What I’ve learned

In 1887, a young woman tried to get a job as a reporter for the New York World. Her birth name was Elizabeth Cochran, but her pen name was Nellie Bly.

Today, people know that Nellie Bly spent 10 days in the New York City Lunatic Asylum, working as an undercover investigative reporter. And that she wrote about the appalling conditions and treatment of the inmates there. However, like most everyone else, all I’d ever read were secondhand reports of her experiences. I’d never actually read her book, Ten Days in a Mad-House, which is a collection of the articles she wrote after being released.

Finding a free copy of Bly’s book was easy – it’s been out of copyright for decades. In less than three minutes I was reading an on-line copy at gutenberg.org

The opening sentence of Chapter One reads: “On the 22d of September I was asked by the World if I could have myself committed to one of the asylums for the insane in New York, with a view to writing a plain and unvarnished narrative of the treatment of the patients therein and the methods of management, etc. Did I think I had the courage to go through such an ordeal as the mission would demand? Could I assume the characteristics of insanity to such a degree that I could pass the doctors, live for a week among the insane without the authorities there finding out that I was only a “chiel amang ’em takin’ notes?”

(A “chiel amang ’em takin’ notes” comes from a poem by Robert Burns. It translates as a young person among them taking notes.)

Bly accepted the assignment and passed herself off as Nellie Brown, a name close enough to her own that the newspaper would be able to track her movements.

I immediately liked Bly’s writing. She is clear and concise, with a style that is not off-putting to a 21st Century reader. She has a gift for capturing dialog, and there are detailed conversations of her pretending to be insane, of her in court being questioned by a judge, of her being interviewed upon her arrival at the Asylum, of conversations with other inmates, and so on.

The book, which is a collection of the newspaper articles she wrote after lawyers for the New York World got her released, is only around 35,000 words long, so is a quick read.

Her articles had an immediate and powerful effect on both the New York City Lunatic Asylum and the city of New York. The doctors who had declared Bly to be insane offered their apologies. The more abusive of the doctors and nurses were fired. More nourishing meals and better living conditions were provided. Many of the inmates didn’t speak English well, so translators were hired.

Also included in the book are two additional reports, one of Bly going to an employment agency to apply as a servant, and the other of her experiences working as a shop-girl making paper boxes.

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