Letter to Convicts - 3 pamphlets.
(Dix, D.L..) Letter to Convicts in the Western State Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, in Alleghany City. Fifth Thousand. [Boston]: Printed, but not published, 1848.
16mo.; printed wrappers.
Second edition; fifth thousand. Not in Sabin; listed in bibliography of Marshall’s 1937 biography of Dix.
Boxed together with:
(Dix, D.L.). Letter to Convicts in Twenty-Six State Prisons, and Ten Houses of Correction, or County Penitentiaries. Printed, but not published, July 1848.
16mo.; printed wrappers.
Second Edition; fifth thousand, August, 1848. Not in NUC; Sabin 20337 note.
Boxed together with:
(Dix, D.L.). Fifth Letter to Convicts in State Prisons and Houses of Correction, or County Penitentiaries. Printed but not published, November 1850 [Boston: 1848-50].
16mo.; printed wrappers.
First edition. Sabin 20337 note.
Three scarce pamphlets printed, not published—that is, distributed gratis—following Dix’s 1845 publication on prisons: Remarks on Prisons and Prison Discipline in the United States. Each is annotated in an unknown hand, “From Miss Dix, Trenton New Jersey 1851,” indicating that these pamphlets were given by Dix to Sarah Kimball.
During her travels inspecting facilities for the insane, Dix also visited alms houses and prisons, and these letters offering prayers for the prisoners’ devotional exercises were written in reply to prison inmates. They give testimony to her prodigious labors on behalf of all unfortunates. In 1845, she wrote: “I have traveled over more than ten thousand miles in the last three years. Have visited eighteen state penitentiaries, three hundred county jails and house of correction, more than five hundred almshouses and other institutions, besides hospitals and houses of refuge.” Between 1848 and 1948 Dix was memorializing the state and national legislatures in her quest for state hospitals for the mentally ill.
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