Elizabeth Jane Cochran at 26 years old, c. 1890
Nellie Bly Mother of investigative journalism was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran on May 5, 1864 in the small town of Cochran’s Mills, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Her father, Michael Cochran, owned a lucrative mill and served as associate justice of Armstrong County. When Bly was six, her father died suddenly and without a will. Unable to maintain the land or their house, Bly’s family left Cochran's Mill. Her mother remarried but divorced in 1878 due to abuse.
At 15, Bly enrolled at the State Normal School in Indiana, Pennsylvania. It was there that she added an “e” to her last name, becoming Elizabeth Jane Cochrane. Due to the family’s financial struggles, she left the school after one term and soon moved with her mother to Pittsburgh, where her two older brothers had settled.
Bly looked for work to help support her family, but found fewer opportunities than her less-educated brothers. In response to an article in the Pittsburg Dispatch that criticized the presence of women in the workforce, Bly penned an angry open letter to the editor that called for more opportunities for women, especially those responsible for the financial wellbeing of their families.
Signing the letter provocatively, “Lonely Orphan Girl.” The letter was no work of art, but editor George Madden was impressed by its writer’s fervor. He placed an advertisement in the next issue of the Dispatch, inviting the Lonely Orphan Girl to come forward. She did, and he offered her a job. To protect her identity and her reputation, Madden soon recommended she select a pen name. The two settled upon Nellie Bly, after a popular song by Stephen Foster.
From the very beginning, she was determined to write stories that mattered. She had no experience, no education, and little polish, but she had a fire in her belly that few newspapers had ever seen. Bly enjoyed writing hard-hitting investigative pieces and some of her first articles were about the unsavory working conditions of women in factories where they produced everything from cigars to barbed wire. She learned that women toiled 12 hours a day for a mere dollar. She wrote about women’s labor laws. She wrote about sexist divorce laws. She convinced Madden to send her to Mexico, but before long she was expelled for exposing government corruption.
The Dispatch editors were not pleased. They attempted to rein her in by assigning her stories about flower shows and fashion. Nellie Bly refused those fluffy assignments. Wanting to write pieces that addressed both men and women, Bly began looking for a newspaper that would allow her to write on more serious topics. She moved to New York City in 1886, but found it extremely difficult to find work as a female reporter in the male-dominated field.
In 1887, Bly stormed into the office of the New York World, one of the leading newspapers in the country. She wanted to write a story on the immigrant experience in the United States. The editor, Joseph Pulitzer, declined that story, but he challenged Bly to investigate one of New York’s most notorious mental asylums, Blackwell’s Island. Bly not only accepted the challenge, she decided to feign mental illness to gain admission and expose firsthand how patients were treated.
After checking herself into a women’s boarding house under yet another fake name, Bly began acting erratically, peppering her speech with Spanish nouns and claiming she had lost her memory. That night she asked for a pistol. This was apparently all it took; the proprietress called the police, who hauled Bly off to court and on September 25, 1887, Nellie Bly was committed to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. .
In 1887, New York City's asylums were shrouded in mystery. Rumors swirled about horrific conditions, abuse, and women disappearing behind locked doors, never to be seen again. But they were just rumors. No proof. No witnesses willing to speak. No way to know the truth.
Nellie Bly, knowing she could be trapped there indefinitely, declared insane with no way out. She did it anyway.
The moment she arrived, Nellie dropped the act. She behaved completely normally. She spoke clearly. She answered questions rationally. It didn't matter. Once you were inside, you were insane. No amount of sanity would set you free.
What Nellie discovered inside was worse than anyone imagined. The asylum held over 1,600 women. Many of them weren't mentally ill at all. They were poor. They were immigrants who didn't speak English. They were women whose husbands wanted to be rid of them. They were girls who'd been raped and were considered "damaged." They were inconvenient, unwanted, and discarded. And once inside, they were tortured.
The treatments were barbaric. Patients were forced to sit in freezing cold baths for hours. punishment disguised as therapy. The food was rotten, inedible. Rats roamed freely. The halls were filthy. Nurses beat patients with sticks. They tied women to chairs and left them for days. They mocked them, starved them, and ignored their pleas for help.
Nellie watched women scream for help and be silenced with violence. She saw patients beg for warm clothing and be denied. She witnessed daily cruelty designed not to heal, but to break. And she wrote it all down. In her mind. Memorizing every detail.
For ten days, Nellie endured the same treatment as everyone else. She froze in the baths. She choked down spoiled food. She slept on a hard bench in a freezing room with no blankets. She didn't complain. She didn't fight back. She documented.
On October 4, 1887, after ten days inside, an attorney hired by her newspaper secured her release. She walked out of Blackwell's Island and immediately began writing. On October 9, 1887, the New York World published "Ten Days in a Mad-House", Nellie Bly's firsthand account of life inside the asylum. The article was explosive. Nellie described everything in vivid, horrifying detail. The cold baths. The rotten food. The rats. The beatings. The women who didn't belong there. She wrote about a woman who spoke only German and was declared insane because doctors couldn't understand her.
