Unsung Heroes: Nellie Bly
Nellie Bly (born Elizabeth Jane Cochran) was not the sort of person who took nonsense from anybody. A pioneering journalist, she got her first break in writing when she grew angry at the appalling views on women touted by Erasmus Wilson, the most popular columnist of the Pittsburgh Dispatch, and wrote them a letter to complain. The paper, impressed by the spirit of the letter, took her on as a columnist. This is a fantastic way to get a job, declaring “No, you’re awful. I could do this much better. Let me show you how,” and then backing up that claim.
Bly’s life before this hadn’t exactly been simple, something which may have helped her develop her intense levels of badass. Born the 13th child out of 15, Bly’s father died when she was six, leaving her mother and siblings with nothing due to will issues. Her stepfather was an abusive drunk, whom Bly described in court as being “generally drunk since he married my mother. When drunk he is very cross, and [he is] cross when sober.”
Bly’s initial work for the Dispatch showed glimpses of the journalistic style she would go on to develop. She covered the difficulties faced by working class women and girls, the urgent need for reforming the state’s divorce laws, and the lives of local factory workers. So the editors decided after this to put her in the ‘women’s interest’ pages and have her cover minor fashion events and flower shows. Bly tried to get back to serious reporting by having herself sent to Mexico to write as the Dispatch’s foreign correspondent, but this only lasted for a few months before she was returned once again to the women’s pages.
Did Bly settle for a career writing lighthearted fluff, or give up journalism, accepting Wilson’s claim that a woman doing more serious work would be “a monstrosity”? Of course she didn’t, because she was awesome. She left a suitably withering note for Wilson and moved to New York in order to find work on a paper that would take her seriously.
Now, getting into journalism is not an easy task. It isn’t easy now and it wasn’t easy in 1887, particularly if you happened to be poor and female. Generally after six months of failing to get a job, one might give up and return home to do something easier. The people covered in this series are not the sort of people who give up and go home when things get hard, however, and after six months of knocking on doors Bly managed an interview at the New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer (he of the prize). The editor, John Cockerill, – possibly in an attempt to deter her – challenged Bly to write a piece on Blackwell’s Island, then home to a notorious New York asylum.
In order to fully appreciate how blazingly fantastic what Bly did next was, it’s important to realise that investigative journalism wasn’t really a thing that existed at that point. People didn’t go undercover to write reports, or press closely-guarded inside sources for facts. It just wasn’t something that happened. This is what made Nellie Bly a pioneering journalist: she went undercover, and feigning insanity for 10 days, managed to have herself sent as a patient to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island to see for herself what was going on. This was particularly bold, as she had no guarantee she would be able to secure her release when the piece was done, and indeed had some difficulty regaining her freedom. She came back with a story of cruelty, beatings and poor conditions – examples of pretty much everything that was wrong with 19th century mental health care. Not only did Bly’s report get her the job at the New York World, it also drew public and political attention to the institution. This brought money and much needed changes, improving the lives of the people treated there. An impressive achievement for someone only just starting their career.
Could I pass a week in the insane ward at Blackwell’s Island? I said I could and I would. And I did.
– Nellie Bly
Pioneering the field of investigative journalism and spending her career writing important pieces on workers’ rights, the treatment of women, and other socially important issues wasn’t quite enough for Bly, however. She still had a significant quantity of badass in her that she needed to make use of, and there was only one outlet for it that held sufficient coolness: a race around the world. Phileas Fogg’s 80 day trip around the world was all well and good, but it was fictional. Bly was going to be the first person to do it for real, and she was going to do it better.
"ROUND THE WORLD WITH NELLIE BLY": 1890 illustration published by New York World - a boardgame square for every day of Bly's adventure
So, by the age of 26, Bly had pioneered a new form of journalism, written countless important pieces in support of worker’s rights and women’s suffrage, and set the record for the fastest solo trip around the world. Doing either of these things is enough to cement someone’s claim to brilliance, let alone both.
It is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little sympathy and kindness there are in the world.
– Nellie Bly
For interesting further reading on Bly, there is the excellently thorough Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist by Brooke Kroeger, and Bly’s own Ten Days in a Mad-House.
- Unsung Heroes: a new series on BadRep spotlighting fascinating people we never learned about at school…
Guest blogger Rob Mulligan blogs atStuttering Demagogue.Stay tuned for future Heroes.
There must be some way all of these awesome historical badasses can be gathered together and brought to the modern day to fight a greater threat as some sort of awesome feminist super-team, surely?
Is it reductive that I want this? Sorry it’s just how my brain works.
I’d buy that graphic novel.
I’d buy it RIGHT NOW.
