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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You missed in History class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff 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 was feigning insanity

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

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Speaker 1: I would not do as the health editor, a fellow

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: she might be the heroine in a 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 Bly. 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 twenty five thousand dollars a year, which is big

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Speaker 1: money at the time. So we're going to start at

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Speaker 1: the beginning, as we always do with our heroines. Childhood.

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Jane Cochrane was born May fifth, eighteen sixty four

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Speaker 1: in Cochrane's Mills, Pennsylvania, and her father was a Cochrane himself,

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Speaker 1: Judge Cochrane, and he'd already had a family of ten

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Speaker 1: with his first wife. Elizabeth was his thirteenth child of

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Speaker 1: fifteen and she was considered the most rebellious, and so

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Speaker 1: her mother Mary Jane likes attention and quickly instills that

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Speaker 1: in her daughter. She has the baby Elizabeth christened in

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Speaker 1: a bright pink gown, which earns her the nickname Being

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Speaker 1: and her childhood is comfortable. She lives in a nice mansion,

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Speaker 1: um has an easy life, you know, the daughter of

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Speaker 1: a judge, but things change when she's about six years

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Speaker 1: old when Judge Cochrane dies without a will, and because

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Speaker 1: he's already had this first family, his second family is

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Speaker 1: left with no protection and there's not much anyways to

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Speaker 1: be split between fifteen children, so his estate is auctioned

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Speaker 1: off and the second family moves into a modest home

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Speaker 1: and Pink helps take care of her siblings, and her

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Speaker 1: mother remarries, probably trying to make a more stable life

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Speaker 1: for herself and her children, but unfortunately, she marries an

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Speaker 1: abusive alcoholic man, and Pink actually even ends up testifying

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Speaker 1: at their eventual divorce trial. Her brothers ended up being

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Speaker 1: able to land decent white collar jobs even though they

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Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of education, so Pink decided that

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Speaker 1: she liked to be independent and helps support her mother.

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Speaker 1: She enrolled at the Indiana Normal School when she was

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Speaker 1: fifteen to train as a teacher, but ran out of

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Speaker 1: money after one semester and moved to Pittsburgh with her mother,

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Speaker 1: where she helped run a boarding house. And Pittsburgh is

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Speaker 1: where she will meet her fortune. So we're gonna skip

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Speaker 1: to eighteen eighty five when she gets her job at

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Speaker 1: the Pittsburgh Dispatch and this was the most amazing way

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Speaker 1: to get a job. She sends an angry, anonymous letter

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Speaker 1: to the editor of the paper in response to an

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Speaker 1: editorial by the Quiet Observer Erasmus Wilson, who had written

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Speaker 1: a piece called what Girls Are Good For? And Wilson

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: this really angered young Pain because she knew that some

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

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Speaker 1: she was an example of this herself. And I don't

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Speaker 1: have any other options. So she writes in and the

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Speaker 1: grammar isn't good. There's no punctuation. After all, she hasn't

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Speaker 1: had much of a formal education. But it's such a

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

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

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Speaker 1: 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 asking that

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Speaker 1: she come forward and she came to the office the

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

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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 or porter. 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 nombed plume

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

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Speaker 1: and he chooses Nellie Bligh from an old Stephen Foster song.

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Speaker 1: But eventually one of Nellie Bligh's stunts goes awry and

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: advertising in the paper, So the editor's back off and

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Speaker 1: Nellie's forced onto the fashion beat which she is not

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Speaker 1: interested in, so instead she goes to Mexico. From eighteen

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Speaker 1: eighties six to eighteen eighties seven, she traveled through Mexico

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

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

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Speaker 1: fights 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 blig. She's

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Speaker 1: got to be the best. 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 said us

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: aboard a ship. And the editor rejects this idea. He

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: to be doesn't so much easier, but uh Nellie bliges

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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 Jean Marie Louts 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 Palette

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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, and like his magic skills, thank

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Speaker 1: you to Chris. It's 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 the official tours. 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 in 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 p fessionals that she's actually insane.

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

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Speaker 1: that protects her reputation and makes her popular as a

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: old Nelly Brown, leaving all her documentation behind. 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 Murraino and pretends to speak Spanish, sort

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Speaker 1: of trying to play into prejudices against emigrant 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 bit 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 old self, she writes,

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

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Speaker 1: acted the crazier I was thought to be. And she's

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Speaker 1: these really terrible things Inside of Blackwells Asylum. She sees

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Speaker 1: people 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 that 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 Nelly 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 with in the hospital. Even the ambulance driver who

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: what 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: an attorney to rescue her. We were wondering just telling

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Speaker 1: that too, like, you know, where is that Nellie? I

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Speaker 1: imagine getting back from lunch or something and being like,

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Speaker 1: she's been God for a while. We should we should

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Speaker 1: cold check on her. When she's out, she starts writing

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Speaker 1: her series and the pieces called Ten Days in a madhouse,

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Speaker 1: and the first installment is so incredibly popular that her

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Speaker 1: byline becomes a headline for the next Teeth and it

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Speaker 1: actually results in some social changes. There's a grand jury

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Speaker 1: investigation of the asylum, the care improves, and one quote

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Speaker 1: that really sort of sums up her experience there um

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Speaker 1: shut her up and make her sit up straight from

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Speaker 1: six am to eight pm. Do not allow her to

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Speaker 1: talk or move during these hours, give her nothing to read,

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Speaker 1: let her know nothing of the world or its doings,

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Speaker 1: and see how long it will take to make her insane.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty good quote, and this series turns her into

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Speaker 1: a star. She continues to write firsthand investigative accounts. Will

