Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn President Bill Clendaniel Retires | Page 11

Dorothea Dix:
A Life of Service
By Bree Harvey, Director of Education & Visitor Services
When thinking about notable figures buried
at Mount Auburn who focused their lives on service to
others, reformer Dorothea Dix (Lot # 4731 Asciepids Path
and Spruce Avenue) comes readily to mind. Born in Maine,
she moved to Massachusetts at age twelve, living with her
grandmother in Boston and then an aunt in Worcester.
In 1819, Dix opened a successful school for young girls
in Boston. In 1824, after chronic fatigue and a case of
tuberculosis forced her to stop teaching, Dix became a
governess for the family of her friend, Unitarian minister
William Ellery Channing (Lot 678 Greenbrier Path). Dur-
ing her years with the Channing family, she wrote several
children’s books, including a science textbook for school
children. She returned to teaching and opened another
school in Boston in 1831.
In 1836 Dix traveled to England to recuperate follow-
ing a collapse. While residing in Liverpool she learned of
new reform movements for the treatment of the mentally
ill. Returning to Boston two years later, she accepted a
position teaching Sunday school at the East Cambridge
House of Correction. At that time the mentally ill were
often housed in prisons rather than in hospitals, so Dix saw
fi rst-hand the deplorable conditions affecting prisoners and
the mentally ill alike. Aghast, she devoted the rest of her life
to improving correctional facilities and creating separate
hospitals for the insane.
After an eighteen-month survey of jails, almshouses and
hospitals throughout Massachusetts, Dix presented her
fi ndings to the Massachusetts Legislature. Following her
1843 “Memorial,” which
reported conditions for
treatment of the mentally ill,
the Worcester Asylum was
enlarged. Encouraged, Dix
expanded her crusade to the
rest of New England and
then the entire country. She
eventually inspired legislators
in 15 states and Canada to
establish a total of 102 state-
run and private institutions.
Dix later took her crusade
abroad, convincing Queen Victoria to investigate the treat-
ment of the insane in the United Kingdom and Pope Pius
IX to do the same in the areas surrounding the Vatican. She
also visited France, Turkey, Russia and Greece to lobby for
mental health care reforms in those countries.
In 1845 Dix took a break from her work on mental
health care reform to work with Charles Sumner (Lot
2447 Arethusa Path) on an appeal for prison reform. The
two advocated for a prison system that separated different
levels of offenders from one another.
During the Civil War Dix volunteered her services as
superintendant of nurses for the Union army. Following the
war, she turned her attentions to improving care for the
mentally ill and continued her work until her retirement in
1881.
Dorothea Dix spent her fi nal years in Trenton, NJ, in a
state hospital that she had helped to found earlier in her
life. She died there in 1887 at age 68. In keeping with her
wishes, the executors of her estate had her buried at Mount
Auburn, not far from the lot of William Ellery Channing.
Celebrating Longfellow’s Sonnets
Morning snow and seasonably crisp temperatures did not deter the always
ample throng which convened on February 23 in Story Chapel for the
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Birthday Celebration, held in conjunction
with the Longfellow House National Historic Site. This year’s program
focused on the poet’s timeless sonnets. Reading and discussing them
were: Charles Calhoun, author of Longfellow Rediscovered, a recent
biography of the poet; Bree Harvey, Mount Auburn’s Director of Educa-
tion & Visitor Services; Adu Laitan Matory, a student from the Kennedy-
Longfellow School and winner of the Cambridge 2007 School Poetry
Slam; J. Lorand Matory, professor of Anthropology and of African and
African-American Studies at Harvard, Atu’s father; Matthew Pearl, author
of The Dante Club, a New York Times best-selling historical mystery
novel set in Cambridge and Boston during the 19th century, and Nancy
Jones, Visitors Services Coordinator and Museum Educator at the Longfel-
low National Historic Site. After coffee, tea and birthday cake, the group
walked to Longfellow’s grave to pay their respects and lay a wreath.
Left: Mount Auburn’s Bree Harvey
introduces speakers
Above: Longfellow National Historic
Site rangers at the poet’s grave on
Indian Ridge Path
Summer 2008 | 9