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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Everybody. Today's classic is one that listeners have

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Speaker 1: requested so often that we actually included it in a

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Speaker 1: round up episode that was our most requested episodes that

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Speaker 1: we already have. It is journalist Nelly Bly, famous for

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Speaker 1: everything from feigning insanity to do an expos of an

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Speaker 1: asylum to traveling around the world in a hot air balloon.

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Speaker 1: This is back from with previous host Katie and Sarah.

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Speaker 1: So enjoy Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class

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Speaker 1: from housetop works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy and our subject

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Speaker 1: for today has really captivated us, so I hope you

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Speaker 1: like her as much as we do. I think she's

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Speaker 1: our new professional heroine. Our subject is Nellie Bligh and

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Speaker 1: stunt journalism. And when Nelly Bligh embarked on the journalistic

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Speaker 1: stunt that made her so famous, which is feigning in

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Speaker 1: Santa d in order to be committed to a notorious asylum,

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Speaker 1: something I would not do as a health editor. A

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Speaker 1: fellow journalist from a competing paper picked up on the

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Speaker 1: story and he covered the court appearance that resulted in

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Speaker 1: her committal as real news. He didn't pick up on

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Speaker 1: the fact that it was a stunt, and he wrote

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Speaker 1: the circumstances surrounding her were such as to indicate that

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Speaker 1: possibly she might be the heroine in an interesting story. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: we'd have to agree Nellie bly pioneered the era of

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Speaker 1: girls stunt reporters, women who wrote firsthand, somewhat lowbrow reports

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Speaker 1: that got him off the fashion and flower show and

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Speaker 1: perhaps cat show beat from a corning stone take note,

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Speaker 1: and instead into the seediest, most dangerous parts of the city.

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Speaker 1: This was big from about the late eighteen eighties to

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Speaker 1: the early eighteen nineties, but no one was bigger than

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Speaker 1: Nellie Bligh. Yeah. She starts off writing for five dollars

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Speaker 1: a week, and at the pinnacle of her career she's

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Speaker 1: making thousand dollars, which is big money at the time.

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Speaker 1: So we're going to start at the beginning, as we

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Speaker 1: always do, with our heroine's childhood. Elizabeth Jane Cochrane was

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Speaker 1: born May fifth, eighteen sixty four, in Cochrane's Mills, Pennsylvania,

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Speaker 1: and her father was a Cochrane himself, Judge Cochrane, and

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Speaker 1: he'd already had a family of ten with his first wife, Elizabeth,

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Speaker 1: was his thirteenth child of fifteen, and she was considered

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Speaker 1: the most rebellious, and so her mother, Mary Jane likes

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Speaker 1: attention and quickly instills that in her daughter. She has

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Speaker 1: the baby Elizabeth christened in a bright pink gown, which

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Speaker 1: earns her the nickname Pink, and her childhood is comfortable.

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Speaker 1: She lives in a nice mansion um has an easy life,

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Speaker 1: you know, the daughter of a judge. But things change

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Speaker 1: when she's about six years old, when Judge Cochrane dies

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Speaker 1: without a will, and because he's already had this first family,

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Speaker 1: his second family is left with no protection and there's

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Speaker 1: not much anyways to be slipped fifteen children, so his

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Speaker 1: estate is auctioned off and the second family moves into

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Speaker 1: a modest home and Pink helps take care of her

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Speaker 1: siblings and her mother remarries, probably trying to make a

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Speaker 1: more stable life for herself and her children, but unfortunately

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Speaker 1: she marries an abusive alcoholic man, and Pink actually even

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Speaker 1: ends up testifying at their eventual divorce trial. Her brothers

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Speaker 1: ended up being able to land decent white collar jobs

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Speaker 1: even though they didn't have a lot of education, so

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Speaker 1: Pink decided that she liked to be independent and helps

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Speaker 1: support her mother. She enrolled at the Indiana Normal School

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Speaker 1: when she was fifteen to train as a teacher, but

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Speaker 1: ran out of money after one semester and moved to

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Speaker 1: Pittsburgh with her mother, where she helped run a boarding house.

