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Conflicts Cambridge jail and discovered that some of the tattered inmates were chained in a filthy, cold cell simply because they were mentally ill. Dixie had confronted the hidden-away fact that most psychotically troubled people of the day existed in deplorable circumstances within prisons, poorhouses, reformatories -?? and even homes. The shy, but incensed witness reported the situation to a local court. Die’s charges were spurned, but she made the situation public, and efforts were made to improve conditions.
In 1881, she accepted an apartment at the Trenton New Jersey State Hospital she herself had founded. Six years later, July 17, 1887, at the age of 85, Throated Dixie died of what her physician called ossification of the arterial membrane. She was seated at the tea table. She was later buried in the Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston with the simplest Of funeral services Occupation Dixie was merely 14 when she founded a school for little children. She taught, and also wrote learning materials for, her youthful charges over the next two decades.
At one point, Dixie crossed the Atlantic to England where she met advocates of better treatment for the insane as a nurse. A teacher, nurse, humanitarian, and social reformer for the mentally ill Hobbies She enjoyed helping people. At the age of 54, Throated had traveled half of the United States and Europe inspecting institutions, jails, etc. For mistreatment Interesting Facts She was responsible for establishing or enlarging 32 mental hospitals in N. America, Europe, and Japan. In June 1861, Dixie was appointed superintendent f female nurses by the secretary of war, Simon Cameron, for the federal government.
She over saw the training, recruitment, and placement of some 2,000 women who cared for wounded union soldiers during the civil war President Millard Fillmore found Throated to be a wonderful warm and caring companion, a loyal friend Reform Massachusetts Her report on conditions in Massachusetts prisons and “almshouses” showed horrific conditions for those who had mental disease as well as those who were unable to maintain a profession or a wage. In some cases, those who ere curable or those who did not belong in prison were placed there because they had no where else to go.
The prisons and charity houses were not able to say no to peacekeepers who brought these people in. Dixie insisted that there must be a concerted effort to help these people out by starting at the top. She wished the Massachusetts legislation to work on ways of improving holding places for the mentally ill and the poor. She said it was up to them to exercise that “wisdom which is the breath of the power of God,” a reference to a divine cause. Background Throated had anything but a normal childhood.
Her father was an abusive alcoholic and her mother, it was rumored, was mentally retarded. Later, two more children were born into the family and Dixie had the job of both mother and father. Dixie had been known to make the comment, “l never knew childhood”. Often, she would take refuge at her grandmother’s house in Boston, Massachusetts. Though Throated lived a dysfunctional family life, she learned much from her father, such as reading and writing. These two assets would influence many of the choices she would make later in life.
This early and added skill of reading and writing put her ahead of all her classmates in school. So began her passion for teaching as she taught her brothers to read. The family soon moved to Massachusetts. By this time, her father was an incurable alcoholic and her mother became worse, suffering from acute and incurable headaches Trochee’s grandmother, on her father’s side, who had given her refuge earlier in life.