She wrote about girls as young as sixteen locked away for being "difficult." She wrote about women who begged to be released and were told they'd never leave. The public was outraged and demanded answers. A grand jury was convened to investigate. They toured Blackwell's Island. They interviewed patients and staff. They confirmed everything Nellie had written.
The city of New York immediately allocated an additional $1 million to the Department of Public Charities and Corrections to reform asylum conditions. Staff were retrained. Oversight increased. Patients gained new rights and protections. Some of the women Nellie had met were released. Others received proper care for the first time.
"Ten Days in a Mad-House" became a sensation. It was published as a book. It was read across the country. It sparked a national conversation about mental health, women's rights, and institutional abuse. Nellie Bly became famous overnight.
Bly would go on to write several similar exposes in her career, taking down sweatshops, corruption in jails, and bribery from lobbyists; though perhaps today is best known for having taken on the challenge of following in the footsteps of Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg (Around the World in Eighty Days, 1873). In 1889, Bly attempted to circumnavigate the glove and break the fictitious record of Phileas Fogg.The adventure soon became a competition, as reporter Elizabeth Bisland from the Cosmopolitan set out in the opposite direction in the hopes of beating Bly.
The expedition captured the world’s imagination. The New York World ran daily updates on her journey, which started at 9:40 am on November 14, 1889, and took Bly through Great Britain, France, where she met the author Italy, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, China, and Japan.
She landed in San Francisco, two days behind schedule as a result of rough weather on her Pacific crossing; however, Pulitzer arranged for a chartered train to take her to Chicago. She arrived in New Jersey on January 25, 1890, to huge, welcoming crowds.
Her record-breaking journey took 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds. Bly wrote about her journey in the "Around the World in 72 Days," which became a bestseller. Bly beat her rival, who had missed her steamship from Southampton and arrived less than four days after. She became an international celebrity
Ultimately, Nellie Bly’s circumnavigation record only stood for a matter of months. Eccentric businessman George Francis Train traveled around the world in just 67 days, starting and ending in Tacoma, Washington. By 1913, John Henry Mears had slashed Bly’s record in half, completing the journey in under 36 days. Today, the trip can be completed by airplane in less than 36 hours, and the International Space Station takes only 90 minutes to completely orbit Earth. Nellie Bly was neither the first nor the fastest to travel around the world, and yet she remains an enduring source of fascination to the present day.
The most likely reason for this is Nellie herself. Her sharp wit, courage, and sincerity shine through in her writing and the writing of those that knew her. It is "Ten Days in a Mad-House" that has cemented her legacy as the mother of investigative journalism. Nellie Bly proved that journalism wasn't just about reporting what happened. It was about uncovering what was hidden. It was about giving voice to the voiceless. It was about risking everything to tell the truth.
Before Nellie, undercover journalism didn't exist. She invented it. After Nellie, investigative reporters followed her lead.going undercover in factories, prisons, sweatshops, and more to expose injustice.
Because of Nellie, over 1,600 women were seen. Their suffering was acknowledged. The system that imprisoned them was forced to change. Because of Nellie, mental health reform began in America. Because of Nellie, journalists learned that sometimes the most important stories require more than a notebook, they require courage. Nellie Bly didn't just write about injustice. She lived it. She endured it. And then she made damn sure the world knew about it all.
She did it to expose the truth and highlight the women who'd been abandoned by society. Her story changed mental health care in America. Her courage proved that one person, willing to risk everything, can help change the world. Her asylum report is uncomfortable, but remains absolutely compelling.reading!
Bly continued to publish influential pieces of journalism, including interviews with prominent individuals like anarchist activist and writer Emma Goldman and socialist politician and labor organizer Eugene V. Debs. She also covered major stories like the march of Jacob Coxey’s Army on Washington, D.C. and the Pullman strike in Chicago, both of which were 1894 protests in favor of workers’ rights.
Bly met wealthy industrialist Robert Seaman in 1895 at the age of 30 and married him a few days later, leaving the newspaper life behind. Seaman was 40 years older than his bride, but neither seemed particularly fussed by the age difference. Their marriage lasted nearly 10 years, until Seaman’s death in 1904.
Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman inherited all of her late husband’s holdings, including his Iron Clad Manufacturing Company. Another widow might have handed the company over. Bly decided to run it herself.
Bly had no experience in this arena, but a lack of experience had never stopped her before. By 1905, she was filing patents for new types of oil barrels. As an employer, Bly embodied all the principles she had championed in her stories. She paid her workers fairly and offered them access to gymnasiums, libraries, and healthcare, unlike almost every other American factory. Unfortunately, treating employees like human beings was expensive, and before too long her businesses went under.
Nellie Bly returned to the newsroom covering World War I from Europe and continuing to shed light on major issues that impacted women. While still working as a writer, Bly died from pneumonia on January 27, 1922 at the age of 58. She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.
By then, she had revolutionized journalism, a trailblazer who had traveled the world, and advocated for women's rights and workers' protections. But it is her asylum exposé that remains her most enduring achievement. In a tribute after her death, the acclaimed newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane remembered Bly as “the best reporter in America.”