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Speaker 1: And Pittsburgh is where she will meet her fortune. So

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Speaker 1: we're gonna skip to eighteen eighty five when she gets

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Speaker 1: her job at the Pittsburgh Dispatch, and this is the

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Speaker 1: most amazing way to get a job. She sends an angry,

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Speaker 1: anonymous letter to the editor of the paper in response

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Speaker 1: to an editorial by the Quiet Observer Erasmus Wilson, who

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Speaker 1: had written a piece called what Girls Are Good For?

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Speaker 1: And Wilson was one of the most popular columnists in Pittsburgh,

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Speaker 1: and he was a Civil War veteran. And this piece

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Speaker 1: he wrote considered women useless outside of the domestic sphere.

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Speaker 1: And this really angered young Pink because she knew that

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Speaker 1: some women didn't have a choice but to work. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, she was an example of this herself. And

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Speaker 1: don't have any other options. So she writes in and

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Speaker 1: the grammar isn't good. There's no punctuation after all, She

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Speaker 1: hasn't had much of a formal education, but it's such

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Speaker 1: a spirited letter and she signs it the Lonely Orphan

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Speaker 1: Girl that it completely captivates the editor of the paper,

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Speaker 1: and the managing editor of the Pittsburgh Dispatch was George Madden,

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Speaker 1: who thinks, with his good business sense, that he's got

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Speaker 1: to get this girl to write for his paper. So

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Speaker 1: he puts an ad in a Sunday paper skiing that

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Speaker 1: she comes forward. And she came to the office the

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Speaker 1: next day and got her job as a cover board

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Speaker 1: and appropriately enough, her first article is a response to

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Speaker 1: Wilson's editorial Yeah, and she goes on to cover topics

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Speaker 1: that interest her, like the conditions of working girls in

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Speaker 1: Pittsburgh and life in the slums um the archaic divorce

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Speaker 1: laws in the state, topics that normally wouldn't fall to

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Speaker 1: a woman reporter. Who would who would write more about Yeah,

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Speaker 1: flower shows, cat shows, fashion, and um. Madden eventually decides

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Speaker 1: that she should be a permanent staffer because even though

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Speaker 1: she's not well trained, she's good and she's interesting. Madden

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Speaker 1: and ms Cochrane decide that she needed a nomed plume

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Speaker 1: so she could keep her personal and her professional identities

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Speaker 1: separate and he chooses Nellie Bligh from an old Stephen

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Speaker 1: Foster song. But eventually one of Nellie Bligh's stunts goes

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Speaker 1: awry and she poses as a sweatshop worker in Pittsburgh,

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Speaker 1: and the owners getting mad at the paper's negative coverage

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Speaker 1: of their business and threatened to cut off all their

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Speaker 1: all their advertising in the paper. So the editor's back

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Speaker 1: off and Nellie's forced onto the fashion beat, which she

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Speaker 1: is not interested in, so instead she goes to Mexico.

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Speaker 1: From eighteen eighty six to eight eight seven, she traveled

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Speaker 1: through Mexico doing quote unquote real journalism. She wrote about corruption,

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Speaker 1: the conditions of the poor, details about the food, what

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Speaker 1: bullfights were like, but the Mexican officials that eventually get

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Speaker 1: so angry that she's expelled from the country and she

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Speaker 1: returns to Pittsburgh, but the editors haven't learned their lesson

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Speaker 1: and they try to stick around the fashion flower Show

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Speaker 1: beat again, and she quits, and before she leaves, she

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Speaker 1: writes a note for Erasmus Wilson, Dear q O, I'm

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Speaker 1: off for New York. Look out for me. Bligh's got

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Speaker 1: to be the best off, so she arrives in New

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Speaker 1: York looking for a job and decides that she'd really

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Speaker 1: like to work for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, but

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Speaker 1: really anywhere will, do you know, She's not in a

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Speaker 1: position to be too picky at the time. Months later,

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Speaker 1: she still can't find work. She's running out of money,

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Speaker 1: and she smooth talks her way into the office of

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Speaker 1: Colonel John Cockrell, who's the managing editor of The New

