By Bonnie Withers

When you consider our small numbers, our denomination has always had an outsized influence on the greater society. One renown reformer was Dorothea Dix (1802-1887).

If you have studied the history of mental health treatment in the U. S., her name is known to you. In the period prior to the Civil War, she traveled tirelessly through the U.S. and beyond, documenting the deplorable conditions she found for mental patients. Among the many presentations she made to state legislatures calling for reform, her tour through the prisons and jails of Massachusetts resulted in a presentation to the state legislature in 1843, called the Memorial. This document is considered a prime document in the history of the treatment of the mentally ill; everything changed after it became known with the establishment of many state psychiatric hospitals.

Dorothea Dix became the first woman to receive an executive appointment from a U.S. President when Abraham Lincoln appointed her as the Union’s superintendent of female nurses during the Civil War. Dix wanted no husband hunters or flirts, so she initially accepted only women who had reached 30 years of age, had a plain appearance, and agreed to wear only black or brown skirts, without hoops or jewelry. Three thousand women served under her and saved many lives. Dorothea Dix was a friend of and heavily influenced by her Unitarian minister, William Ellerly Channing.

(A note about names: Although the overall title of these vignettes refers to “UU History”, some of these folks were Unitarian and others Universalists; they aren’t identified by both names until after the merger of 1961.)