Who Was Nellie Bly?

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I’m sure you have probably heard the song “Frankie and Johnny,” sang by Elvis Presley. In the song, it mentions Nellie Bly. Who really was she and what was she famous for doing? She was an actual person whose real name was Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, who was born in 1864 and died of pneumonia in 1922. Nellie Bly was her PEN NAME, she used as an American journalist. I was interested in finding out more about her mainly because I have also written for a couple local newspapers. Nellie Bly was also an inventor, one of her inventions being an improved Milk Can, and she was especially known for her trip around the world in 72 days, in 1890, when she was determined to beat the Jules Verne character Phileas Fogg’s feat, in “Around the World In Eighty Days.” I loved that movie with David Niven. Another thing she was famous for was getting herself committed to an insane asylum for the purpose of an undercover assignment to expose the brutality and neglect of patients in the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. She pretended to be insane and after several doctors examined her, they declared her to be a hopeless case and committed her. She learned firsthand how positively horrible the treatment of these women proved to be, having to eat gruel broth, spoiled meat and given dirty water to drink. The patients were subjected to abuse in many ways, having to sit on hard benches most of the day with no warm clothes to wear. Rats were in the hospital and many other horrible conditions. Reading some of what she wrote about this experience will make your skin crawl. She even had buckets of cold water poured over her head. She wrote her expose “Ten Days in a Mad House” causing a sensation and launching investigations which the grand jury made. Increased funds were budgeted from the Department of Public Charities and Corrections. I think the place should have been shut down and all the participants of these atrocities put in prison. She focused on the plight of women, while investigating factory workers but she was mostly silenced in her attempt to be heard, until the expose was published. She was recognized posthumously, by the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1998