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Speaker 1: York World, and as soon as she gets her audience

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Speaker 1: with him, she doesn't waste any time. Immediately suggests a

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Speaker 1: story where she would travel to Europe and return steerage

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Speaker 1: class to report on all the immigrants coming into the

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Speaker 1: US and what the conditions were like for them aboard

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Speaker 1: a ship, and the editor rejects this idea. He thinks

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Speaker 1: it's too challenging for a young, relatively inexperienced reporter, so

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Speaker 1: in its place, he suggests, why don't you instead pretend

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Speaker 1: to be insane and have yourself committed at Blackwell's Island, which,

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Speaker 1: to be doesn't sound much easier, but uh Nellie blies

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Speaker 1: into it. She signs up for the job he gives

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Speaker 1: her on the spot, and she joins the staff and

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Speaker 1: starts to prepare for her first assignment. Her piece is

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Speaker 1: called ten Days in a Madhouse. And we want to

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Speaker 1: say that John Marie Lutes article on girls stunt reporting

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Speaker 1: for American Quarterly was really helpful in researching this part

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Speaker 1: of the podcast. Yeah, and actually tex stuffs. Chris Pallette

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Speaker 1: was a huge help in actually obtaining the article using

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Speaker 1: his magic library skills. I like his magic skills. Thank

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Speaker 1: you to Chris. So a little background on Black Wells.

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Speaker 1: It was an interesting place. Um. It offered cheap psychiatric

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Speaker 1: care for mentally ill immigrants, but the conditions were really bad,

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Speaker 1: and Charles Dickens had visited it on his American tour

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Speaker 1: but left very quickly because it depressed himself. And reporters

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Speaker 1: were interested in it. To a Harper's Weekly reporter had

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Speaker 1: taken a supervised tour and um ended up writing that

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Speaker 1: it was a pretty comfortable, fair and clean place, but

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Speaker 1: you can only imagine what's on the officials. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: people are curious about what it's actually like on the inside.

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Speaker 1: So Bligh has got to get inside to write this report. Um.

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Speaker 1: She's great for this story too. She doesn't have much

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Speaker 1: of a formal education, no real professional training and journalism,

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Speaker 1: no credentials. She's a total amateur. But she's really good,

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Speaker 1: and she's out there and adventurous enough to convince law

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Speaker 1: enforcement and mental health professionals that she's actually insane. But

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Speaker 1: she's still able to maintain that middle class respectability that

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Speaker 1: protects her reputation and makes her popular as a female journalist.

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Speaker 1: And in case you're wondering how you fake crazy, you

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Speaker 1: practice making faces in the mirror. There were actually illustrations

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Speaker 1: of her doing this. It's pretty awesome. So she checks

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Speaker 1: into a boarding house for women as nineteen year old

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Speaker 1: Nelly Brown, leaving all her documentation behind mind she acts irrationally.

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Speaker 1: She stays up all night. She's kicked out in the morning,

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Speaker 1: but won't leave the boarding house, so the matron calls

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Speaker 1: the police. The New York Times covered her court appearance

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Speaker 1: and described her as, I quote, a mysterious waif. So,

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Speaker 1: in order to convince the judge to send her to Blackwells, though,

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Speaker 1: which is the really critical part of this preparation, she

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Speaker 1: calls herself Nellie Murreno and pretends to speak Spanish, sort

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Speaker 1: of trying to play into prejudices against immigrants. And she

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Speaker 1: drops this act as soon as she gets to prison,

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Speaker 1: the whole Spanish speaking bit um. But then she's got

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Speaker 1: to get past the actual doctors, the mental health professionals,

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Speaker 1: who the professional bid is certainly called into question by

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Speaker 1: what she runs into. The doctor who examines her assumes

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Speaker 1: that she is a woman of the town, which is

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Speaker 1: our new favorite euphemism for prostitute, before pronouncing her this

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Speaker 1: is a quote positively demented. I consider it a hopeless case.

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Speaker 1: She needs to be put where someone will take care

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Speaker 1: of her. End quote. But interestingly, as soon as she's

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Speaker 1: in the ward, she doesn't even bother feigning insanity anymore.

