The Write Stuff

And though she didn't care much for the floral tie, her new admirer war His movie star good looks and hair she later described as the color of Scotch and water intrigued her, but still she politely declined his offer to dance. It had been a trying day. The Fox had spent the better part of it trying to get an interview with former Vice President Spiro Agnew, unsuccessful. She just wanted to unwind with a drinker too. In November of nineteen seventy four, journalism was still mostly a man's job,

but she was determined to succeed. Divorced and in her mid forties, English born Fox had recently accepted a one month trial with an American newspaper. They paid for all her expenses and flew her to Atlanta alone and board. She left the bar and headed to the Atlanta Constitution office, hoping to entice fellow journalists to show her around town. No one offered. Fox returned to the hotel bar to

find the handsome man still there. He introduced himself as Darrell Golden and asked if she had changed her mind about that dance. This time she accepted. They hit it off and sat and talked for a while. He told her that he had traveled quite a bit and planned to drive to Miami the next day. She told him she was also traveling and leaving for West Palm Beach in the morning. Golden suggested they share a ride. The Fox choked that he could be a serial killer for

all she knew. The two laughed, then she finally accepted. They spent the night together, and Golden told her he wouldn't move long. His lawyer had secret tapes in a vault and some one was bound to kill him. He suggested that Fox write a book about him, and despite this odd behavior in her misgivings, she spent the next two days traveling with Golden once they arrived in West Palm. Though Fox bid him farewell, Golden pleaded for one more night,

she declined. The following day, she learned that Golden had picked up the wife of a fellow journalist and attempted to rape her before she got away. As it turned out, Darrell Golden was actually Paul Knowles, the infamous Casanova killer. He'd escaped from prison and had killed women in multiple states. Later, he had admit to killing thirty five women, though authorities only tied him to eighteen. One month later, Knowles died

while attempting to escape. Fox returned to London with not only a story to tell, but the realization that she agreed with her former travel companion on one thing. She would indeed write a book about him. Fox hadn't intentionally placed herself in danger, but she wasn't the only female journalist who would do anything for a story. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. Welcome to American Shadows. One day in eighteen eighty five, the headline for the Pittsburgh Dispatch read what Girls Are

Good for? Erasmus Wilson, the father of five girls and the papers most popular columnist, penned the story under the pseudonym Quiet Observer. In the article, Wilson stated that a woman's worth was housework and bearing children. He also said that working women were monstrosities, perhaps naturally women readers didn't take to Wilson's opinion. One angry woman anonymously wrote a lengthy rebuttal, pointing out that women equally intelligent were not

given the same opportunities as men in the workplace. They did their jobs as well as their male counterparts for half the pay. The reader eloquently pointed out that a woman's shortcomings were the men who held them back. Not one to complain without a solution, the author made several keen suggestions to enrich the lives of women and the state of society. The letter caught the attention of George Madden,

the papers editor. He published a notice asking for the anonymous author to step forward, and when Elizabeth Jane Cochrane walked into his office, he offered her a job as a reporter, and so began her wild career. Elizabeth was no stranger to hard work and pushing to get ahead. She had fourteen siblings. Her father, Michael, had ten children with his first wife, But when she passed away. He went Mary Jane Kennedy, also a widow. Kennedy Cochrane had

five children together. Elizabeth was born on May fifth of eighteen sixty four and became her father's thirteen daughter. Superstition about the numbers seemed to do little except to make her more ambitious. Michael Cochrane died when Elizabeth was six years old. Although he had been the successful judge and prosperous landowner, his untimely death presented a serious financial hardship for his second family. Some sources say his second family had very little to live on by the time the

estate was divided among all his children. Others say Michael died without a will, leaving Mary without access or claim to his estate. Either way, the family struggled to make ends meet and became destitute. Early on, Elizabeth realized that survival meant earning a decent wage. Given the limited choices presented to women, it was a monumental task, but Elizabeth was smart and very determined. At fifteen, she enrolled in a small school to become a teacher, but dropped out

when she could no longer afford classes. Instead, the mother and daughter moved to Pittsburgh to run a boarding house. She was just eighteen when she penned her controversial response to Wilson's article, and after accepting the job as a reporter, Elizabeth got straight to work. The editor wanted her to have a catchy pseudonym, and her fellow journalists tossed around a few suggestions, but one of them suggested Nellie Bly,

and it stuck. Pittsburgh songwriter Stephen Foster had made the name famous in his song Nellie Bly, though he spelled Nellie with a y instead of an I e. The lyrics portrayed a young woman with fortitude and grit, traits Elizabeth possessed, and with that, Elizabeth Cochrane became Nellie Bly. A reporter for the Pittsburgh Dispatch. Her new career gave her the freedom to shine a light on a subject She was passionate about women's issues. While she wrote about

