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How long was Nellie Bly in the asylum?
ten daysOnce examined by a police officer, a judge, and a doctor, Bly was taken to Blackwell's Island. Committed to the asylum, Bly experienced the deplorable conditions firsthand. After ten days, the asylum released Bly at The World's behest.
What did Nellie Bly see in the asylum?
After pretending to have amnesia, Bly was committed to the asylum. Inside the asylum, she found other patients who had been committed when they were also healthy. Many of these patients could not speak fluent English, so they could not convince the nurses that they were actually sane.
Why did Nellie Bly go undercover to the asylum?
Bly's editor suggested she have herself committed to the asylum for 10 days to expose the real conditions, and Bly immediately agreed. Working under an assumed name, she took a room in a boarding house and set out to prove herself insane.
What are 3 important facts about Nellie Bly?
She was the first woman to cover the Eastern Front during World War I. Nellie Bly died from pneumonia on January 22, 1922 in New York City. The name "Nellie Bly" comes from a song called "Nelly Bly" by Stephen Foster. Before entering the insane asylum, Nellie spent six months in Mexico writing about the Mexican people.
What did the nurse do to Nellie Bly?
Cotter, “a pretty, delicate woman,” told Bly that, “for crying, the nurses beat me with a broom-handle and jumped on me, injuring me internally, so that I shall never get over it.” She said the nurse then tied her hands and feet, threw a sheet over her head to muffle her screams and put her in a bathtub of cold water.
How did Nellie Bly lose her memory?
Per the film, poor Nellie loses her memory after the horrific 'medical' treatments and more complications ensue. Luckily, the real Nellie made it out intact, after help from her newspaper. She wrote the news article exposing the negligent asylum and a book – Ten Days in a Mad-House.
What did matron Grady do to Nellie?
In both a retaliation (since Nellie stole Lottie's (Anja Savcic) baby blanket from Grady's office) and a pre-emptive strike (she doesn't want Nellie to escape by seducing Josiah) Grady rather horrifically straps Nellie into a chastity belt and then straps her down to a table where she uses leeches to end her “quick- ...
How old was Nellie Bly when she died?
57 years (1864–1922)Nellie Bly / Age at death
Is Ten Days in a Mad House a true story?
Ten Days in a Mad-House: A True Story of Brutality and Neglect.
How old was Nellie Bly when she got married?
At the age of 30, Bly married millionaire Robert Seamen and retired from journalism. Bly's husband died in 1903, leaving her in control of the massive Iron Clad Manufacturing Company and American Steel Barrel Company. In business, her curiosity and independent spirit flourished.
Why did Nellie Bly go around the world?
On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly set off on her race around the world in an attempt to beat the "record" set in Jules Verne's fictional book, "Around the World in 80 Days." People from around the world watched to see if this young woman could get along on such a trip, alone.
Why did Nellie Bly change her name?
When Elizabeth Cochran began in journalism in 1885, it was considered inappropriate for a woman to write under her own name. Cochran's editor chose the name “Nelly Bly” from a Stephen Foster song. However, he also misspelled the name, and she became “Nellie Bly.”
What was the name of the asylum that Nellie was trying to get committed?
Blackwell Island AsylumNellie Bly Committed Herself to the Infamous Blackwell Island Asylum Just to Get the Story.
What did matron Grady do to Nellie?
In both a retaliation (since Nellie stole Lottie's (Anja Savcic) baby blanket from Grady's office) and a pre-emptive strike (she doesn't want Nellie to escape by seducing Josiah) Grady rather horrifically straps Nellie into a chastity belt and then straps her down to a table where she uses leeches to end her “quick- ...
What did Nellie Bly want to do?
Nellie Bly famously said that she wanted to 'do something no girl has done before', a wish that came true through her ground-breaking investigative journalism. Her real name was Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, something she changed when she began writing.
What happened Blackwell asylum?
Like most of the original buildings on Blackwell's Island, the asylum fell to ruin. Damaged by exposure to the elements and fire, Blackwell's once-expansive network of prison and medical buildings are now unrecognizable. The asylum is marked by an octagonal tower.
What was Nellie Bly known for?
Nellie Bly, born Elizabeth Cochran in 1864, is possibly the most well-known female name in journalism. She was known for “stunt journalism,” frequently going undercover or travelling to far parts of the world. Her major claim to fame, however— and her first major ...
What is the food that Bly finds in the asylum?
