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Nellie Bly’s Bold Asylum Exposé: Ten Days in a Madhouse



In 1887, a young journalist named Nellie Bly made history with a daring undercover assignment that forever changed the landscape of investigative journalism and mental health reform. Those words, describing New York City’s most notorious mental institution, were written by Bly after she got herself committed to Blackwell’s Island. Her shocking exposé, “Ten Days in a Madhouse,” catapulted her to fame and shed light on the horrendous conditions within the asylum, ultimately leading to significant reforms.


Enter Nellie Bly

In the late 1880s, New York newspapers were rife with harrowing stories of brutality and abuse in the city’s mental institutions. Into this grim narrative stepped Nellie Bly, a plucky 23-year-old with an unyielding determination to make a difference. Born Elizabeth Cochrane, she adopted the pen name Nellie Bly after a popular Stephen Foster song. At a time when female journalists were mostly relegated to society pages, Bly was determined to break into the male-dominated world of hard news.



Bly’s editor at The World, intrigued by her tenacity, challenged her to come up with an audacious stunt to prove her mettle as a “detective reporter.” Bly accepted the challenge with gusto, deciding to infiltrate Blackwell’s Island and report on the conditions firsthand.

Illustration of Bly being examined by a psychiatrist, from Ten Days in a Mad-House

The Crazy-Eye Makeover

To prepare for her assignment, Bly underwent a dramatic transformation. She dressed in tattered second-hand clothes, stopped bathing and brushing her teeth, and practiced looking deranged in front of a mirror. “Faraway expressions look crazy,” she noted. Assuming the alias Nellie Moreno, a Cuban immigrant, she checked herself into a temporary boarding house for women and began acting irrationally. Her erratic behavior soon had other residents fearing for their lives. “It was the greatest night of my life,” Bly later wrote.


The police were called, and within days, Bly was moved from court to Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward. Her act was so convincing that the chief doctor diagnosed her as “delusional and undoubtedly insane.” Other newspapers took an interest in the “mysterious waif with the wild, hunted look in her eyes,” further solidifying her cover. Soon, Bly found herself aboard the “filthy ferry” to Blackwell’s Island.


The Horrors of Blackwell’s Island

Opened in 1839, Blackwell’s Island was initially envisioned as a progressive institution focused on humane rehabilitation. However, funding cuts turned it into a nightmare. Staffed partly by inmates from a nearby penitentiary, the asylum was notorious for its brutal treatment of patients.

The New York City Mental Health Hospital on Blackwell's Island, c. 1893

While previous writers, including Charles Dickens in 1842, had reported on the poor conditions, Bly was the first to go undercover. What she found exceeded her worst fears. Doctors were oblivious, and orderlies were “coarse, massive” brutes who “choked, beat, and harassed” patients. Foreign women who couldn’t speak English were often deemed insane and locked away. Patients endured rancid food, dirty linens, insufficient clothing, and ice-cold baths that resembled torture. Bly vividly described one such bath:

“My teeth chattered and my limbs were goose-fleshed and blue with cold. Suddenly I got, one after the other, three buckets of water over my head – ice-cold water, too – into my eyes, my ears, my nose and my mouth. I think I experienced the sensation of a drowning person as they dragged me, gasping, shivering and quaking, from the tub. For once I did look insane.”

Worst of all was the endless isolation:

“What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment? . . . Take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.”

Despite dropping her crazy act upon arrival, Bly found that her sane behavior only confirmed the doctors’ diagnosis. “Strange to say, the more sanely I talked and acted, the crazier I was thought to be,” she wrote.


Near the end of her stay, Bly’s cover was nearly blown when a fellow reporter who knew her arrived to investigate the mysterious patient. Bly convinced him to keep her secret, and after ten harrowing days, The World sent an attorney to arrange for her release.



Going Public and Making History

Two days after her release, The World published the first installment of Bly’s exposé, “Behind Asylum Bars.” The psychiatric community was stunned, and the public was outraged. Newspapers across the country lauded Bly’s courageous efforts. Overnight, she became a star journalist.


For Bly, the true victory was the impact of her work. “I have one consolation for my work,” she wrote. “On the strength of my story, the committee of appropriation provides $1,000,000 more than was ever before given, for the benefit of the insane.” Although the city had already been considering budget increases for asylums, Bly’s articles undoubtedly hastened the process.


A month after her series ran, Bly returned to Blackwell’s with a grand jury panel. Many of the abuses she reported had been corrected: food and sanitary conditions were improved, foreign patients were transferred, and abusive nurses had been removed. Her mission was accomplished.



A Legacy of Courage

Bly’s career continued to soar with other sensational exploits, including a record-setting 72-day trip around the world in 1889, inspired by Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days.” In later years, she founded her own company and designed steel barrels used for milk cans and boilers. Bly passed away in 1922, but her legacy endures. Her life has inspired a Broadway musical, a movie, and a children’s book.


Nellie Bly’s bold undercover investigation not only launched her career but also brought about much-needed reforms in mental health care. Her fearless determination to expose the truth continues to inspire journalists and advocates for social justice to this day.

 

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