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Asylum, Prison, and Poorhouse: The Writings and Reform Work of Dorothea Dix in Illinois

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Description

This illustrated collection of annotated newspaper articles and memorials by Dorothea Dix provides a forum for the great mid-nineteenth-century humanitarian and reformer to speak for herself.

Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802­–87) used to be perhaps the most famous and admired woman in The usa for much of the nineteenth century. Beginning in the early 1840s, she launched a personal crusade to persuade the quite a lot of states to provide humane care and effective remedy for the mentally ill by funding specialized hospitals for that purpose. The appalling conditions endured by most mentally ill inmates in prisons, jails, and poorhouses led her to take an active interest also in prison reform and in efforts to ameliorate poverty.

In 1846–­47 Dix brought her crusade to Illinois. She presented two lengthy memorials to the legislature, the first describing conditions at the state penitentiary at Alton and the second one discussing the sufferings of the insane and urging the establishment of a state hospital for their care. She also wrote a series of newspaper articles detailing conditions in the jails and poorhouses of many Illinois communities.

These long-forgotten documents, which appear in unabridged form in this book, contain a wealth of information on the living conditions of one of the vital most unfortunate inhabitants of Illinois. In his preface, David L. Lightner describes one of the vital vivid images that emerge from Dorothea Dix’s descriptions of social conditions in Illinois a century and a half ago: “A helpless maniac confined all through the bitter cold of winter to a dark and filthy pit. Prison inmates chained in hallways and cellars because no more men may also be squeezed into the dank and airless cells. Aged paupers auctioned off by county officers to whoever will handle them at the lowest cost.”

Lightner provides an introduction to every document, placing each memorial and newspaper article in its proper social and historical context. He also furnishes detailed notes, making these documents readily accessible to readers a century and a half later. In his final chapter, Lightner assesses both the immediate and the continuing affect of Dix’s work.


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