The middle chunk of the exposé then takes care to detail every part of Bly’s first day in the asylum, which all nine days afterward echoed. Again, the women are given barely edible food — slightly spoiled and cold meat, thin and flavorless broth and tea, and bread that was “black and dirty…hard, and in places nothing more than dried dough,” and which Bly finds a spider in (Ch. 10–11). Bly can’t make herself eat it, but the other residents are hungry enough that they nearly leap over each other to reach as much food as they can, and eat it quickly without complaint.
What was the grand jury report on the asylums?
The grand jury’s report recommended the changes Bly had proposed, and called for a sum of nearly $850,000 to be added to the budget of the Department of Public Charities and Corrections; the jury also attempted to make future examinations more thorough so that only the seriously ill were admitted into the asylums (“ Nellie Bly”).
What is the name of the woman who admits herself to a boarding house?
She admits herself to a woman’s boarding house under a false name, Nellie Brown. She acts distant, nervous and agitated until she disturbs the other women enough that they call for the doctors to take her away. Bly then meets with several doctors, and a kindly judge, who attempt to classify her mental health.
Why is Nellie Bly's piece important?
Bly’s piece is important to remember because it opens the conversation about the actual treatment of people deemed “insane,” and the irresponsible manner in which so-called professionals diagnose and treat them. We need to constantly second-guess ourselves on what we deem “insane” and “proper treatment.” We cannot allow ourselves to forget about these people, and to keep them on that island. Out of sight, out of mind is an all-too appropriate idiom to apply to the plight of the mentally ill, so we need vivid works such as Nellie Bly’s to remind us of what is happening while we look away.
Where does Bly go after being in the hospital?
After one terrible night at Bellevue — with inedible food and a hard mattress to sleep on — Bly is transferred into Blackwell’s Island. Once there, she stops “acting insane” and simply acts as herself. Somehow, in this world of twisted “logic” and treatment, the “more sanely [she] talked and acted the crazier [she] was thought to be” (Ch. 1).
What was the treatment for Rosemary Kennedy?
The brutal practices of lobotomies and electroconvulsive therapy were developed and made popular particularly during the “psychological revolution” of the 50s and 60s (“An Illustrated History”). After the 60s asylums — as we know them from Bly’s exposé, as well as famous pop culture representations like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Girl, Interrupted — began to go out of style and were deemed unnecessary. Patients were no longer treated as inmates who were simply held in asylums so as not be roaming the streets, but were beginning to be treated as patients, who needed medical care.
What episode of The West Wing is Nellie Bly?
Bly was also a subject of Season 2 Episode 5 of The West Wing in which First Lady Abbey Bartlet dedicates a memorial in Pennsylvania in honor of Nellie Bly and convinces the President to mention her and other female historic figures on his weekly radio address.
How many people died in the 1901 train crash?
In its early years, it was a parlor-car only train; in 1901 it crashed, killing 17 people. A steam tug named after Bly served as a fireboat in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Cover of the 1890 board game Round the World with Nellie Bly.
What was Eva Hamilton's first book based on?
The first chapters of Eva The Adventuress, based on the real-life trial of Eva Hamilton, appeared in print before Bly returned to New York.
How long did it take George Francis Train to circumnavigate the world?
Bly's journey was a world record, although it was bettered a few months later by George Francis Train, whose first circumnavigation in 1870 possibly had been the inspiration for Verne's novel. Train completed the journey in 67 days, and on his third trip in 1892 in 60 days.
What was the purpose of the photograph Bly took?
A publicity photograph taken by the New York World newspaper to promote Bly's around-the-world voyage. In 1888, Bly suggested to her editor at the New York World that she take a trip around the world, attempting to turn the fictional Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) into fact for the first time.
How long did Bly stay in the asylum?
Committed to the asylum, Bly experienced the deplorable conditions firsthand. After ten days , the asylum released Bly at The World ' s behest. Her report, later published in book form as Ten Days in a Mad-House, caused a sensation, prompted the asylum to implement reforms, and brought her lasting fame.
What was Nellie Bly's first job?
Pittsburgh Dispatch. As a writer, Nellie Bly focused her early work for the Pittsburgh Dispatch on the lives of working women, writing a series of investigative articles on women factory workers. However, the newspaper soon received complaints from factory owners about her writing, and she was reassigned to women's pages to cover fashion, society, ...
What is the name of the song that Nellie Bly wrote?
Writing as Nellie Bly, a pen name taken from a Stephen Foster song, she was a courageous crusader to let herself be committed into an insane asylum with no guarantee that she’d be able to leave, said Brooke Kroeger, author of “Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist,” in an interview.
How did Nellie Bly die?
She died of pneumonia in 1922 at age 57. But her groundbreaking “Ten Days in a Mad-House” ushered in a new age of newspaper writing.
When she went undercover in a New York City insane asylum in 1887, was Nellie Bly?
