Imagine voluntarily spending time in an asylum or traveling around the world in a race. This woman didn’t have to imagine; she did both!
Elizabeth Cochran was born in Pennsylvania in 1864. Her father died when she was 6, causing financial hardship for her mother, who remarried but then divorced due to abuse. At age 15 she briefly attended a school. She had to leave, however, after one term on account of financial difficulties. She moved with her mother and two older brothers to Pittsburgh to look for work.
While in the city, Elizabeth struggled to find employment on account of her gender. When an article in the city’s newspaper criticized women in the workplace, she penned a response. She called for more opportunities for women to work, especially for those who were in a similar situation to hers. Realizing good writing when he saw it, the editor hired her and she took on the pen name Nellie Bly, which was the name of a popular Stephen Foster song of the times. Her column was popular. She wrote about terrible conditions in factories, and she even traveled to Mexico and reported about government corruption and the poor.
Now going by Nellie in the business world, she left for New York City. Despite her experience, she once again had difficulty finding a job at the newspaper in a male-dominated profession. She reportedly barged into the office of one of the most powerful men in newspapers, New York World editor Joseph Pulitzer, offering her idea for a story. He, in turn, made her an offer she would not refuse.
Pulitzer wanted a story on the city’s notorious mental asylum, Blackwell Island. To really do things right, Nellie decided to pretend to be insane so she could get herself locked up and investigate the place. Her incredible writing about what occurred there shocked the public and made a name for her in the big city. All of her time there was later published as a book called Ten Days in a Mad House. As a result of her exposé, a grand jury investigated the asylum and improvements were made to patient care.
Nellie continued to go deep and write about conditions in jails, sweatshops, and the legislature. She had achieved a level of fame no other female journalists at the time could touch. In 1889, after reading Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne, Nellie embarked on a massive undertaking to see if she could indeed go around the earth in that amount of time and even beat the novel’s main character’s achievement. Another woman even competed with her to see who would get back first! Daily updates were published and the entire United States waited to see if she would achieve her goal. The World held a contest to see who could get closest to guessing when she would arrive back home; over one million guesses were made. She completed her journey in 72 days, setting a world record which would be broken a few months later when a businessman did it in 67 days. Around the World in Seventy-two Days tells more of her story, as does Eighty Days, a fantastic nonfiction account of the race between the women.
While she continued to produce interesting articles, she retired at age 30 after marrying. She would later return to journalism after her husband’s death, reporting from Europe on World War I and back in the United States on women’s suffrage.
Read more about her in the books on the shelf here. This is an affiliate link; thank you for supporting my work.