International Women’s Day (8 March) is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. In some places like China, Russia, Vietnam and Bulgaria, International Women’s Day is a national holiday.
Dorothea Dix
by Judith Hollowood
I speak this morning to celebrate the relentless work of Dorothea Lynde Dix, a Unitarian reformer-heroine of pre-civil war America.
For many years, Miss Dix, a lifelong Unitarian Christian, did not have a purpose in life large enough for her conscience. By her early 20s, she was caught in cycles of depression and illness that so often dragged down unconventional women of her time – women who could not or would not find their whole purpose in marriage, family, and friendship.
But when more than half her life was passed – at the age of 43 – she found a purpose – improving the care of the mentally ill, who were for the most part housed with prison populations, uncared for and unable to care for themselves.
She was not, as simple accounts suggest, the first or only person concerned with better care for the insane. Massachusetts had built a model public mental institution, and several progressive private institutions existed. Many people, including some in her own circle, were already invested in this issue. Two well-placed social reformers, Horace Mann and Samuel Gridley Howe, had shown that overwhelming evidence could move cautious legislatures to action. But the movement for the insane lacked someone who could invest him or herself in it wholeheartedly. [Read more…]