The Story of Nellie Bly

Nellie Bly - HJ Myers, photographer (Wikipedia)

Having read ‘The Girl Puzzle’ by Kate Braithwaite, I wanted to find out more about her interesting subject, Nellie Bly.

Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran on 5th May 1864 in Cochran’s Mills, Pennsylvania. The town was named after her father, Michael Cochran, who had started as a mill worker before buying the local mill and most of the land around his home.

When Cochran married Mary Jane Kennedy, it was the second marriage for both of them. He and his first wife had had 10 children, and he had 5 more, including Elizabeth, with Mary Jane, who had no children from her first marriage.

In 1870, when Elizabeth was 6 years old, the family suffered the sudden loss of Michael Cochran. They not only had to deal with their grief, they were also left in a dire financial situation as Michael had left no will, which meant the family had no legal claim to his estate.

Into her teen years, Elizabeth decided to add an ‘e’ to her surname, making it ‘Cochrane’. In 1879, age 15, she enrolled at Indiana Normal School, which is now the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she studied to become a teacher. Unfortunately, due to lack of funds, she had to leave.

The following year, Mary Jane Cochran moved her family to Pittsburgh where, with Elizabeth’s help, she ran a boarding house.

A couple of years later, there was a published piece in the local newspaper, the ‘Pittsburgh Dispatch’, titled ‘What Girls Are Good For’. The writer of the piece, Erasmus Wilson – who was known to readers as the ‘Quiet Observer’, or ‘Q.O’ – claimed that women were best suited to domestic duties and referred to the working woman as “a monstrosity”.

Using the pseudonym, ‘Lonely Orphan Girl’, Elizabeth sent in a passionate rebuttal, which grabbed the attention of the paper’s editor, George Madden. He ran an advertisement asking the author to identify herself and when she did, he offered her a chance to write a piece for the newspaper.

Elizabeth entitled her article, ‘The Girl Puzzle’ and wrote of how divorce affected women; she went on to argue for reform of the divorce laws.

So impressed was Madden, he offered her a full-time job.

She began working as a reporter in 1885 at a rate of $5 a week, and took on a pen name, which was customary for women who were newspaper writers; the editor chose ‘Nellie Bly’, after a Stephen Foster song.

Bly’s writing highlighted the negative side of sexist beliefs and the importance of women’s rights. She became known for her investigative style of reporting and her undercover work through a series of articles covering the appalling conditions faced by women factory workers.

When the factory owners complained, Bly was moved to the paper’s women’s page, to cover fashion and society, which she found frustrating and limiting.

Determined “to do something no girl has done before”, she left for Mexico, spending almost 6 months reporting on the lives and customs of the Mexican people. Her dispatches would later be published as a book, ‘Six Months in Mexico’.

Nellie Bly in Mexico, age 21 (Wikipedia)

When she protested the imprisonment of a local journalist who’d criticised the Mexican government in one of her reports, the threat of arrest prompted her hurried return to America.

In 1887, Bly moved to New York City. 4 months later, penniless, she managed to talk her way into the offices of the ‘New York World’, the newspaper owned by Joseph Pulitzer.

Joseph Pulitzer (Wikipedia - Library of Congress' Prints and Photographs division)

Soon after, she undertook the assignment that made her name – reporting on the conditions endured by the patients of the lunatic asylum on Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island). Pretending to be a mental patient, she successfully got herself committed and was at the asylum for 10 days.

New York City Asylum for the Insane (Woman) Blackwell's Island - from 'King's Handbook of New York City' (Wikipedia)

Her exposé, which brought her fame, was instrumental in getting the authorities to implement reform, which eased the conditions of the patients. It was later published as a book, ‘Ten Days in a Mad-House’.

Bly didn’t pause to rest on her laurels but continued with more investigative work, including reporting on the poor treatment of those in New York jails and factories. She also wrote pieces on the corruption in the state legislature.

In 1888, she put forward the idea of an around-the-world trip to her editor, an attempt to make fact Jules Verne’s 1873 fictional tale, ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’.

Nellie Bly's publicity photo for her around-the-world voyage 1890 (Wikipedia - Historical and Public Figures Collection)

On the morning of 14 November 1889, Nellie Bly boarded an ocean liner to begin her 40,070km (24,898 miles) journey.

Her travels took her to England, France, southern Italy, the Suez Canal, Colombo (capital of Sri Lanka), Penang (Malaysia) and Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. She travelled via horse and burro, rickshaw and sampan, and existing railroad systems.

Setbacks and rough weather as she crossed the Pacific delayed Bly, and she reached San Francisco 2 days behind schedule. But Pulitzer chartered a private train to bring her back; she arrived in New Jersey on the afternoon of 25 January 1890 to be greeted with great fanfare and celebration.

Bly had successfully completed her trip in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds, setting a real-world record. Even though her record was beaten a few months later, it was still considered quite a feat for a woman at that time, especially for one travelling on her own.

Thanks to the newspaper’s continuous coverage of her travels, Bly’s fame grew to international proportions.

In 1895, she married Robert Seaman, a millionaire industrialist, and retired from journalism. At 73, he was 42 years her senior.

Robert Seaman (Wikipedia)

Seaman died in 1904, succumbing to a heart attack brought on by injuries sustained when he was knocked down by a horse and wagon while crossing the street.

Bly took over running his company, the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company. She put social reforms in place at the company and the employees enjoyed perks unheard of at that time, including libraries and healthcare.

Unfortunately, Bly wasn’t very good at understanding the financial side of the business. That along with embezzlement by unscrupulous employees brought the company down.

She returned to what she knew and began reporting again, working for the ‘New York Evening Journal’ in 1920. Apart from writing about the growing women’s suffrage movement, she also covered the First World War, writing stories from the Eastern Front. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bly was the first woman to visit the war zone between Serbia and Austria.

Barely two years after returning to her writing career, on 27 January 1922, Nellie Bly died of pneumonia at St Marks Hospital, New York City. She was 57 years old.

Nellie Bly's grave in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York - 'Anthony22’ at en.wikipedia (Wikipedia)

A truly fascinating woman.