In the early 1800's, disease began sweeping the nation. People feared that they, their family members, or their friends may become ill. At the time, if there was anyone that they knew that was sick or behaving in an unusual manner, they would put them in a prisons. People thought that if you were mentally unstable at the time, you were possessed or sick and could not be helped. By the 1820's, life in prisons and jails were harsh and unsanitary. Many of these places were filthy and overcrowded. The patients there were not well fed or treated with proper care. It was not until the early 1840's that someone pointed out the conditions and fought for the patients in theses institutions. Dorothea Dix was known to be the "voice for the mad." Before leading the Asylum Movement, Dix spent her teenage years with her grandmother in Worchester, Massachusetts, where she was encouraged to learn and have an interest in …show more content…
Many people were not aware of the conditions in these institutions and she described that the people "confined in this Commonwealth in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, beaten with rods, lashed into obedience." Many were surprised, and they believed that to become or to stay a humane society, they must show sympathy to the prisoners. Continuing to push toward better life for the prisoners and insane, she proposed that the mentally ill should not be punished because they do not know their right and wrong and that prisoners should only be punished if they did wrong and the punishment would be fair. Dix also wanted to abolish the death penalty, which slowly became somewhat of a success starting with Michigan as the first state to get rid of capital punishment in 1847, along with multiple states following. Also, she wanted to expand the hospitals even more for the mentally unstable and wanted money for land to make more hospitals, but it did not happen because it was too