Nellie Bly

Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman (born Elizabeth Jane Cochran; May 5, 1864 – January 27, 1922), better known by her pen name Nellie Bly, was an American journalist who was widely known for her record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days in emulation of Jules Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg, and for an exposé in which she worked undercover to report on a mental institution from within. She ushered in the era of stunt girl reporting and helped advance a new kind of immersion journalism.

Early life

Elizabeth Jane Cochran was born May 5, 1864, in Cochran's Mills, now part of Burrell Township, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. Her father, Michael Cochran, born about 1810, started 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 (named after him) in Pennsylvania. Cochran married twice. He had 10 children with his first wife, Catherine Murphy, and five more children, including Elizabeth, his thirteenth daughter, with his second wife, Mary Jane Kennedy. He died in 1870, when Elizabeth was 6.

As a young girl, Elizabeth often was called "Pink" because she so frequently wore that color. As a teenager, she wanted to portray herself as more sophisticated, so she dropped the nickname and changed her surname to Cochrane. In 1879, she enrolled at Indiana Normal School (now Indiana University of Pennsylvania) for one term but was forced to drop out due to lack of funds. In 1880, Cochrane's mother moved her family to Allegheny City, which was later annexed by the City of Pittsburgh.

Career

Pittsburgh Dispatch

In 1885, a column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch titled "What Girls Are Good For" stated that girls were principally for birthing children and keeping house. This 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 Cochran introduced herself to the editor, he offered her the opportunity to write a piece for the newspaper, again under the pseudonym "Lonely Orphan Girl". Her first article for the Dispatch, titled "The Girl Puzzle", argued that not all women would marry and that what was needed were better jobs for women.

Her second article, "Mad Marriages", was about how divorce affected women. In it, she argued for reform of divorce laws. "Mad Marriages" was published under the byline of Nellie Bly, rather than "Lonely Orphan Girl" because, at the time, it was customary for female journalists to use pen names to conceal their gender so that readers would not discredit them. Cochrane chose "Nelly Bly", after the African-American title character in the popular song "Nelly Bly" by Stephen Foster. However, her editor wrote "Nellie" by mistake, and the error stuck. Madden was impressed again and offered her a full-time job.

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 female factory workers. Bly went undercover as a poor woman to get hired at a copper cable factory for a firsthand view of the poor working conditions that women and children faced in the typical factory setting. Her columns were applauded by factory workers for highlighting the hidden truth. However, the newspaper soon received complaints from factory owners about her writing, and she was reassigned to women's pages to cover fashion, society, and gardening, the usual role for female journalists, and she became dissatisfied. Still only 21, she was determined "to do something no girl has done before." She then traveled to Mexico to serve as a foreign correspondent, spending nearly half a year reporting on the lives and customs of the Mexican people. Her dispatches later were published in book form as Six Months in Mexico. In one report, she protested the imprisonment of a local journalist for criticizing the Mexican government, then a dictatorship under Porfirio Díaz. When Mexican authorities learned of Bly's report, they threatened her with arrest, prompting her to flee the country. Safely home, she accused Díaz of being a tyrannical czar suppressing the Mexican people and controlling the press.

Asylum exposé

Burdened again with theater and arts reporting, Bly left the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1887 for New York City. Bly faced rejection after rejection as news editors would not consider hiring a woman. Penniless after four months, she talked her way into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, the New York World, and took an undercover assignment for which she agreed to feign insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island, now named Roosevelt Island.

It was not easy for her to be admitted to the asylum; she first decided to check herself into a boarding house called "Temporary Homes for Females". She stayed up all night to give herself the wide-eyed look of a disturbed woman and began making accusations that the other boarders were insane. Bly told the assistant matron: "There are so many crazy people about, and one can never tell what they will do." She refused to go to bed and eventually scared so many of the other boarders that the police were called to take her to the nearby courthouse. Once examined by a police officer, a judge, and a doctor, Bly was taken to Bellevue Hospital for a few days, then after evaluation was sent by boat to Blackwell's Island.

Committed to the asylum, Bly experienced the deplorable conditions firsthand. After a few days committed to the asylum, Bly dropped her feigned "madness" and, despite her lucid state and claimed sanity, underwent the same treatments as other inpatients in extremely cold, hostile conditions. She got to know other patients, noting the particular mistreatment of poor or immigrant patients with limited English language skills. After several days of lucidity and multiple denied requests to be discharged, an attorney from The World intervened. After ten days, the asylum released Bly at The World's behest. Her report, published October 9, 1887 and later in book form as Ten Days in a Mad-House, caused a sensation, prompted the asylum to implement reforms, and brought her lasting fame. Just twenty-three years old, Nellie Bly had a significant impact on American culture and shed light on the experiences of marginalized women beyond the bounds of the asylum as she ushered in the era of stunt girl journalism.

In 1893, Bly used the celebrity status she had gained from her asylum reporting skills to schedule an exclusive interview with the allegedly insane serial killer Lizzie Halliday.

Biographer Brooke Kroeger argues:

Her two-part series in October 1887 was a sensation, effectively launching the decade of "stunt" or "detective" reporting, a clear precursor to investigative journalism and one of Joseph Pulitzer's innovations that helped give "New Journalism" of the 1880s and 1890s its moniker. The employment of "stunt girls" has often been dismissed as a circulation-boosting gimmick of the sensationalist press. However, the genre also provided women with their first collective opportunity to demonstrate that, as a class, they had the skills necessary for the highest level of general reporting. The stunt girls, with Bly as their prototype, were the first women to enter the journalistic mainstream in the twentieth century.