In order to do all this work, she arose early and sat up late into the night. Naturally her health failed under such a strain. After six years she gave up her schools, and took a position as governess in a family living at Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Here she lived much in the open air, and her great desire for universal knowledge led her to make a special study of botany and marine life.
Her health failing again, she visited Philadelphia, and then went South as far as Alexandria, Virginia, writing short stories the while to support herself. The winter of 1830 she spent in the West Indies with the family of Dr. Channing. There she at last regained her health.
The following spring, Miss Dix returned to Boston, and reopened her school in the old Dix homestead. Pupils flocked to her, and for five years the work flourished. Her influence over her pupils was wonderful. They thought her very beautiful, as indeed she was. Mrs. Livermore writes of her: "Miss Dix was slight and delicate in appearance. She must have been beautiful in her youth and was still very sweet looking, with a soft voice, graceful figure and winning manners."
In 1836, ill health obliged her to close her school once more. This time she went to England. Though only thirty-four, she had saved enough money to enable her to live in comfort without labor. Shortly after, her grandmother died, leaving her enough to carry out the plans for helping others, which had become a part of her life. She then returned from England and made her home in Washington.
In 1841, however, we find her again in Boston and at this time her real life work began. It happened that a minister well known to Miss Dix had charge of a Sunday school in the East Cambridge jail. He needed a teacher to take charge of a class of twenty women, and asked Miss Dix if she could tell him of any suitable person.
Miss Dix thought the matter over and then said, "I will take the class myself!"
Her friends objected because of her frail health, but having once arrived at a decision, Dorothea Dix never changed her mind. As one of her pupils said, "Fixed as fate, we considered her!"
The following Sunday, after the session was over, she went into the jail and talked with many of the prisoners. It seemed that they had many righteous grievances, one being that no heat of any kind was provided for their cells.
When Miss Dix asked the keeper of the jail to heat the rooms, he replied that the prisoners did not need heat, and that besides, stoves would be unsafe. Though she begged him to do something to make the cells more comfortable, he refused. She then brought the case before the Court in East Cambridge. The Court granted her request and heat was furnished the prisoners.