Dorothea Dix might be considered by some to be one of America’s uncanonized saints. Like many legendary saints of ages past, Dorothea was born in a small, rather remote town. Really just a dot on the map, Hampden, Maine turned out to be too small to use up the considerable energy and compassion of Dorothea Dix.
Born at the beginning of the 19th Century, Dorothea Dix grew up like many canonized saints living a relatively humble life and taking up a career in a rather pedestrian profession as a school teacher in her own private girls school. But as with many canonized saints, Dorothea Dix had what religious leaders might call an epiphany. That is to say, like many well known saints, Dix arrived at a crossroads in her life that seemed to change everything for the rest of her life.
St. Damian of Molokai, for example, found his life changed when he had the opportunity to share the gospel message and care for the human needs of lepers. This unusual contact made all the difference in his life and in effect set the stage for his saintly acts to play out.
In somewhat the same way the rather simple life of Dorothea Dix was challenged and changed forever when she visited a jail in East Cambridge, MA. for the purpose of teaching a Sunday School session for women inmates. As it turned out it was Dorothea who learned a lasting lesson that day. What she saw on location was appalling. To her horror Dix discovered that insane inmates had been mainstreamed with ordinary prisoners and treated with incredible cruelty and neglect.
Dorothy Dix could have walked away from that experience and no one would have been the wiser. She could have spent the rest of her life in her rather sheltered vocation as a teacher. But the conditions that she saw – lack of heat, filth, general care – during her visit so touched her to the core that her heart responded like that of a saint.
From the age of 39 Dorothea Dix became what some have called a reformer, a zealot and an advocate for those suffering from mental illness. With energy and conviction she brought the sub-human conditions that she found prevailing in East Cambridge to court. Through her conscientious and unrelenting efforts Dorothea Dix brought about changes throughout the state and gave new hope for the first time to those who suffered from mental illness that their special needs would be recognized and served.
So compassionate was she to the needs of the insane that she took her campaign outside of the state of Massachusetts. She used her plan of visiting prisons, recording conditions and then drafting reform ideas to state legislatures with great success in every state east of the Mississippi. Her work led to the establishment of many mental hospitals, specifically equipped and staffed to meet the needs of those with mental illness.
Working on behalf of the mentally ill was Dorothea Dix’s lifetime work. It would have been more than enough for most people. But as is the case with most saints, Dorothea Dix responded to needs where she found them. Living during the American Civil War, Dorothea Dix responded to the needs of wounded Union soldiers. For the duration of the war she served her nation but also the many thousands of wounded as the Superintendent of Female Nurses, a group whose usefulness Dix helped to underscore. In saint-like fashion Dorothea Dix served without pay.
When the war was ended, Dorothea Dix returned to her enduring interest, and continued to work in the interests of the insane while also branching out to help with efforts being made for general prison reform and schools for the blind. Dix never married but gave her life instead to the service and well being of those in need of a champion.
At 80 years of age, Dix ‘s health began to fail. She took up residence and shortly passed away in one of the mental hospitals that she had helped to establish during her prolonged career as advocate.
In the Catholic faith, canonized saints are holy people whose lives are fully scrutinized and who are elevated by stages based on the verifiable presence of miracles which have occurred through their intercession. Dorothy Dix will never be a saint in the Catholic tradition. However, those who read their scripture closely might expect that because of the way in which she spent her life for ” the least of my brothers” she will not be without her eternal reward.
Sources
www.webster.edu
www.civilwarhome.com
