“Dorothea Dix pleads for a state mental hospital.” Learn North Carolina. Org. http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newnation/4748. 1/12/15.
If County Jails must be resorted to for security against the dangerous propensities of madmen, let such use of prison-rooms and dungeons be but temporary. It is not long since I noticed in a Newspaper, published near the borders or this State, the following paragraph: “It is our fate,” writes the Editor, “to be located opposite the County Jail, in which are now confined four miserable creatures bereft of the God-like attribute of reason: two of them females; and our feelings are daily excited by sounds of woe, that would harrow up the hardest soul. It is horrible that for the sake of a few thousand dollars the wailings of the wretched should be suffered to issue from the gloomy walls of our jails without pity and without relief. Were our law-makers doomed to listen for a single hour each day to the clanking of chains, and the piercing shrieks of these forlorn wretches, relief would surely follow, and the character of our State would be rescued from the foul blot that now dishonors it.” In nearly every jail in North Carolina, have the insane at different times, and in periods varying in duration, been grievous sufferers. In Halifax County, several years since, a maniac was confined in the jail; shut in the dungeon, and chained there. The jail was set on fire by other prisoners: the keeper, as he told me, heard frantic shrieks and cries of the madman, and “might have saved him as well as not, but his noise was a common thing he was used to it, and thought nothing out of the way was the case.” The alarm of fire was finally spread; the jailer hastened to the prison: it was now too late; every effort, (and no exertions were spared,) to save the agonized creature, was unavailing. He perished in agony, and amidst tortures no pen can describe.…
The author of this primary source is Dorothea Dix. Dorothea was born in 1802 and died in 1887. Dix was a social reformer who was devoted to the well being of the mentally ill which led to the widespread of prison reform. Dix is a sunday school teacher, that visited a prison and discovered the horrendous living conditions, especially for the mentally ill. Dix wrote this letter to the General Assembly of North Carolina to ask for a state mental Hospital for the protection and cure of the insane. She wanted to help the mentally ill, and believed that they will not be healed caged in prisons. Dorothea Dix is definitely believable and trustworthy source.
Dorothea Dix began traveling around the state to research the conditions in poor houses and prisons, and began documenting what she saw. This document was created when mentally ill patients were being put in prisons alongside criminals. The mentally ill were put into cages with no heat, and sometimes they were even chained to one another. Dorothea Dix wanted to do something about these conditions and she started the prison reform. The prison reform helped improve the conditions in prisons and in poorhouses, to make more livable conditions for patients. This document helps give a complete image of the event. In the document Dix explains how the guards didn't know the jail was set on fire even with the inmates clanking their chains and shrieking to let them out. The guards thought the noises were normal and by the time they knew the prison was on fire it was too late.
Dorothea Dix believed that the mentally ill could not receive the treatment they needed in prisons and they needed to be put into homes or hospitals where they would be helped. Dorothea Dix was trying to prove the point to the assembly, and reader, that all states should have a mental hospital for the mentally ill. You can learn a life lesson from Dorothea Dix, if you have a concern or problem for something get up and fix it.
