She Was An Investigative Journalist Who Went Undercover As A Patient In A New York City Asylum To Show Everyone How Deplorable The Conditions Were
Do you know the story of Nellie Bly, one of the most fascinating American women journalists?
Her story was one that inspired a popular character in the second season of American Horror Story, as she was an investigative journalist who revealed the horrors that took place inside one of New York’s most famous insane asylums.
Nellie was born in Cochran’s Mills, Pennsylvania, in 1864. At the time, her full name was Elizabeth Jane Cochran.
Her father owned a successful mill but passed away when she was very young. Since her father passed away suddenly and without a will, Nellie and her family were forced to leave the mill and start over.
When she was 15, Nellie enrolled in the State Normal School in Indiana, Pennsylvania, where she stayed for only one term. Then, she left school because her family was struggling financially, so they moved once again and settled in Pittsburgh.
Nellie knew she needed to find work to help support her family. The Pittsburgh Dispatch published an article about how women don’t belong in the workforce, which made her very angry, so she penned a spirited letter to the editor, who was so impressed by her writing that he invited her to write for the paper.
She began working as a reporter and columnist for The Pittsburgh Dispatch and started using the name Nellie Bly, inspired by a well-known song.
However, Nellie didn’t stay with The Pittsburgh Dispatch for long, as she was dissatisfied with the limiting pieces she was assigned and eventually quit.
Nellie searched for a paper that would take her more seriously as a reporter and writer, so she moved to New York City in the late 1880s.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Reproduction Number:LC-USZ62-75620 – pictured above is Nellie
She faced a lot of rejection from many publications until she went into the offices of the newspaper New York World, which was being run by Joseph Pulitzer.
She told Joseph she wanted to write a story about immigration, but he denied that and gave her an assignment that would change her life.
He wanted Nellie to write a piece about Blackwell’s Island, one of the most notorious insane asylums in New York.
In order to get an in-depth story, Nellie pretended to suffer from a severe mental illness so she would be admitted into the hospital in 1887.
For ten days, 23-year-old Nellie witnessed and suffered some of the same abuses and terrible conditions the asylum patients had to deal with daily.
She took into account all of her experiences so that by the time she was released, she could write her series of articles under the title “Ten Days in the Madhouse” for New York World.
Nellie’s dedication to her story on the asylum gained her tremendous recognition, and it didn’t take long for her to become one of the most famous journalists in the country.
Her exposé shed light on the mistreatment of asylum patients and led the city to put more funding into its mental health institutions.
Afterward, Nellie took on and came up with more incredible assignments. She wrote many investigative stories that shed light on corruption.
In 1888, she convinced her editor at New York World to let her write a travel piece in which she wanted to take a trip around the world to see if she could go around the world in 80 days, just like the title of Jules Verne’s popular 1873 fiction novel.
Nellie documented her journey and had readers guessing how long it would take her. New York World published daily updates on her journey, and she completed her worldwide trip in just 72 days.
After her trip, she continued writing a few journalism pieces and took time to write a series of novels. In 1895, she married millionaire manufacturer Robert Seaman when she was 31, and he was in his 70s. When Robert died, Nellie was left in charge of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company and American Steel Barrel Company.
Nellie ended up thriving with the companies for a while. She was an inventor and patented a few products before becoming one of the leading female industrialists in the United States before the businesses eventually went bankrupt.
She returned to reporting in the early 1910s and covered major events like the women’s suffrage movement and World War One. Sadly, Nellie passed away from pneumonia in New York City in 1922 when she was only 57-years-old.
Although Nellie passed away at an earlier age, she accomplished more than some people do in an entire lifetime and is an inspiration to journalists, writers, and activists to this day.
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