son, 40). She found a vacant store, furnished it, and turned it into a school for children (Thinkquest, 5). At the age of seventeen, her grandmother sent her a correspondence, and requested her to come back to Boston with her brother (Thinkquest, 6).When she returned to Boston, she asked her grandmother if she could start another school in her grandmothers dining room. After a bit of opposition, her grandmother agreed (Comptons, 1). There, she taught until 1835, when illness from Tuberculosis and exhaustion set in. After she was ill, she closed the school (Comptons, 2). She then traveled to Europe to recuperate, under the advice of friends and family (Thinkquest, 7). After returning to Boston, months later, she found herself with a very large inheritance that would allow her to love comfortably for the rest of her life (Readers Companion to American History, 1).After realizing that she was not the type to sit back and do nothing, she accepted an invitation to teach at a Sunday school at the East Cambridge Jail in East Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1941 (www.mfh.org,1). Thats when her quest began. She was shocked when she saw that mentally ill patients were being put into the jails, and even more appalled at the conditions they were put in. She first appealed to the local courts. Although the charges were denied, the conditions were mildly improved (www.mfh.org, 2). Not satisfied with the outcome of the local courts, she traveled the state of Massachusetts for two years, documenting the conditions she found (McHenry, 1). She, with the help of a member of the Massachusetts State Legislature, Samual Gridley Howe, presented her reports from her visits to the jails, work houses, and hospitals in January of 1843 (Thinkquest, 10). Her reports consisted of stories such as this, the telling of a Salem Countys poor house keeper of his encounter with a patient on day:I knew I must master him now or never: I caught a stick of wood... a...