0. When she went undercover in a New York City insane asylum in 1887, Nellie Bly was surrounded by a world of grim horror. “Nearly all night long I listened to a woman cry about the cold and beg for God to let her die.
How long did it take for Bly to be released from the asylum?
Exhausted and starving, Bly was relieved when, 10 days after her entry into the asylum, lawyers from the New York World arranged for her release. Though sorry to leave the suffering women, Bly was eager to write about what she had seen.
What were the clothes that Bly and the other inmates were given?
Despite the autumn chill, Bly and the other inmates were given threadbare dresses with poorly fitted undergarments after the frigid baths.
What is the book Ten Days in a Mad House about?
Bly established her reputation as a “stunt girl” with a social justice bent. She went on to write exposés of baby-selling rackets and harsh conditions for factory workers, Kroeger writes. Advertisement.
How much did Kroeger add to the asylum?
But despite the coverup, the grand jury believed what Bly had written. Shortly after the visit, officials added nearly $1 million to the asylum’s budget, an enormous amount for 1887, according to Kroeger’s book.
What happened to Bly in the asylum?
After pretending to have amnesia, Bly was committed to the asylum. Inside the asylum, she found other patients who had been committed when they were also healthy. Many of these patients could not speak fluent English, so they could not convince the nurses that they were actually sane.
What book inspired Bly to travel around the world?
After her time in the Women’s Lunatic Asylum, Bly set out to travel around the world, inspired by Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in Eighty Days. The New York World covered her trip, and readers eagerly followed the journalist’s progress. Bly returned to the United States 72 days after she had departed.
What was the Bly story?
Bly’s journalism career would later include stories about industrialization, coverage of World War I, and support for the suffrage movement. She rode in the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, DC and in her coverage of the event, predicted that it would be at least 1920 before women got the vote.
Where did Nellie Bly grow up?
Her reporting introduced readers to the horrors of insane asylums and to international travel. Born Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, Nellie Bly grew up in Pennsylvania in an area that is now a suburb of Pittsburgh. Her grandfather was an Irish immigrant, and Bly’s father had spent his working life moving up from a mill worker to a merchant ...
What does "lunatic" mean?
The word “lunatic” comes from luna, meaning moon, and the popular misconception that the changing moon could cause people to have fevers or to act irrationally. In Bly’s lifetime, “lunatic” was an umbrella term used to describe any person with a mental illness or behavioral disorder.
What were people with autism called in the 19th century?
Therefore, people with a variety of symptoms could be considered “lunatics” and sent to an asylum.
Why was the grand jury impaneled at Blackwell's Island?
Not only did the New York City municipal government appropriate more money to the care of the mentally ill on Blackwell’s Island, a grand jury was impaneled to investigate the abuses and poor treatments Bly uncovered at the asylum.
Why did Nellie Bly go undercover?
How Nellie Bly went undercover to expose abuse of the mentally ill. Today, we celebrate the 154th birthday of Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman. Better known by her nom de plume Nellie Bly (taken–and misspelled–from the title of a Stephen Foster tune, “Nelly Bly”), she was the pioneering, if not the very first, American investigative journalist.
What happened after Nellie Bly's investigation was published?
After Nellie Bly’s investigation was published, a grand jury was impaneled to investigate the abuses and poor treatments she uncovered at the asylum. Photo via Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons. The fascinating question to answer, of course, is how did she do it?
Where was Bly in the hospital?
The matron of the house enlisted a few cops to escort Bly to the Essex Market Police Courtroom, where an impatient judge named Duffy pronounced her insane and ordered her to the famed insane ward at Bellevue Hospital, the city’s largest charitable hospital.
When did the first Bly story come out?
Two days later, on Sunday, Oct. 9, 1887, the World ran the first installment of her story, titled “Behind Asylum Bars,” and Bly became an overnight sensation. The psychiatrists who had erroneously diagnosed her as insane offered profuse apologies, even as the remaining stories were widely syndicated across the nation.
How long was the trip of Phineas Fogg?
In 1889, she made a famous, widely reported and intrepid 72-day trip around the globe. It was the fastest journey of her era and one that shattered the fictional record of Jules Verne’s wanderer, Phineas Fogg, in his novel “Around the World in 80 Days.”.
Where was the Lunatic Asylum in New York City?
Medical historians and patient advocates, however, rightly revere Bly for her infamous exposé of the New York City Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s (now Roosevelt) Island in the East River. First reported in October 1887 on the pages of Joseph Pulitzer’s flagship newspaper, the New York World, Bly subsequently published her daring dispatches as ...
