On this day in 1841 educator Dorothea Dix visited the East Cambridge Jail to teach a Sunday school class. She found mentally ill women incarcerated with violent criminals. All were living in horrific conditions without heat or furniture. When asked how these conditions could be tolerated she was told the “insane do not feel heat or cold.”
She began to visit perhaps every jail in the Commonwealth carefully documenting what she witnessed. Armed with this information she began to lobby politicians and others to legislate for more humane conditions for the mentally ill. This work would continue for the rest of her life, extending to other states and eventually to many other countries.
Inspired by her Unitarian faith Dix helped to shift her culture in a more humane direction.
There remains much work to do, but it can’t hurt to pause and thank an amazing woman for a life well lived…
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