all injustices, she primarily focused on working when men. Her new career seemed nearly perfect, including the salary of five dollars a week, at least for a while. Bli's articles were highly controversial in the Victorian era. In her first article, titled The Girl Puzzle, she argued that women needed better opportunities, especially impoverished women. Even more radical, Blin made a case for some women to remain single. She titled her second

article Mad Marriages, which called for divorce law reform. Blin didn't stop there. To get to the heart of another story. She went undercover working in a factory. Women at sweatshops worked for pitiful wages. They endured unsafe working conditions and unreasonably long hours to earn more money. Bli thought wealthy business men taking advantage of women made for a great story.

The factory owners didn't agree. They had money and power, and immediing le pressured George Madden to stop printing the stories. Fearing repercussions from the city's elite and powerful, Madden reassigned Bli to the Societal pages to cover more woman appropriate topics like gardening, social events, and fashion. The reassignment didn't sit well with Bli. She proposed that the paper center to Mexico to write an article about life under Dictator

por Furio Diaz. Unfortunately, the assignment was cut short and Bli returned home, where Madden promptly assigned her to the Societal pages again. Bli wanted more out of her career and quit. She wrote a note to Erasmus Wilson, addressing him by his pen name dear q O. She wrote, I'm off for New York. Look out for me, signed BLI. For six months, she applied to one newspaper after another.

No one wanted to hire a woman journalist. Finally, she landed an interview with John Cockrill, the managing editor for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. The paper had a long standing reputation for provocative and sensationalist stories and captivating headlines. Cockerell wanted someone who could deeply investigate tough topics and write powerful stories. Bli assured Pulitzer and Cockerell that she

could get the job done. The men said that she'd need something wild and over the top to secure the position. In fact, they had just the assignment go undercover at the Blackwell Island Insane Asylum. For years, rumors had swirled around the conditions inside Blackwell. There were whispers of cruelty and neglect. The job wouldn't be for the faint of heart, they warned. Did she have enough courage to endure a stay at Blackwell? And could she manage to fool doctors

and staff into believing she was insane. Bli replied that she most definitely did and could. Cockerell cautioned her to not write sensationalism for headline's sake. She must tell the truth, good or bad. Again. Lie agreed. She assured them that getting in would be easy. All she needed to do was looking act like she had lost her mind, and the real question was how her editors would get her out. Cockerell shrugged and replied he had no idea. Bli took the job. Her editors left it up to her to

figure out how to get inside Blackwell. She decided on the persona of Nellie Brown. The initials matched her own for simplicity's sake. For a while, she considered asking friends for help, but that would have required them to act and pretend to be poor and Blackwell when we took in those without money, she decided the best plan was to leave them out of it. She found tattered second hand clothes to wear and rehearsed dazed expressions in front

of a mirror. She practiced acting strangely and stayed up most of the night telling herself ghost stories fully In her new role, Bli rented a room at a boarding house. She shouted about murder and mayhem and accute as her fellow borders of being insane. That first night, one of the boarders had a nightmare about her. The next day, the rest of the tenants became so terrified of her that they called the police. Bli later wrote that her

performance was the greatest of her life. The police took her to court to stand in front of a judge. Bli continued to play her role. The judge didn't take long to send her to Bellevue for an evaluation. Now, all Bligh had to do was fool the doctors. As the doctors poked, prodded, and questioned her, Bli stared blankly, and she told them she had no idea how she got to New York. After the doctors determined that she was not drugged, they declared her insane. Bli listened as

the doctors examined another woman till he Maynard. No matter how many times Maynard asked for a test to prove her sanity, the staff refused and locked her away for being difficult. Another mean, an immigrant from Germany, pleaded with the doctor in her native language. Unable to understand her, he declared her anxiety in pleading word signs of insanity

and ordered her committed. Bli was stunned. Without any translator or family, this woman and those like her would most likely live out the rest of their lives at Blackwell. Bli quickly dropped the insanity act, and, as it turned out, being committed had little if anything to do with mental illness. She and the others were ushered onto a ferry and

taken to Blackwell. The hundred and twenty acre island stretches along the East River, running alongside Manhattan from fifty first Street to eight Blackwell A later renamed Roosevelt Island, had one more name, Welfare Island. The island contained more than the asylum. It included prisons, hospitals, and charity housing for the needy and disabled. I'll told eleven institutions existed on

the island In eighteen seventy two. The asylum, which had been expanded to accommodate around a thousand patients, now housed one thousand, six hundred. Just sixteen doctors were assigned to care for all of them. Bli gathered her courage and allowed the staff to take her inside. She made friends with fellow inmates and asked for their stories. She found many were not clinically insane at all. Immigrant women who couldn't speak English had been declared incompetent. Indigent women without