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Speaker 1: She just acts like her regular oldself, she writes, Yet

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Speaker 1: strange to say, the more sanely I talked and acted

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Speaker 1: the crazier I was thought to be. And she sees

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Speaker 1: really terrible things inside of Blackwells Asylum. She sees people

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Speaker 1: forced to eat meals, rotten food, beatings, and ice baths,

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Speaker 1: and she describes her own ice bath pretty memorably. She says,

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Speaker 1: my teeth chattered and my limbs were goose fleshed and

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Speaker 1: blue with cold. Suddenly I got one after the other,

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Speaker 1: three buckets of water over my head. Ice cold water

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Speaker 1: too into my eyes, my ears, my nose, and my mouth.

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Speaker 1: I think I experienced the sensation of a drowning person

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Speaker 1: as they dragged me, gasping, shivering, and quaking from the tub.

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Speaker 1: For once, I did look insane and quote this reminds

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Speaker 1: me of the Sarah Water's book I just finished Actually Well.

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Speaker 1: And she overhears another woman, another patient, shrieking and being

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Speaker 1: beaten while given her own ice bath, and the woman

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Speaker 1: is dead the next morning. Just all this terrible stuff

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Speaker 1: that happens in here. But this is a risky stunt

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Speaker 1: for Nellie too, aside from just being forced to take

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Speaker 1: ice baths, Female insanity, especially hysteria, which is what she

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Speaker 1: was trying to imitate, was often conflated with nymphamania at

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Speaker 1: the time, which would expose female patients to abuse from

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Speaker 1: people within the hospital. Even the ambulance driver who takes

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Speaker 1: Nellie to black Wells rights after the series is published

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Speaker 1: that he knew she wasn't crazy because she didn't make

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Speaker 1: a pass at him, and he thought about suggesting her

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Speaker 1: to a quote test, which we can only imagine what

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Speaker 1: that would be, but decided that she looked too respectable.

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Speaker 1: After a few days at black wells Blai asked for

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Speaker 1: a re examination, but was denied, and eventually Pulitzer sent

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Speaker 1: a while. We should we should good check on her.

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Speaker 1: When she's out, she starts writing her series and the

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Speaker 1: pieces called ten Days in a Madhouse, and the first

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Speaker 1: the care improves, and one quote that really sort of

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Speaker 1: Do not allow her to talk or move during these hours,

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Speaker 1: give her nothing to read, let her know nothing of

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Speaker 1: will take to make her insane. It's pretty good quote,

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Speaker 1: and this series turns her into a star. She continues

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Speaker 1: to write for hand Investigative Accounts will give you some

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Speaker 1: of our favorite titles. First is my favorite the girls

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Speaker 1: who make boxes. Nellie Bligh tells how it feels to

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Speaker 1: be a white slave. You've got Nellie Bligh as a mesmerist,

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Speaker 1: which kind of reminded me of our Houdini episode trying

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Speaker 1: to be a Servant. Nellie Bligh's Strange experience Nellie Bligh

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Speaker 1: and the Pullman. She visits the homes of poverty in

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Speaker 1: the model Workingman's town, in the Magdalen's Home, Nellie Bligh's

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Speaker 1: visit to an institution for unfortunate women which was reformed

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Speaker 1: prostitutes or supposedly reformed, and she also does all kinds

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Speaker 1: of related stunt. She poses as an unwedded mother to

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Speaker 1: a night in jail, and does stuff that's um, I

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Speaker 1: guess not quite as risque as some of these pieces.

