Nellie Bly
by David for group historicalziegfeld Mar 10, 2011

When considering the great acting performances of the late 19th century, there was one that didn't occur on stage, that may have contributed to more social good than any other in the United States. This occurred when Nellie Bly (pen name of Elizabeth Jane Cochran) feigned madness in order to gain access as a patient to Bellvue Hospital for the Insane in order to report on inmate conditions for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. The appearance of a beautiful demented woman at the admissions offices was news in itself, with rival newspapers printing "who is this tormented beauty" stories. Bly was subjected to the brutal regimens of control--hours motionless and silent on straight backed wooden benches in unheated rooms--ate the submarginal food and drank the fetid water--witnessed the binding together of distraught patients. After ten days, the New York World intervened, securing her release. Her book TEN DAYS IN A MADHOUSE proved an instant sensation, giving her fame, leading to asylum reform and $850,000 bump in appropriations. An immensely courageous woman, with a lively spirit of adventure, she next proposed to her editors that she attempt to best Phineas Fogg's feat in Jules Verne's Around in the World in 80 Days. She set off in 1889, using existing rail and steamship lines, and performed the circumnavigation in less than 73 days. En route she visited Jules Verne and a Chinese leper colony. Upon her marriage to millionaire manufacturer Robert Seaman in 1895, Bly left reporting. Seaman's death shortly after the wedding left her in charge of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co., maker of sanitary milk cans and iron storage barrels. She proved an energetic CEO until the company was ruined by an employee's embezzlement. She returned to reporting and made the suffragette movement her favorite subject. She died, aged 57, in 1922.