husbands or family had also been committed. Given their treatment, Bli had no doubt that anyone who arrived saying wouldn't remain that way long. Patients suffered immense cruelty from the doctors and staff. The staff forced Blith and the others to sit motionless, without speaking, on benches for up to twelve hours. Anyone who dared complain or resist was beaten or threatened, sometimes with sexual violence. They were harnessed together like livestock and made the pull carts. Meals consisted of

moldy bread and other rotting food. The staff didn't provide utensils, forcing the women to tear apart their food by hand. Each patient was doused with buckets of cold water instead of showering. At night, she and the others slept with pillows stuffed with straw and blankets too thin to keep them warm. In the dark, a woman sobbed and pleaded with God to let her die over several days, Bly witnessed more abuse. Tillie Maynard suffered a seizure. Instead of

offering help, the nurses cursed her. One told the others that have falled to the floor might teach Maynard a lesson. Nurses threw another woman into a closet for muttering to herself. The staff slapped and punched the patients. Nurses nearly choked one woman to death. The patients were tied up with bed sheets and dunked in frigid water. Beatings with broomsticks

were common. Doses of morphine and coral hydrate were administered liberally and created addictions in some patients, and doctors continued to examine and questioned Bly. The more she declared herself, saying, the more they doubt at her. After ten excruciating days, her editor sent a lawyer to secure her release. Freedom was bitter sweet. Although she was glad to put the experience and blackwell behind her, Bly felt determined to help

those she had left behind. In October seven, the first installment of her story, titled Behind Asylum, Bars hit the streets and Bly became an instant media sensation. Authorities immediately launched an investigation doctors and nurses scrambled to cover up the allegations. Patients who had been committed were released or

transferred to prevent them from speaking to investigators. The investigators pursued the charges for months, and no one was happier to be summoned before a grand jury than Nellie bly. Despite the asylum's attempted to cover up, the jury believed her account. Blive and New York Assistant District Attorney Vernon Davis worked to bring about reform in mental institutions. A bill was passed allowing additional funding. Regulations monitoring staff and

patient care followed. After it was over, Nellie Bligh returned home. She slept easier knowing that she had not only helped those she left behind a Blackwell, but also other patients in mental hospitals throughout the state. After her Blackwell Asylum expos a, Bligh's career took off, it should proven that women were equally capable of investigative reporting as their male counterparts. Two years later, she made the news again. She asked her editor at The World News to send her around

the world, though not as an investigator. Bli suggested a publicity stunt readers would love, she would travel around the globe and try to match Jules Verne's fictional voyage around the world in eighty days. Paper sales soared as readers kept track of Blige's whereabouts. The paper hosted a contest with the prize of a European trip for anyone who could guess Blig's return date. While in France, Bli stopped to meet Jules Verne briefly. The clock was ticking, after all.

She arrived back in New York seventy two days later, beating the fictional record. Bli had become a household name and one of the most well known journalists in America. Although the paper sold more copies than ever, her editor refused to give her a raise or a bonus. She left and went on tour as a lecturer and novelist, recounting her trip around the world. Employment came knocking once more when a publisher contracted her to write fiction for three years, earning her far more than she ever had

at the paper. When new editors took over the World News in three they convinced Bli to return, but by the age of thirty, she retired from reporting and married Robert Livingston. Seaman, the millionaire owner of the iron Clad Manufacturing Company. She co ran her husband's company, even designing a milk can and patenting the first fifty five gallons steel drum. Robert died in nineteen o four, leaving Bli to run the company alone. She added employees with healthcare, libraries,

and even a gym. The company failed, though a factory manager's embezzlement helped bankrupt it. Bli returned to writing covering women's rights for the New York Evening Journal. She accurately predicted that women wouldn't get the right to vote until

nineteen twenty. Her number of firsts weren't complete, though. Bli became the world's first woman to cover the front lines as a foreign correspondent during World War One, where she was briefly arrested when authorities mistook her for a British spy. She continued writing about the war after returning to New York. In nine two, Bli became ill with pneumonia. She died at St. Mark's Hospital at age fifty seven and was

buried at a simple grave at Wood Lawn. In nineteen seventy eight, the New York Press Club purchased a proper headstone for her grave site, and in nine Bli was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Four years later, she and other women journalists were honored on American post stamps. Even then, Nellie Bligh wasn't done. A monument was erected

in consisting of multiple pieces sprawling along a walkway. The faces of four women, each rendered seven feet tall and bronze interspersed with large mirrored spheres, then invite the viewer to see the statues and themselves and the reflections, all leading to a bronze statue of Blith's face observing all. Designed by artist Amanda Matthews, the memorial honors Blig's courageous life and outstanding journalism, along with other women who have

