Would You Go As Far As Nellie Bly?

Six-year-old Elizabeth Jane Cochran lost her father in 1870. He failed to leave a will which forced the auction of his estate. Not too long afterward, Elizabeth’s mother remarried as a way to support her children. Elizabeth’s abuse at the hand of her step-father is thought to be the springboard that led her to champion the cause of women’s rights.

As a lonely teenager, she changed the spelling of her name by adding an “e” on the end – supposedly to sound more sophisticated. Her break into journalism came in the form of a rebuttal she sent to the Pittsburgh Dispatch newspaper regarding a sexist column in their newspaper. She went by the name, Lonely Orphan Girl. The paper loved her straightforward writing style and hired her to work for them.

Since most women of the day chose pen names when they wrote, Elizabeth’s editor, George Madden, chose the name, Nellie Bly, taken from the song written by Stephen Foster. Thus began Nellie’s investigative undercover work. After she posed as a sweat shop worker and exposed the deplorable conditions inside, she was reduced to being a fashion reporter.

At that point, she left the paper and headed for New York where she was hired as reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.One of her most noted undercover reports came when she feigned insanity in order to expose shocking conditions at a women’s lunatic asylum on Blackwell Island. Her resulting book, Ten Days in a Madhouse, prompted a grand jury to look into conditions at the asylum.

“In spite of the knowledge of my sanity and the assurance that I would be released in a few days, my heart gave a sharp twinge. Pronounced insane by four expert doctors and shut up behind the unmerciful bolts and bars of a madhouse! Not to be confined alone, but to be a companion, day and night, of senseless, chattering lunatics; to sleep with them, to eat with them, to be considered one of them, was an uncomfortable position. Timidly we followed the nurse up the long uncarpeted hall to a room filled by so-called crazy women. We were told to sit down, and some of the patients kindly made room for us.”

Quoted from: Ten Days in a Madhouse. See the complete book at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bly/madhouse/madhouse.html