SOMEONE WRITE IT QUICK
Okay, so, counting the pirate lady (because all superhero teams should have a pirate, dammit) we have Lady Killigrew, Nancy Wake and Nellie Bly so far. Who else belongs here? Obviously BadRep has featured a number of women (ha ha) but I think the requirement here is that they be historical in some way.
I WILL WRITE IT IF YOU WILL DRAW IT. Y/Y?
Well, this series is going to run to several posts, so wait and see! Also, we might well take suggestions if anyone wants to send them in – [email protected] …
Lady Killigrew is also a good addition to any League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen, in terms of including older characters, because she did her most famous piratical acts when she was sufficiently advanced in years to be played in a movie by Judi Dench or somebody like her.
If I were putting a group together I’d be voting for Sojourner Truth. She was amazing – Hodge made fanart of her when she was doing the Alphabet. Also Harriet Tubman – when I discovered a book about her in my primary school library I was blown away.
ps. The pirate posts will soon return! It’s a series of five pirate women, so stay tuned for that, as Lady K will soon have company :D
pps. I would totally draw a comic series that featured these women. Although I’m already committed to draw two other projects at the mo – one’s a short 10 page number and one’s a longer project I’m working on with the author of this post, in fact! But we should chat :D
Hellen Mirren for Lady Killigrew? She seems to be the current awesome older actress, based on RED and Brighton Rock. Also the League Of Extraordinary Gentlewomen needs the fantastic Russian pilot Ibrina Sebrova, who I need to write about in the near future.
Read AIR by Vertigo… Amelia Earhart, fuck yeah!
Coming soon in this series is a piece on Jackie Cochran, who was possibly even more awesome than Amelia Earhart, but not quite as famous because she didn’t vanish mysteriously.
I’ve read the first two volumes of Air, I think, have they released more yet?
We are NOT calling this the League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen, for three reasons:
1. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen were fictional, these women are real (but possibly travelling through time).
2. The name implies that it’s just a take-off of the male-oriented league. They’re NOT the girl league, they’re their own thing, and should be viewed as such.
3. Because that name is rubbish and I don’t like it, and I came up with the idea of them fighting crime and exposing Freud together, so nyah.
Any suggestions for better names though? I’m busy right now and can’t come up with something suitably awesome.
Well, no, obviously (or at least I would hope it was obvious!) I wouldn’t actually use that title were I working on a project of this sort for real.
If you were to start something like this up in realistic terms, simply creating a gender-flipped outgrowth of Alan Moore’s work wouldn’t be the most original exercise ever, and I think conceptually would need some work to differentiate it.
Just on the subject of heroines of the last couple of centuries and comics, This emerging comic features a fictional Victorian-era heroine and looks awesome, by the way.
ps. I expose Freud. We know this. Markgraf chronicled it. /ends in-joke
@Rob, Wikipedia says Air was cancelled last year :( – if you own the trades I might just nick them off you to get an idea of what they’re like :D
I wondered, when editing this one, whether she really counted as “unsung”, as she seems to have been so celebrated in her day.
But I’d honestly never heard of her until Rob pitched this article! And I think she’s brilliant.
Grant Allen, who is something of an unsung contemporary of Conan Doyle, wrote a comic novel called “Miss Cayley’s Adventures” in 1899, nine years after Bly’s trip, about a young woman who resolves to travel the world and also ends up working as a journalist. I wonder if he was influenced by Nellie Bly.
I want to add a link to Bly’s other book about her travels, Around the World in Seventy-Two Days. I haven’t read it, though, and one point I should probably make is that “Miss Cayley’s Adventures” is absolutely wonderful until she goes to Africa. Then the white privilege racefail kicks in hardcore and there are some really awful racial stereotypes going on – I’m not sure if the same happens with Bly, but I thought I’d mention it if I’m going to recommend a link I haven’t read yet! On the one hand, we can say “Ah, well, that was the nineteenth century!” – but on the other hand it’s so easy to just say that when in fact I think a lot of people of colour get erased from history by the implication that “the nineteenth century” was solely written about by white writers! And so it’s hard for me to really recommend a lot of Grant Allen wholesale because of the racefail. So I’m wondering how Nellie fared, and I’ll be interested to see how she writes about meeting people from around the world compared to Allen’s imagining of someone doing so.
I’m going to read the books now, though, because I have a bit of a fascination with Pioneering Ladies of the Nineteenth Century…
Awesome!
I’m wondering how I could possibly have never previously heard of her.
Thank you so much for this article! I had heard of Nellie Bly before but only tangentially. She was so much more inspiring than I knew.
I can’t wait to read Ten Days in a Mad-House and Around the World in Seventy-Two Days.
I’m really enjoying the Unsung Heroes series :D