Dorothea Dix and the Prison Reform

Dorothea Dix had a huge impact on the Prison Reform in the 1840s. Dix went into prisons all over Massachusetts and recorded what she had observed from her visits. She witnessed the horrible conditions both prisoners and mentally ill people were kept in. Dix believed that the mentally ill and the criminals should be kept separate and the mentally ill should get the treatment they needed. The following is a section from Dorothea Dix, Memorial To The Legislature of Massachusetts (1843) :

"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. And I cannot suppose it needful to employ earnest persuasion, or stubborn argument, in order to arrest and fix attention upon a subject only the more strongly pressing in its claims because it is revolting and disgusting in its details.

I must confine myself to few examples, but am ready to furnish other and more complete details, if required. If my pictures are displeasing, coarse, and severe, my subjects, it must be recollected, offer no tranquil, refined, or composing features. The condition of human beings, reduced to the extremest states of degradation and misery, cannot be exhibited in softened language, or adorn a polished page.

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.

As I state cold, severe facts, I feel obliged to refer to persons, and definitely to indicate localities. But it is upon my subject, not upon localities or individuals, I desire to fix attention; and I would speak as kindly as possible of all wardens, keepers, and other responsible officers, believing that most of these have erred not through hardness of heart and wilful cruelty so much as want of skill and knowledge, and want of consideration. Familiarity with suffering, it is said, blunts the sensibilities, and where neglect once finds a footing other injuries are multiplied. This is not all, for it may justly and strongly be added that, from the deficiency of adequate means to meet the wants of these cases, it has been an absolute impossibility to do justice in this matter. Prisons are not constructed in view of being converted into county hospitals, and almshouses are not founded as receptacles for the insane. And yet, in the face of justice and common sense, wardens are by law compelled to receive, and the masters of almshouses not to refuse, insane and idiotic subjects in all stages of mental disease and privation. "

Source:

Dix, Dorothea. Dorothea Dix, Memorial To The Legislature of Massachusetts.  January, 1843. Teach Us History. http://www.teachushistory.org/second-great-awakening-age-reform/resources/memorial-legislature-massachusetts. Accessed on January 13^th, 2015.

Annotation:

Dorothea Dix was writing to the Legislature of Massachusetts to convince them that the mentally ill should be kept and cared for separate from the criminals because they needed treatment. At the time, prisons consisted of both criminals and the mentally ill. Both were kept in horrifying conditions. Many were kept chained up with no heat, little to no clothing, and little to no food. In a lot of the prisons, violence and beatings were used to control the “creatures”. Dix referred to them as creatures because that was exactly how they were being treated. Dix was writing to the Legislature to let them know that the mentally ill were human beings and should be treated like them rather then treated like animals. Within the rest of the letter she mentions different cases that she witnessed at the prisons that she visited. This excerpt definitely gives me a good picture of this event. They way she goes into details and describes the conditions of the jails made it easy for me to picture it. Dix was trying to convince the Legislature to build separate asylums for the mentally ill so they can receive the medicine they need to get better.

Does Skin Color Still Matter?

This is the social pyramid we looked at. 

The essential question for the Latin American lesson was, “Why is it essential to acknowledge human value regardless of race? How are the events in the Latin American revolutions evidence of this social imperative?” In class, we studied the impact of race on Latin American revolutions for independence. First, we looked a pie chart of the race percent of the population in Latin America and we looked at a social pyramid. According to the pie chart, the Indian’s made up 50% percent of the population. The Creoles made up 23% of the population. They were the people who were born in the new world but whose parents were either Spanish or Portugal descent. The African Slaves made up 11% of the population. Both the Mullattoes & the Free Blacks made up 8% of the population. The Mullattoes were people with at least one parent with African descent.  The Mestizos made up 7% of the population and they were the people descended from a white parent and a parent with Indian heritage. The Peninsulares made up 1% of the population and they were the people born in Spain or Portugal who migrated over to the new world.  In terms of the social pyramid, it was the Peninsulares on top then it went the Creoles, the Mestizos, the Mullattoes, the Indians, and on the bottom the African slaves. After looking over both the chart and the pyramid, we then analyzed Casta Art. The painting showed the different types of names for different relations between people. This just proves the importance of racial distinction in Latin American colonies because there was a different word for everyone.

This is the Casta Art we analyzed. 

The next thing we did in class was an activity called 3 Routes to Independence. The first step was to create a timeline. The class divided into smaller groups and each group did one of the three topics: Mexico, Gran Colombia, or Brazil. Since there was more groups then topics multiple groups did each topic. My group did Gran Colombia and we then had to read through a summary of the Gran Colombia revolution and create a timeline with key events including important people.

Here is my group’s timeline: 

• April 19, 1810- a junta expels the Spanish governor of the province of Venezula and takes controls
• July 1811- a National Assembly in Caracas formally declares Venezulas independence 
• July 1812- the Spanish recover a military initiative and regain control of the entire province 
• 1813- Simón Bolívar returns to Venezula and wins six successive engagements against Spanish forces 
• August 6, 1813- he enters Caracas and takes political control with doctoral power
• July 1814- Bolívar has once more lost Caracas; he goes to Bogotá and he succeeds in recapturing from the Spanish  
• End of 1817- he is back in Venezula and building up a new army in an inaccessible region on the Orinoco River
• 1819- Bolívar's small force of only 2500 men, uses cowhide boats to cross a succession of flooded tributaries of the Orinoco and a mounting crossing 
• August 7, 1819- the Spanish Army surrenders 
• August 10, 1819- Bolívar enters Bogotá
• December 17- the Republican de Colombia is proclaimed (covers modern day Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezula
• Venezuela; June 24, 1821- Bolívar wins a battle at Carabobo which brings him once again Caracas 
• Ecuador;May 24 1822- Antonio José Sucre wins a victory at Pichincha and brings the patriots into Quito
• Bolívar remains ruler until 1830, he resigns and wanted to retire in Europe but dies of tuberculosis 
• September- Ecuador and Venezuela formally form Gran Colombia

After creating our timeline and having it approved by our teacher we did a jigsaw activity. My group which did Gran Colombia had to get together with two other groups. One group had to have Mexico and the other group had to have Brazil, so that we could exchange timelines. Within our jigsaw groups, we had to come up with 2 similarities among all 3 revolutions and come up with 2 differences between all the 3 revolutions. For the two similarities, my group came up with that all of the revolutions had the same time period of events and that 1822 was the year all the countries gained their independence. For the first difference, my group came up with Brazil was a peaceful revolution and Gran Colombia and Mexico were both violent revolutions. The second difference my group came up with was that the three revolutions were in different places, there were different leaders, and they were fighting against different things. In the Brazil Revolution, at first Jose was killed because he did not have an elite status and then Pedro tried to make Portuguese people the only people with power. In the Mexico Revolution, Miguel called for the end of 300 years of racial equality. In the Gran Colombia Revolution, Bolivar’s main goal was to liberate New Granada from Spanish control. Even though the revolutions had three different routes to independence, race was an issue in all three.

Judgments are still being made based on race in today’s society and that is just wrong. One big example which brought up a big up rise was the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. An 18 year old black man was shot by a white Ferguson police officer on August 9, 2014. The officer that shot Brown was found not guilty. When Brown was shot he was unarmed and many believe that he was surrendering while the police officer shot him. This incident led to numerous amounts of protests and continued on for a while. Because of Brown’s skin color many believed that was why he was shot. This could be true or false, but either way race should not be something people should still base judgments, decisions, or anything else off of. Race is still an issue in our world today and it should not be.