Dorothea Lynde Dix Short Biography

803 Words4 Pages
Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887) Margaret Sanger (1879-1966)      Born April 4, 1802, Hampden, District of Maine, Mass. [now in Maine], U.S. Died July 17, 1887, Trenton, N.J. American educator Social reformer Humanitarian whose devotion to the welfare of the mentally ill led to widespread reforms in the United States and abroad. (Dorothea Lynde Dix. 2014)      Dorothea left home at age 12, she went to Boston to study with her grandmother. At 14 years of age she was teaching at a girls school in Worcester, MA. She opened her own school for girls in Boston, MA in 1821. In 1826 Dorothea developed health problems that were reoccurring. It was later discovered that she had tuberculosis. While in England recovering…show more content…
and Canada establish hospitals for the mentally ill. In 1845 Dix published Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline in the United States . (Dorothea Lynde Dix. 2014). Dorothea died in 1887 in a hospital she founded.        Born September 14, 1879 in Corning, New York. Died September 7, 1966 in Tucson, Arizona. American birth control activist Sex educator Nurse Popularized the term birth control Opened the first birth control clinic in the United States Established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (Prentice Hall, 1994)      Margaret was the 6th of 11 children. Her mother endured 18 pregnancies before she died of tuberculosis at the age of 49. (Plant, R. 2010) Because of her mother’s death and her father’s inability to support a large family Margaret associated large families with ill-health and poverty, and small families with prosperity and progress. Margaret first became a teacher, but that did not suit her. In 1902 she completed her training and became a nurse. By age 23 she was married and within months she was repeating her mother’s history. She was pregnant and had tuberculosis. She almost died with the birth of her first baby. After the birth of two more children and a fire that destroyed their house, Margaret and her husband moved back to New York. There she began working as a visiting nurse among the poor of the Lower East Side. (Plant, R.…show more content…
 This stirred up a lot of controversy because she often justified birth control on the grounds that it would prevent the “unfit” from reproducing.   In 1921, she founded the American Birth Control League which was later renamed the Planned Parenthood Federation. In 1923 she opened the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in New York. This was the first doctor-run birth control clinic in the United States. In 1953, she persuaded her wealthy friend, Katherine Dexter McCormick, to fund the hormonal research of biologist Gregory Pincus. (Plant, R. 2010)  The plan proved successful, and in 1960, the U.S. Federal Drug Administration approved Enovid for use as a contraceptive. (Plant, R. 2010)   American Women's History: An A to Z of People, Organizations, Issues, and Events, (Prentice Hall, 1994), 305-308. Dorothea Lynde Dix. (2014). In Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/166801/DorotheaLynde-Dix Sanger, Margaret. In A. O'Reilly (Ed.), Encyclopedia of motherhood. (pp. 1099-1101). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/10.4135/978141297927

More about Dorothea Lynde Dix Short Biography

Open Document