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Speaker 1: She uncovers the bribery of lobbyists in the legislature, and

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Speaker 1: in one story titled Visiting the Dispensaries, Lee Blind narrowly

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Speaker 1: escapes having her tonsils amputated. She goes to a throat

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Speaker 1: doctor that poor people are forced to visit for medical

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Speaker 1: care and applies makeup to make herself look poor, so

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Speaker 1: she has a sore throat, and this is what she writes,

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Speaker 1: that tonsil needs a peace cut off. The doctor said,

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Speaker 1: dropping the probing instrument and taking up another who's bright

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Speaker 1: gleam gave me a chill. I'll do a great deal,

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Speaker 1: I think pathologically to get a story, but I won't

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Speaker 1: give up half a tonsil lesson to us all. I

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Speaker 1: would draw the line there the price of journalism. So

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Speaker 1: Pulitzer's paper was really good at appealing to multi ethnic,

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Speaker 1: multi class audiences, from women's immigrants to poor people. So

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Speaker 1: this socially active journalism that still doesn't offend the middle

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Speaker 1: class mores is really popular. Yeah, and the New York World,

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Speaker 1: you know, encourages this girl's stunt journalism to a certain extent,

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Speaker 1: but they also find a way to keep other would

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Speaker 1: be Bligh's anonymous. Don't want to have all of these

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Speaker 1: superstar and then you get to pay them stunt reporters exactly. Um,

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Speaker 1: So they decide to call everybody else who's not Nellie

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Speaker 1: bly Meg Merriles, and by eliminating the individuality of stunt reporting,

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Speaker 1: which was what made it so captivating in the first place,

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Speaker 1: it's someone's own experience. They can talk about their own

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Speaker 1: background and how they're reacting to what they're seeing. By

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Speaker 1: removing that, it dooms the genre. It doesn't really extend

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Speaker 1: past the early eighteen nineties. So well, the mad House

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Speaker 1: piece is what makes Nellie bly so famous. What she's

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Speaker 1: remembered for is the stunt we're about to talk about. So,

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Speaker 1: Pulitzer had a plan to promote the building of the

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Speaker 1: world New offices. He wanted to launch a stunt where

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Speaker 1: a journalist would travel around the world trying to beat

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Speaker 1: the record set by the fictional Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne's

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Speaker 1: hero and around the world Old in eighty days. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: of Brenda's starr, but also Carmen san Diego. So Pulitzer

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Speaker 1: plans on sending a man, but Blinde says that she'll

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Speaker 1: do it for less time for another paper unless they

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Speaker 1: send her. So Pulitzer caves and on November nine, she

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Speaker 1: sails from New York City to beat the record, and

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Speaker 1: with her she takes two British pounds silver, a tiny

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Speaker 1: bit of American money, which was really more of an

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Speaker 1: experiment to see if other countries accepted American money. And

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Speaker 1: cold cream, which I think is funny because she hardly

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Speaker 1: brings anything on this trip. She's trying to pack the

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Speaker 1: light but must have been the key component of her

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Speaker 1: beauty regiment. Skincare is very important and if Charles Badeaux

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Speaker 1: we're going with her, he would have told her to

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Speaker 1: bring troubles. But since her dispatches are so sporadic on

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Speaker 1: her travels to go back to our actual story, so

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Speaker 1: the world has to resort to promoting the stunt. How

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Speaker 1: where they can. They run articles on geography, they hold

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Speaker 1: contests where people guess what her time will be with

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Speaker 1: the prize of a trip to Europe which gets them

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Speaker 1: one million entries. Yeah, they basically try to keep it

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Speaker 1: in the paper anyway they can. And Blin meanwhile is

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Speaker 1: traveling by ship, train, rickshaw Borough catamaran and another girl

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Speaker 1: stunt reporter joins in to this quest. I guess Cosmopolitans

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Bisland and she tries to compete unsuccessfully, but it

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Speaker 1: just kind of goes to show how popular this girl's

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Speaker 1: stunt journalism was at the time, and her trip sounds

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Speaker 1: pretty cool. She ends up stopping for wine and biscuits

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Speaker 1: with Jules Verne at his home in France. I wish

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Speaker 1: he would invite me. He shows her a map of

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Speaker 1: Phileas Fogg's route and has hers lined up next to it,

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Speaker 1: so you know they can compare. And she ends up

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Speaker 1: spending Christmas in a Canton Leper colony, which gives us

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Speaker 1: another chance to to redeem ourselves from saying Canton like Canton,

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Speaker 1: Ohio all through the Opium Wars podcast, We're very sorry.

