were serious career minded women. For this reason, Dix only accepted women who were plain looking and older than 30 years old. She also instigated a dress code of modest black or brown skirts, and forbade hoops or jewelry of any kind. Even with these strict dress codes, a total of over 3,000 women served as Union Army nurses.

Known as "Dragon Dix" to some, the Superintendent was stern and brusque, frequently clashing with military bureaucracy and occasionally ignoring administrative details. However, Army nursing care was markedly improved under her leadership. Dorothea Dix looked after the welfare not only the nurses, who labored in an often brutal environment, but to the soldiers as well. Often times obtaining medical supplies from private sources when they were not forthcoming from the government.

At the end of the war, Dix resumed her work on behalf of the mentally ill. She spent the last years of her life living as a guest in the New Jersey State hospital in Trenton, N.J. She died July 17, 1887.