Author
Our idea of adventure today might be a road trip to a new destination, or simply getting on a terrifying roller coaster. However, what we envision never seems to include what we watch in movies, like going undercover and spying on an enemy, or traveling around the world in the least amount of days as possible.
Megan Barnett
Our idea of adventure today might be a road trip to a new destination, or simply getting on a terrifying roller coaster. However, what we envision never seems to include what we watch in movies, like going undercover and spying on an enemy, or traveling around the world in the least amount of days as possible.
How did Nellie Bly work?
She began by reporting on the daily lives of women laborers in the city, investigating the dangerous factories in which they worked long hours in unsafe conditions for low wages. However, her reporting didn't earn her any popularity with the factory owners, and they soon barred her from entering their factories, according to History. Undeterred, Bly, for the first — but certainly not the last — time, went undercover as a factory worker and kept writing. She continued to expose the long hours, unsanitary conditions, and exploitation that working girls had to endure.
What was Nellie Bly's most famous stunt?
While her madhouse exposé may have gained her the spotlight, Nellie Bly's most famous stunt didn't occur until November 1889. Inspired by the famous Jules Verne novel Around the World in Eighty Days, Bly had proposed to her editor that she try to break the fictional record set by the book's protagonist, Phileas Fogg. At 9:40 AM on November 14, she boarded the steamer Augusta Victoria from Hoboken, New Jersey, and began her 24,899-mile journey around the world, sponsored by the New York World, according to New World Encyclopedia.
How old was Nellie Bly when she died?
Nellie Bly died in New York City at just 57 years old, but her legacy as a reporter, as an activist, and as a reformer can still be felt today.
Why is Nellie Bly called Pink?
For the first 20 or so years of her life, Nellie Bly was known not as Nellie, nor as Elizabeth Jane Cochran, which was her birth name, but as "Pink," due to her fondness for the color, according to New World Encyclopedia.
What did Bly say about torture?
After listening to the stories of abuse and neglect from the other inmates and witnessing the deplorable conditions firsthand, Bly concluded, "What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment?" via New World Encyclopedia.
Why did Elizabeth Cochrane change her name?
It was also around this time that Bly changed her name for the first time, adding an "e" to the end of Cochran because she believed it made her sound more sophisticated. The young Elizabeth Cochrane enrolled in the Indiana Normal School, a small teaching college in Indiana, Pennsylvania, in 1879. However, she couldn't afford the tuition, and she left the school in her first semester due to lack of funds.
What girls are good for by Erasmus Wilson?
Entitled " What Girls Are Good For ," the piece's author, Erasmus Wilson, argued that women's participation in the workforce was "a monstrosity" and called instead for women to remain in the domestic realm, according to Biography.
Overview
Career
A newspaper column titled "What Girls Are Good For" in the Pittsburgh Dispatch that reported that girls were principally for birthing children and keeping house prompted Elizabeth to write a response under the pseudonym "Lonely Orphan Girl". The editor, George Madden, was impressed with her passion and ran an advertisement asking the author to identify herself. When Cochrane introduce…
Early life
Elizabeth Jane Cochran was born May 5, 1864, in "Cochran's Mills", now part of the Pittsburgh suburb of Burrell Township, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. Her father, Michael Cochran, born about 1810, started out as a laborer and mill worker before buying the local mill and most of the land surrounding his family farmhouse. He later became a merchant, postmaster, and associate justice at Cochran's Mills (which was named after him) in Pennsylvania. Michael married twice. …
Death
On January 27, 1922, Bly died of pneumonia at St. Mark's Hospital, New York City, aged 57. She was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.
Legacy
In 1998, Bly was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Bly was one of four journalists honored with a US postage stamp in a "Women in Journalism" set in 2002.
In 2019, the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation put out an open call for artists to create a Nellie Bly Memorial art installation on Roosevelt Island. The …
Works
Within her lifetime, Nellie Bly published three non-fiction books (compilations of her newspaper reportage) and one novel in book form.
• Bly, Nellie (1887). Ten Days in a Mad-House. New York: Ian L. Munro.
• Bly, Nellie (1888). Six Months in Mexico. New York: American Publishers Corporation.
See also
• List of American print journalists
• List of female explorers and travelers
• Nellie Bly Cub Reporter Award
• Women in journalism
Further reading
• Bly, Nellie (January 12, 1915). "American Woman Imprisoned in Austria; Liberated When Identified by Dr. Friedman". Los Angeles Herald. p. 2. Retrieved May 13, 2020.
• Brown, Rosemary J. (2021). Following Nellie Bly: Her Record-Breaking Race Around the World. Pen & Sword Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1526761408.