helped reshape the world. The monument, named the Girl Puzzle after Bligh's first article, stands in Lighthouse Park on Roosevelt Island. The location isn't far from where she went undercover at Blackwell Asylum. The asylum itself, along with many other original buildings, fell into disrepair. An octagon shaped tower is all that's left. I've been there. It's a quieting place, once a house of horror. Blackwell now stands in ruins and in the

shadow of the bronze monument. There's more to this story. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. On February eighth, nine seven, Evelyn Nesbitt took to the witness stand, heart pounding. All eyes were on her. Yet it wasn't the black curls framing her flawless complexion that caught their attention. It wasn't her famous beauty or status is a well known model that had everyone's focus.

It was her testimony. She recounted the events as that unfolded with Stanford White, new York's top architect, and while he was well known for designing homes for the city's wealthy elite, he harbored a dark secret. Evelyn told the court how Stanford had insisted she'd drink the champagne he had handed her, despite telling him that it tasted terrible. Everything went black. Shortly afterward, she awoke naked in a

room full of mirrors and realized what had happened. The memory caused her to tremble and collapse on the stand. I can't, I can't go on, she sobbed. The court waited anyway, Evelyn bravely pushed on with the events. When she realized Stanford had raped her, Evelyn screamed. Stanford told her it was over now and that she should be quiet. He threw her a kimono to put on and left the room for a while. She screamed harder than before.

Evelyn raised her eyes to look at the courtroom and primarily filled with men, except for the small table in the corner where four women sat in n seven women weren't permitted in a courtroom unless they were relatives or witnesses. The women, Dorothy Dix, Winnifred Black, Nicola Greeley Smith, and Ada Patterson, weren't either of those. They were journalists sent to cover what some called the trial of the century.

Yet Stanford wasn't on trial for sexual salt. Evelyn had been called to testify in the murder trial being conducted against her husband, Harry Thaw, a feigned heir to a railroad fortune. Evelyn worked as a professional model, posing for everything from the Gibson Girl Drawings to several top magazines. She served as an inspiration for Anne of Green Gables. Her beauty meant that she had plenty of suitors, including Stanford White. She was sixteen when they met and he

was forty eight. Though Stanford was married, he groomed Evelyn and her mother for what was to come. He bought them expensive gifts and paid for their apartment. Stanford had a long history of grooming young girls for sex. He and other members of the Union Club participated in orgies and other sexual escapades. Reportedly, the ultra rich new of Stanford's affinity for underaged girls, and that depravity made the story much more interesting to the public. Even after the assault,

Stanford pursued Evelyn with the help of her mother. Feeling helpless, Evelyn remained trapped in the abusive relationship for six months. When she turned seventeen, Evelyn broke away from the relationship and dated twenty one year old actor John Barrymore. Unfortunately, both Stanford and her mother conspired to end the relationship. Barrymore was down on his luck and Stanford had plenty of money. But another suitor was equally taken with Evelyn,

harry Thaw. He first met her while she starred in the Broadway show The Wild Rose. He attended forty times, sending Evelyn flowers and lavish gifts. Aside from his attraction to Evelyn, Harry knew about Stanford's preference for having sex with miners and felt compelled to save her. When Evelyn developed pendicitis, Harry was at her side at the hospital while she healed. He offered to take Evelyn and her mother on a trip to Europe. After their arrival, Evelyn

told Harry about the attack. Harry misused drugs and frequently experienced fits of rage and mental instability. Evelyn knew this, but when Harry proposed, she accepted. The two married on April five of nineteen o five. A year later, in June of nineteen o six, Evelyn and Harry attended a musical at Madison Square Garden. Harry caught sight of Stanford setting a few rows away. Harry stood fists clenching. Evelyn

asked to leave. She thought her husband was behind her, but when she reached the elevator he was nowhere to be found. Then she heard the shots. When the police arrived, Harry insisted Hid shot Stanford for the atrocities committed against his wife. The case was a field day for the press, and the four women sitting at the table in the courtroom took to Evelyn's story with enthusiasm and heart. When their stories appeared, journalist Irving Cobb commented on their emotional

retelling and dubbed them the Sob Sisters. Despite this derogatory nickname, it said that the women's stories helped effect the trial's outcome. After to try else, Harry Thaw was found not guilty by reason of insanity. All four women had successful careers telling human stories and ways that, like Nellie Bly, reshaped journalism.

American Shadows is hosted by me Lauren Vogelbaum, researched by Genneros That are Caught, and produced by Jesse Funk and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show, visit Grim and Mild dot com. And four more podcasts from my Heart Radio visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.