Good Morning Steemians.
Time for a history lesson.
Nellie Bly
Meet Nelly Bly which was her pen name, other wise known as Elizabeth Cochran Seaman. Elizabeth was born on May 5th 1864, daughter of Michael Cochrane and Mary Jane Kennedy in Pennsylvania USA.
Elizabeth's father died around 1870-1871 and the family moved to Pittsburgh. It was moving there that Nellie realised what she was destined to do.
Newspaper column.
One day Elizabeth read a column in a newspaper called The Pittsburgh Dispatch called "What girls are good for." This prompted her to write to the editor of the newspaper, and entitled it under the name lonely orphan girl. While I cannot find out for certain I believe this may be due to women's rights in these days.
The editor of the paper was so impressed with the letter that he put an advertisement in the newspaper asking for the author of the letter to come forward and identify themselves.
Elizabeth decided to come forward and identify herself to the newspaper, she was offered to write a piece for the newspaper; so she came up with the article entitled The girl puzzle, again under the name of lonely orphan girl. The article was a success, the paper was impressed and Elizabeth was offered a full time job writing for the Newspaper. Pen names were common in those days, and the editor chose the name Nelly Bly after a song by Stephen Forster.
Nellie was one of the first female reporters to go undercover, she would work for factories where women worked to expose working conditions. But being a female her article was pushed to the women's section of the paper, Nellie did not truly feel that her articles were getting the credit they deserved.
She left the paper and went to Mexico and started to work for a Mexican paper as a foreign correspondant, but it was a short time after writing for them that she made an article protesting about the imprisonment of a local journalist. The mexican authorities did not like the published article, and she was forced to leave the country or she would be arrested.
Back in America.
Back working at the *Pittsburgh Dispatch she was tired of theatre and arts writing, Nellie chose to leave and head for New York in 1887 to pursue her career. Nellie was in New York for four months, unable to get work and without any money she walked into the offices of The New York World paper and took up an undercover assignment, not knowing then that the assignment that she would do would later change the course of mental health care in America.
The assignment
Blackwell Island Asylum
Nellie was to investigate allegations of brutality and torture in a women's asylum on Blackwells Island This was the first lunatic asylum in New York City and the first munciple mental hospital in America.
Metropolitan hospital this is no longer standing.
The asylum was built of of different buildings and at some point also a prison was there also. New York in the 1800's was the largest urban area and the largest number of people declared insane , due to immigration and industrialisation.
The night before Nelly was to start her article, she practiced in a mirror to try and show that she was naturally insane. Nellie then checked herself into a boarding house ready to start her report. Whilst at the boarding house she told the boarders that she was afraid of them and that they looked crazy.
It was then the police were summoned, Nellie she was put before the court; and told the court that she had amnesia and could not recall what had happened. Due to the behaviour the court insisted she be examined by doctors.
Nellie's plan worked and the doctors declared her mentally insane and committed her to the Asylum, making such comments as "I consider it a hopeless case."
The story of Nellie's examination had also made stories in The New York Sun and * The New York Times.*
Inside the Asylum.
Nellie spent the next ten days in the Asylum, she had reported the most horrific conditions. The food was a gruel broth, and the patients were fed on dried bread dough that had not been cooked. The water was dirty and undrinkable, patients were bathed by being tied up and having freezing buckets of cold water thrown over them.
The Nurses mocked and taunted patients, telling them to shut up and if they didn't they would beat the patients up. The most dangerous patients were tied up together with ropes.
Patients were made to sit all day on hard benches and very little protection from the elements and cold weather.
Nellie wrote about one of her experiences indicating that the treatment was infact to make one insane and not that they were already insane maybe.
She wrote.
What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment? Here is a class of women sent to be cured. I would like the expert physicians who are condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.
She commented.
"My teeth chattered and my limbs were goose-fleshed and blue with cold. Suddenly I got, one after the other, three buckets of water over my head—ice- cold water, too—into my eyes, my ears, my nose and my mouth."
After ten days in the Asylum Nellie was released and submitted her report which later became a book called Ten days in a Mad House.
The report prompted an investigation by the authorities who saw the shocking revelations for themselves, the grand jury recommended the changes that Nellie had suggested in the report and an extra $1 000 000 was invested into the future care of mentally ill patients.
The asylum closed in 1894 and was taken over by the metropolitan hospital it is now demolished.
Fact
American Horror Story Asylum
The story of Nellie Bly was loosely featured on the tv series American Horror Story Season 2. Where a character called Lana Winters played by Sarah Paulson a journalist manages to commit herself to an Asylum so that she can write a story about the conditions of the patients that were living in bad conditions.
Around the world in 80 days.
Nellie pictured on her assignment of her world trip.
Based on the novel written by Jules Verne. Nelly took up another assignment on November 14th 1889 to see if she could actually travel around the world in the same time that the book suggested.
At the same time Cosmopolitan newspaper sponsored their own journalist called Elizabeth Bisland to the same adventure to see if it could indeed be done.
Nelly travelled around Europe where she actually met Jules Verne, she then went on to Asia visiting countries such a Singapore and Japan.
The development of communication cross transatlantic meant that Nellie could write short reports and send them back to the newspaper in New York . But in some places this was not possible, which meant that Nellie had to use handwritten post; and some of her updates were several weeks delayed. As air travel was not yet invented Nelly had to travel by ship and rail most of the time.
She arrived back in San Francisco on Jan 21, two days behind schedule due to a rough weather crossing. However a private charter train was paid for, and Nellie arrived back in New Jersey January 25th 1890 at 3.51pm.
24899 miles Nellie had solely circumnavigated the globe and had beaten Elizabeth Bisland, who arrived four and a half days later. The total time for Nellie was 72 days and a world record was created. Sadly though this was only short term and her record was beaten by George Francis Train who did it in 67 days.
Later years.
Nellie later married a millionaire called Robert Seaman, there was 42 years between them Nellie was 31 and Seaman was 73. Nellie retired from journalism to care for her husband.
She was made the head of his business dealing with iron manufacturing and after the death of her husband in 1904 Nellie went on to create a patent for a Milk Can and stackable garbage cans.
Due to embezzlement, the company went bankrupt and Nellie picked up her journalism Career writing about World War 1 and suffragettes.
Death
Nellie died aged just 57 years old of pneumonia at St Mark's Hospitals in New York in 1922. She is buried at Woodlawn Cemetary The Bronx New York.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing and researching it.
Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly
Asylum Projects
http://www.asylumprojects.org/index.php?title=Blackwell%27s_Island_Asylum
Photo's provided by Wikipedia and Imdb.