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Speaker 1: And she runs into a storm while sailing for Japan,

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Speaker 1: and at this point she's getting worried that she's not

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Speaker 1: going to complete the journey on time, and she says,

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Speaker 1: I would rather go back to New York dead than

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Speaker 1: not a winner. I don't know if that's just her

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Speaker 1: her natural flair for sensationalism, but maybe that's how she felt.

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Speaker 1: But on day sixty eight, she docks in San Francisco

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Speaker 1: and she hears that there might be a smallpox quarantine

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Speaker 1: on her ship, so she jumps overboard onto a tug

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Speaker 1: boat to make sure that she's not held up in

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Speaker 1: San Francisco, and the World has chartered a special train

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Speaker 1: for her to take her to Chicago. It's got one

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Speaker 1: sleeping coach and an engine, so it makes record time

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Speaker 1: getting there. She arrived in New York at seventy two days,

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Speaker 1: six hours, eleven minutes and fourteen seconds, two bands, parades

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Speaker 1: and fireworks, and the world proclaims in all caps the

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Speaker 1: stage coach days are ended, the new age of lightning

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Speaker 1: travel begun. So she's a huge star at this point,

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Speaker 1: and she writes around the World in seventy two days

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Speaker 1: in eighteen nine. But despite her huge success with this

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Speaker 1: stunt and the huge success it brings the paper, she's

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Speaker 1: not even given a bonus, so she resigns, just kind

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Speaker 1: of checked in disgust. World bosses eventually agree to treat

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Speaker 1: her more respectfully and pay her better, and so she

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Speaker 1: returns in EE to do more work on women's rights

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Speaker 1: on wed Mother's Uh some interesting and influential interviews too.

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Speaker 1: She profiles the boxer John L. Sullivan, writes about Susan B. Anthony,

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Speaker 1: and um interviews the anarchist Emma Goldman. You've gotten a

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Speaker 1: lot of requests for her. We might have to do

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Speaker 1: her in another podcast. She's in rad time to another

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Speaker 1: Houdini mentions they're all connected to people. She so cover

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Speaker 1: the Pullman Strike from the perspective of the strikers, which

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Speaker 1: she was the only journalist to do that. That's pretty cool, thanks,

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Speaker 1: Nelly Blagh And she ended up writing an unsuccessful novel

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Speaker 1: before marrying millionaire Robert Seaman in she was thirty, he

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Speaker 1: was seventy, and he was president of the American Steel

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Speaker 1: Barrel Company and the Ironclad Manufacturing Company. It's quite a name,

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Speaker 1: isn't it um. So he leaves her his business after

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Speaker 1: his death ten years later, but she has some bad

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Speaker 1: luck with it. She's grown accustomed to living her life

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Speaker 1: as this New York matron um, but managing the business

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Speaker 1: is not her forte, and the employees commit some forgeries.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of litigation, the company goes through bankruptcy

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Speaker 1: and she loses the fortune. She ends up going to

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Speaker 1: England for a vacation in nineteen fourteen, kind of to

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Speaker 1: escape some of these troubles, and World War One breaks out,

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Speaker 1: which would be pretty bad for your average traveler, but

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Speaker 1: for Nelly b it's an opportunity to do some some

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Speaker 1: journalistic work. She starts reporting through nineteen nineteen and goes

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Speaker 1: home when her mother's health began to fail. In nineteen twenty,

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Speaker 1: she joined the New York Journal and she died of

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Speaker 1: pneumonia January nine two in New York City, and her

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Speaker 1: obituary was over all the New York members. Thank you

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Speaker 1: so much for joining us for this Saturday classic SyncE.

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Speaker 1: This is out of the archive. If you heard an

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Speaker 1: email address or a Facebook U r L or something

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Speaker 1: similar during the course of the show, that may be

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Speaker 1: obsolete now, so here's our current contact information. We are

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Speaker 1: at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com, and

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Speaker 1: then we're at Missed in the History. All over social media.

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Speaker 1: That is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, and Instagram.

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Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening for moral on this and thousands

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Speaker 1: of other topics. Visit how stuff Works dot comm