Nellie Bly (1864-1922)

by Shizhao

Nellie Bly revolutionized the place of the woman in journalism, permanently altering America’s perceptions of female writers. As a child, Bly (born Elizabeth Jane Cochran) experienced a number of traumatic events, including the death of her father and the abusive behavior of her drunken stepfather. She attended school only briefly before dropping out because her family was unable to afford the tuition. At the age of 16, she relocated to Pittsburgh with her mother. After reading a particularly misogynistic column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch, Bly decided to write a response, which she sent to the editor. Impressed by her eloquence and style, the editor offered her a job at the paper. As most women wrote under pseudonyms at the time, He gave her the pen name Nellie Bly, taken from a popular Stephen Foster song. Her first articles with the Pittsburgh Dispatch focused on the horrible conditions of the factories in which local women labored. Unfortunately, male influence bullied her into writing about fashion, gardening, and other typical “womanly” subjects. In open rebellion, she traveled to Mexico and became a foreign correspondent. After six months, she returned home under threat of arrest by the Mexican government, led by the dictator Porfirio Díaz, whom she heavily criticized. In 1887, Bly relocated to New York and received an assignment from New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer. The undercover job, which catapulted Bly to fame, required her to fake insanity in order to report on supposed brutality taking place at the nearby Women’s Lunatic Asylum, located on Blackwell’s Island. She checked into a boardinghouse, refused to go to sleep, caused a ruckus, and landed herself in court. Several doctors testified to her insanity, including the head of Bellevue Hospital’s insane pavilion. The court case was featured in several newspapers. Once in the asylum, she noted the nearly inedible food, a lack of clean water, and human waste collected on the floor. There was no protection from the cold, rats abounded, and the nurses often beat patients when they acted out. After her release and the publication of Ten Day s in a Mad-House, Bly assisted a grand jury investigation of the facility, which underwent significant reforms. The year after her stunt in the asylum, Bly embarked on a recreation of Phileas Fogg’s journey in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. In order to promote the trip, New York World held a guessing contest in which readers could estimate her arrival back in New York for a free European vacation. She used steamboats and railroads to travel through Europe and Asia. Her arrival in San Francisco from Japan was delayed, but a chartered train brought her back to New York after only 72 days. She described her travels in Around the World in Seventy-Two Days and New York World later released a board game based on her adventure. Nellie Bly earned significant respect for women journalists in the United States, demonstrating their incredible capabilities.