Who called attention to the shocking conditions in asylums during the mid-nineteenth century?

Dorothea Dix

Dorothea Dix was an educator, writer, and social reformer. By 1836, Dix changed her focus to the condition of asylums.

Dix began with the conditions of prisons. She was introduced to prisons by educating prisoners. She recorded the conditions and eventually reported what she saw to the government. She brought attention to the issue of keeping criminals next to mentally ill inmates. She advocated for separate facilities for the mentally ill and to clean up the prisons. The government began to provide funding for new facilities to be built.