Your social problems are the mentally ill and prisons.
This became a growing problem in the 19th century and
reformers like Dorothea Dix tried to settle the problem. You will read the following passages as well as the material
from your textbook regarding this topic. Here is a brief description of the movement.
Prison Reform
Reformers during this era also launched campaigns against the prison system, where conditions were horrible.
Debtors’ prisons were still common and housed the majority of American ―criminals‖—mostly the poor, who
sometimes owed creditors only a few dollars. Over time, reformers were able to change the system. Debtors’
prisons gradually began to disappear, and activists succeeded in convincing many that the government should use
prisons to help reform criminals, not just lock them away.
Reform for the Mentally Ill
Often working hand-in-hand with prison reform was the movement to help the mentally ill. The common belief
during this era was that the mentally ill were willfully crazy or that they were no better than animals. As a result,
thousands were treated as criminals and thrown into prisons. The leader of the reform cause was Dorothea Dix,
who compiled a comprehensive report on the state of the mentally ill in Massachusetts. The report claimed that
hundreds of insane women were chained like beasts in stalls and cages. Dix’s findings convinced state legislators to
establish one of the first asylums devoted entirely to caring for the mentally ill. By the outbreak of the Civil War,
nearly thirty states had built similar institutions.
Now read the Primary Source ―Dorothea Dix’s Report to the Massachusetts Legislature‖ and use these questions to
guide your understanding of the prison & asylum reform movements.
1) According to Dix’s report, how were the mentally ill forced to live?
2) Why do you think Dix took her findings to the Massachusetts’s legislature?
3) What possible solutions do you see to the problems Dix lists?
4) Why do you think there was such similarity between the prison reform movement and the movement to
help improve conditions for the mentally ill?
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Dorothea Dix’s Report to the Massachusetts Legislature
Gentlemen: . . . I come to present the strong claims of suffering humanity. I come to place
before the Legislature of Massachusetts the condition of the miserable, the desolate, the outcast. I
come as the advocate of helpless, forgotten, insane, and idiotic men and women; of beings sunk
to a condition from which the most unconcerned would start with real horror; of beings
wretched in our prisons, and more wretched in our almshouses.
I must confine myself to a few examples, but am ready to furnish other and more complete
details, if required. I proceed, gentlemen, briefly to call your attention to the present state of
insane persons confined within this Commonwealth, in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens!
Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.
I offer the following extracts from my notebook and journal. Springfield: In the jail, one lunatic
woman, furiously mad, a state pauper, improperly situated, both in regard to the prisoners, the
keepers, and herself. It is a case of extreme self-forgetfulness and oblivion to all the decencies of
life, to describe which would be to repeat only the grossest scenes. She is much worse since
leaving Worcester. In the almshouse of the same town is a woman apparently only needing
judicious care and some well-chosen employment to make it unnecessary to confine her in
solitude in a dreary unfurnished room. Her appeals for employment and companionship are
most touching, but the mistress replied ―she had no time to attend to her.‖
Lincoln: A woman in a cage. Medford: One idiotic subject chained, and one in a close stall for
seventeen years. Pepperell: One often doubly chained, hand and foot; another violent; several
peaceable now. Brookfield: One man caged, comfortable. Granville: One often closely confined,
now losing the use of his limbs from want of exercise. Charlemont: One man caged. Savoy: One
man caged. Lenox: Two in the jail, against whose unfit condition there the jailer protests.
Dedham: The insane disadvantageously placed in the jail. In the almshouse, two females in stalls,
situated in the main building, lie in wooden bunks filled with straw; always shut up. One of these
subjects is supposed curable. The overseers of the poor have declined giving her a trial at the
hospital, as I was informed, on account of expense.
Besides the above, I have seen many who, part of the year, are chained or caged. The use of cages
is all but universal. Hardly a town but can refer to some not distant period of using them; chains
are less common; negligences frequent; willful abuse less frequent than sufferings proceeding
from ignorance, or want of consideration. I encountered during the last three months many poor
creatures wandering reckless and unprotected through the country. . . . But I cannot particularize.
In traversing the state, I have found hundreds of insane persons in every variety of circumstance
and condition, many whose situation could not and need not be improved; a less number, but
that very large, whose lives are the saddest pictures of human suffering and degradation.
I give a few illustrations; but description fades before reality. Men of Massachusetts, I beg, I
implore, I demand pity and protection for these of my suffering, outraged sex. . . . Become the
benefactors of your race, the just guardians of the solemn rights you hold in trust. Raise up the
fallen, succor the desolate, restore the outcast, defend the helpless, and for your eternal and great
reward receive the benediction, ―Well done, good and faithful servants, become rulers over many
things!
