Episode description

What are girls good for? Well, in the 1800s, the answer to that question was plain as day: birthing children and keeping house. In fact, in 1885, the Pittsburgh Dispatch published a column declaring that a woman who worked outside the home was "a monstrosity”!

This outrageously sexist column sparked a fiery response from one hell of a young woman. Born Elizabeth Cochran and known later and more famously as Nellie Bly, at age 21 wrote back a response under the pseudonym "Lonely Orphan Girl”. Something in Nellie’s passionate letter appealed to the newspaper editor, George Madden, who eventually offered her a full-time job writing on issues affecting working women. 

Unfortunately, the factory owners got their knickers in a knot about her writing (likely calling out sexist behaviour) so she was reassigned to where women belong - fashion, society, gardening and the like. Screw that! In a time when women were treated atrociously, Nellie fought back. Unhappy with her assignment to the lifestyle section, she embarked on a mission that would change the course of journalism forever. 

After a 6-month stint in Mexico reporting as a foreign correspondent during Porfirio Diaz’s tyrannical dictatorship (at age 21, mind you), Nellie decided it was time for the big smoke. Off to New York City she went, facing rejection after rejection from every newspaper (well, she was a woman) until finally she talked her way into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, the New York World. It was here that she began her remarkable foray into the as-yet-unknown career of investigative journalism.

Her first mission: expose the appalling treatment of patients in the Blackwell Island Insane Asylum. A casual stroll around the exterior and interview with a staffer would simply not do for Nellie’s standards. She opted for undercover, which meant feigning insanity to get herself committed… and hopefully returning home. With careful consideration, and a promise from her editor to get her out, Nellie accepted the mission and took to practising her crazy eyes in the mirror, spooking herself out with ghost stories and brushing up on her acting skills. 

But could she really convince doctors, police officers and judges that she was insane? Surely they would do thorough tests and discover inconsistencies that would expose her? Well, unsurprisingly, the doctors and courts were all too willing to send a woman to the loony bin back then. All she had to do was act a bit confused and not blink for a while and they were convinced. She was declared “positively demented”! Off she went with a one-way ticket to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. 

Now we can all imagine what Nellie was subjected to while under good and proper care in a mental asylum in the 1800s. Cold rotten food, a harsh scrubbing at bath time from a fellow legitimately insane inmate deputised by staff, dunked in freezing water in what sounded like waterboarding; good and proper care. The thing is, once Nellie was admitted to the asylum, she no longer kept up the insane act. In fact, according to her records (yes, her editor came good on the promise to get her out - phew!) plenty of the women in there seemed sane. Yet such non-insane behaviour was met with a suspicion of trickery from staff, only further confirming their judgements of these poor women, condemned to a life of inhumane treatment. What a catch-22!

After her exposé on Blackwell Island, New York City spent $50k 19th-century dollars on the management of institutions housing people with mental illness. Other trailblazing journalists (pejoratively called “stunt girl journalists”) followed in her footsteps, using undercover reporting to effect change and shed light on critical human rights issues. 

Nellie Bly was an incredible woman! Oh, and she turned Around The World In Eighty Days into fact and set the world record for travelling around the world (72 days) and would later become a patented industrialist, novelist, national women’s hall of fame inductee, and posthumously inspired songs, musicals and movies.

PREVIOUS EPISODES MENTIONED:

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SOURCES:

• Ten days in a Mad-house, by Nellie Bly  
• Nellie’s Milestones 
• NEW-YORK CITY ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE (WOMAN) BLACKWELL'S ISLAND

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