By: Laila Schwin and Valery Warner
March 17, 2022
Elizabeth Jane Cochran, more commonly known by her pen name, Nellie Bly, was a journalist, charity worker, and inventor. She is well-known for taking a trip around the world in 72 days and for the way that she shaped the concept of investigative journalism.
Bly was born on May 5, 1864, in “Cochran’s Mills,” now part of the Pittsburgh suburb of Burrell Township in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. She was one of 15 children. As a young girl, Elizabeth often was called “Pinky” because she frequently wore that color. As she became 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 but later was forced to drop out because of a lack of funds. In 1880, Bly’s mother moved their family to Allegheny City (now known as the city of Pittsburgh).
Bly’s first attempt at journalism were responses to articles within the Pittsburgh Dispatch under the pseudonym “Lonely Orphan Girl”. She responded to misogynistic articles about how women were only meant for birthing and housework. She was offered a job writing articles for the Dispatch, and after her first article, which argued for divorce law reforms for women, she was offered a full-time job and the pen name of Nellie Bly.
Her early journalistic endeavors were within the Pittsburgh Dispatch newspaper. She focused on the working conditions of women working in factories as well as general women’s societal issues. She was later informally demoted to solely writing about fashion, gardening, and women’s society upon the complaints of factory owners. She continued her political and investigative journalism on a trip to Mexico where she protested the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz and the suppression and imprisonment of Mexican journalists. She later had to flee the country upon threats of arrest and went on to publish her experiences in the book, Six Months in Mexico.
Bly left the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1887 for New York City. She began to face rejection from new editors who would not consider hiring a woman. She eventually talked her way into the office of Joseph Pulitzer and took an undercover assignment for which she agreed to fake insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, now named Roosevelt Island. Bly checked herself into a boarding house called Temporary Homes for Females where she stayed up all night to give herself the “disturbed woman look” and began making accusations that the other boarders were insane. Refusing to go to bed and scaring others, the police were called to take her to the nearby courthouse. After being examined by a police officer, a judge, and a doctor, Bly was taken to Blackwell’s Island.
After ten days, the asylum released Bly, and she later published a book called Ten Days in a Mad-House which prompted the asylum to implement reforms, thus bringing her fame. She had a lasting impact on American culture and shed light on the experiences of women beyond the asylum, too.
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. Her two-part series in October of 1887 was a sensation, effectively launching the decade of “stunt” or “detective” reporting, a clear precursor to investigative journalism. The stunt girls, with Bly as their prototype, were the first women to enter the journalistic mainstream in the twentieth century.
In 1888, Bly wanted to embark on and document a journey similar to the fictional one of the adventure novel Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. On November 14, 1889, Bly boarded the Augusta Victoria and began her trip around the world. She brought very few of her belongings and relied solely on the most essential items. During this, the newspaper Cosmopolitan hired a reporter to set out the same day as Bly to beat the time of her worldwide journey. Bly was unaware of this competitor for most of her journey and ultimately did not care about the competition that was created.
Bly had a near endless list of experiences in the places that she traveled. Her trip ended up lasting 72 days and was mostly traveled by ship and train. She set a world record for circumnavigating the world. Later on, however, the record would go on to be beaten many times, with the current record being just under 36 days.
Following her trip, Bly began to write serial novels for the New York Family Story Newspaper. Her first was Eva the Adventuress, based on the life experiences of Eva Hamilton; several of the chapters were published before Bly returned from her trip. Between 1889 and 1895, she wrote eleven novels. Most of these novels were thought to be entirely lost until their rediscovery in 2021.
In 1895, Bly married Robert Seaman. He was 73 and failing in health at the time. Due to this, she took over as head of Iron Clad Manufacturing Company, a position previously held by Seaman. While working there, she patented both a novel milk can and stacking garbage cans. Due to embezzlement by other people within the business and general business-based negligence by Bly, the company went bankrupt.
She went back to reporting after this and wrote stories from Europe’s Eastern Front during WWI. She was one of the first people and the first woman to visit the war zone between Serbia and Austria. She spent much of her life following this and continuing to write in newspapers.
On January 27, 1922, Bly died of pneumonia at St. Mark’s Hospital, New York City, at the age of 57. In 1998, Bly was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and was one of four journalists honored with a U.S. postage stamp in a “Women in Journalism” set from 2002.
Nellie Bly will forever be remembered for her accomplishments and impact on journalism.
{Information retrieved from Womenshistory.org.}
THE RETURN OF THE EYE 