Unitarianism in America: A History of its Origin and Development

by George Willis Cooke

In 1845 Miss Dix reported that in three years she had travelled ten thousand miles, visited eighteen state penitentiaries, three hundred jails and houses of correction, and five hundred almshouses and other institutions, secured the establishment or enlargement of six hospitals for the insane, several county poorhouses, and several jails on a reformed plan. She visited every state east of the Rocky Mountains, and also the British Provinces, to secure legislation in behalf of the insane. She secured the erection of hospitals or other reformatory action in Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. Her labors also secured the establishment of a hospital for the insane of the army and navy, near Washington. All this was the work of nine years.

In 1853 Miss Dix gave her attention to providing an adequate life-saving equipment for Sable Island, one of we most dangerous places to seamen on the Atlantic coast; and this became the means of saving many lives. In 1854 she went to England for needed rest; but almost at once she took up her humanitarian work, this time in Scotland, where she secured a commission of inquiry, which in 1857 resulted in reformatory legislation on the part of Parliament. In 1855 she visited the island of Jersey, and secured great improvements in the care of the insane. Later in that year she visited Switzerland for rest, but in a few weeks was studying the charities of Paris and then those of Italy. In Rome she had two interviews with the pope, and the erection of a new hospital for the insane on modern principles resulted. Speaking only English, and without letters of introduction, she visited the insane hospitals and the prisons of Greece, Turkey, Austria, Sclavonia, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Belgium. "Day by day she patiently explored the asylums, prisons, and poor-houses of every place in which she set her foot, glad to her heart's core when she found anything to commend and learn a lesson from, and patiently striving, where she struck the traces of ignorance, neglect, or wrong, to right the evil by direct appeal to the highest authorities."

On her return home, in September, 1856, she was met by many urgent appeals for help in enlarging hospitals and erecting new ones; and she devoted her time until the outbreak of the civil war in work for the insane in the southern and middle north-western states. As soon as the troops were ordered to Washington, she went there and offered her services as a nurse, and was at once appointed superintendent of women nurses for the whole army. She carried through the tasks of this office with energy and devotion. In 1866 she secured the erection of a monument to the fallen soldiers in the National Cemetery, at Hampton.

Then she returned at once to her work in asylums, poorhouses, and prisons, continuing this task until past her seventy-fifth year. "Her frequent visits to our institutions of the insane now, and her searching criticisms," wrote a leading alienist, "constitute of themselves a better lunacy commission than would be likely to be appointed in many of our states."[[17]] The last five years of her life were spent as a guest in the New Jersey State Asylum at Trenton, it being fit that one of the thirty-two hospitals she had been the means of erecting should afford her a home for her declining years.

Miss Dix was called by many "our Lady," "our Patron Saint"; and well she deserved these expressions of reverence. President Fillmore said in a letter to her, "Wealth and power never reared such monuments to selfish pride as you have reared to the love of mankind." She had the unreserved consecration to the needs of the poor and suffering that caused her to write: "If I am cold, they are cold; if I am weary, they are distressed; if I am alone, they are abandoned."[[18]] Her biographer justly compares her with the greatest of the saints, and says, "Precisely the same characteristics marked her, the same absolute religious consecration, the same heroic readiness to trample under foot the pains of illness, loneliness, and opposition, the same intellectual grasp of what a great reformatory work demanded."[[19]] Truly was it said of her that she was "the most useful and distinguished woman America has produced."[[20]]

Child-saving Missions.

As was justly said by Professor Francis G. Peabody, "the Boston Children's Mission was the direct fruit of the ministry of Dr. Tuckerman, and antedates all other conspicuous undertakings of the same nature. The first president of the Children's Mission, John E. Williams, a Unitarian layman, moved later to New York, and became the first treasurer of the newly created Children's Aid Society of that city, formed in 1853. Thus the work of the Children's Mission and the kindred service of the Warren Street Chapel, under the leadership of Charles Barnard, must be reckoned as the most immediate, if not the only American antecedent, of the great modern works of child-saving charity."[[21]]

The Children's Mission to the Children of the Destitute grew out of the work of the Howard Sunday-school, then connected with the Pitts Street Chapel. When several men connected with that school were discussing the fact that a great number of vagrant children were dealt with by the police, Fanny S. Merrill said to her father, Mr. George Merrill, "Father, can't we children do something to help those poor little ones?" This question suggested a new field of work; and a meeting was held on April 27, 1849, under the auspices of Rev. Robert C. Waterston, to consider this proposition. On May 9 the society was organized "to create a special mission to the poor, ignorant, neglected children of this city; to gather them into day and Sunday schools; to procure places and employment for them; and generally to adopt and pursue such measures as would be most likely to save or rescue them from vice, ignorance and degradation." In the beginning this mission was supported by the Unitarian Sunday-schools in Boston, but gradually the number of schools contributing to its maintenance was enlarged until it included nearly all of those connected with Unitarian churches in New England.

As soon as the mission was organized, Rev. Joseph E. Barry was made the missionary; and he opened a Sunday-school in Utica Street. Beginning in 1853, one or more women were employed to aid him in his work. In May, 1857, Rev. Edmund Squire began work as a missionary in Washington Village; but this mission was soon given into the hands of the Benevolent Fraternity. In June, 1858, Mr. B.H. Greene was engaged to visit the jail and lockup in aid of the young persons found there. In 1859 work was undertaken in East Boston, and also in South Boston. From this time onward from three to five persons were constantly employed as missionaries, in visiting throughout the city, persuading children to attend day-schools, sewing-schools, and Sunday-schools, securing employment for those old enough to labor, and in placing children in country homes. In April, 1857, Mr. Barry took a party of forty-eight children to Illinois; and five other parties followed to that state and to Michigan and Ohio. Since 1860 homes have been found in New England for all children sent outside the city.