Happy Birthday to Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman — better known as Nellie Bly, globe-trotting newswoman & pioneer of investigative journalism!
An editorial about the proper role of girls (birthing children and keeping house) prompted young Elizabeth to write a letter to the editor signed, “Lonely Orphan Girl.” Impressed, the editor asked her to write more and she responded with “The Girl Puzzle.” That launched her career in newspapers under the pen name, Nellie Bly, given her by the editor.
But when she started writing about working women and their desperate conditions, she was reassigned to the fashion and society stories. Frustrated, she went to Mexico as a foreign correspondent for half a year. After writing a piece critical of the policies of President Díaz, she fled arrest in Mexico, fearing for her own safety.
Back in the States, she found herself relegated to “women’s pages” again but bristled at the work. Wheedling her way into the offices of The New York World, she pitched an audacious assignment for herself: reporting on conditions at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum — from the inside.
Feigning insanity, Nellie got herself admitted as a patient. There she found rampant abuse and neglect plaguing the patients, many of whom driven at least partially mad after admission to the asylum. Nellie’s news stories about the horrendous conditions and mistreatment of the women in the asylum would lead to reforms. Originally appearing in October 1887, “Ten Days in a Mad-House” would then be published as a book and win Nellie widespread acclaim.
The following year, Nellie had another unusual proposal for her publishers: she would be the first to attempt to match Jules Verne’s globetrotters from “Around the World in 80 Days.” Indeed, she beat Phileas Fogg’s amazing feat and summarized it in her own account, “Around the World in Seventy-Two Days.”
Nellie Bly’s exploits captured the imagination of the world. Though a rival newspaper attempted to have another woman reporter, Elizabeth Bisland, “race” after Nellie who also beat Verne’s fictional feat, Nellie Bly beat her and gathered the glory.
There was even a board game based on her journey that became quite popular!
Next, she turned to writing novels. Her serialized novels appeared in The New York Family Story Paper starting in 1889. She wrote 11 novels in all, thought to be lost, but recently recovered and republished in 2021. She also returned to reporting while writing fiction.
Then, she married an elderly millionaire manufacturer of metal cans such as those used to make boilers or store liquids. Nellie started working with her husband as his health failed, eventually even earning patents for her own inventions, an improved milk storage can and a stacking garbage can.
She became one of America’s leading women industrialists but her benevolence combined with a factory manager’s embezzlement eventually bankrupted the company.
Returning to journalism, Nellie wrote of the women’s suffrage movement, accurately predicting in 1913 that women would win the right to vote by 1920. Before that would come to pass, however, she once again found herself making, as well as reporting, headlines — as a war correspondent, the first woman reporting from the war zone between Serbia and Austria during World War I.
Nellie Bly died of pneumonia in 1922, aged 57. Her fame and her name live on. Time and time again, Hollywood has told and retold tell her story. There are certainly plenty of pieces out there about her, from short YouTube biographies to dramatizations.
We watched one several years ago that seemed like a pilot for an intended TV series. The movie focused on her asylum undercover story but the closing credits featured a peppy young woman gallivanting about. I’m not sure, but I think that was 2015’s “10 Days in a Madhouse.”
While reading up again about Nellie today — her story fascinates me! — I discovered another more recent movie, Escaping the Madhouse: The Nellie Bly Story, starring Christine Ricci. Since that one’s currently available on Hulu, I figure on watching it soon.
Meanwhile, here’s a trailer for the 2019 short animated documentary, “Nellie Bly Makes the News.”
Buller's back porch 