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Dorothea Dix- Biography Dorothea Dix was a woman who contributed much to the advancement of the women's rights movement. She is credited to such achievements as helping to reform prisons, hospitals for insane people, and was also the head of the women nurses during the civil war. Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on April 4, 1802 in Hampden, Maine. She grew up in a "non existent" family which was full of fighting and abuse. This was because …

…conditions in the hospitals and mental institutions. At the age of 80, she retired to a private apartment set aside for her at the New Jersey State Hospital, the first of the hospitals that she had planned from the ground up. As an invalid during the last six years of her life, she continued to write letters from her bed to support her crusade for the mentally ill. She remained there until her death on July 17, 1887.