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Speaker 1: give you some of our favorite titles. First is my favorite,

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Speaker 1: The Girls Who Make Boxes. Nellie Bligh tells how it

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Speaker 1: feels to be a white slave. You've got Nellie Bligh

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Speaker 1: as a mesmerist, which kind of reminded me of our

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Speaker 1: Houdini episode trying to be a Servant. Nellie Bligh's strange

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Speaker 1: experience Nellie Bligh and the Pullman. She visits the homes

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Speaker 1: of poverty in the model workingman's down in the Magdalen's Home,

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Speaker 1: Nellie Bligh's visit to an institution for unfortunate women which

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

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Speaker 1: all kinds of related stunt. She poses as an unwin

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Speaker 1: to spend a night in jail, and does stuff that's

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Speaker 1: um I guess, not quite as risque as some of

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Speaker 1: these pieces. She uncovers the bribery of lobbyists in the legislature,

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Speaker 1: and in one story titled Visiting the Dispensaries, Nellie blind

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Speaker 1: narrowly escapes having her tomsels amputated. She goes to a

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: she writes. That tonseil needs a peace cut off. The

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Speaker 1: doctor said, dropping the probing instrument and taking up another

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Speaker 1: who's bright gleam gave me a chill. I'll do a

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Speaker 1: great deal, I think pathologically to get a story, but

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Speaker 1: I won't give up half a tonsil. Listen to us

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Speaker 1: all I would draw the line there the price of ournalism.

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Speaker 1: So 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. They don't want to have all of

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Speaker 1: these superstar and then you get to pay on the

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Speaker 1: stunt reporters exactly. Um, so they decide to call everybody

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Speaker 1: else who's not Nellie Bligh, Meg merrileth and by eliminating

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Speaker 1: the individuality of stunt reporting, which was what made it

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Speaker 1: so captivating in the first place, it's someone's own experience.

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Speaker 1: They can talk about their own background and how they're

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Speaker 1: reacting to what they're seeing. By removing that, it dooms

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Speaker 1: the genre. It doesn't really extend past the early So

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Speaker 1: while the Madhouse piece is what makes Nelly Blyi so famous,

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Speaker 1: what she's remembered for is the stunt we're about to

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Speaker 1: talk about. So Pulitzer had a plan to promote the

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Speaker 1: building of the world new offices. He wanted to launch

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Speaker 1: a stunt where a journalist would travel around the world

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Speaker 1: trying to beat the record set by the fictional Phileas Fogg,

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Speaker 1: Jules Burne's hero and around the world in eighty days. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: At this point she kind of reminds me not only

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Speaker 1: of Brendon's starr, but also Carmens in Diego. So Pulitzer

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Speaker 1: plans on sending a man, but Blin 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: a twenty four hour watch, and a huge jar of

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Speaker 1: cold cream which I think it's 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: were 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, that

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: the paper anyway they can. And Blind meanwhile is traveling

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: journalism was at the time, and her trip sounds pretty cool.

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Speaker 1: She ends up stopping for wine and biscuits with Jules

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Speaker 1: Verne at his home in France. I wish you would

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Speaker 1: invite me. He shows her a map of Phileas Fogg's

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Speaker 1: route and has hers lined up next to it so

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Speaker 1: you know they can compare, and she ends up spending

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Speaker 1: Christmas in a canton leper colony, which gives us another

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Speaker 1: chance to to redeem ourselves. From saying Canton like Canton,

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Speaker 1: Ohio all through the Opium Words 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 did 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 to kind

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Speaker 1: of check 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 eight to do more work on women's rights.

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Speaker 1: Funwed mothers uh some interesting and influential interviews too. She

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Speaker 1: 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 also covered

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

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

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Speaker 1: thanks Nellie Bligh. And she ended up writing an unsuccessful

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

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

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Speaker 1: Steel Barrel Company and the Ironclad Manufacturing Company. It's quite

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Speaker 1: a name, isn't it um? So he leaves her his

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Speaker 1: business after his death ten years later, but she has

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Speaker 1: some bad luck with it. She's grown accustomed to living

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Speaker 1: her life as this New York matron um, but managing

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Speaker 1: the business is not her forte, and the employees commit

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Speaker 1: some forgeries. There's a lot of litigation. The company goes

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Speaker 1: through bankruptcy and she loses the fortune. She ends up

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

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Speaker 1: of to escape some of these troubles, and World War

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Speaker 1: One breaks out, which would be pretty bad for your

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Speaker 1: average traveler, but for Nellie Bly, it's an opportunity to

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Speaker 1: do some some journalistic work. She starts reporting through nineteen

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Speaker 1: nineteen and goes home when her mother's health began to fail.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty, she joined the New York Journal, and

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Speaker 1: she died of pneumonia January nineteen two in New York City,

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Speaker 1: and her obituary was over all the New York papers.

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Speaker 1: And I think we're going to close this one with

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Speaker 1: one more quote from Nellie Bly herself. She wrote shortly

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Speaker 1: before her death, if one would become great, two things

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Speaker 1: are absolutely necessary. The first is to know yourself. The

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Speaker 1: second is not to let the world know you. So

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Speaker 1: while we don't think Nellie Bligh would have approved of

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Speaker 1: social media, we do you should come follow us on

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Speaker 1: Twitter at missed in History, and we'd like to point

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Speaker 1: you to a pretty cool article that goes back to

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Speaker 1: her mad house days called top ten instances of medical

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Speaker 1: quackery throughout History. I edited that one. I can tell

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Speaker 1: you it's good, and you can find that if you

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Speaker 1: search on our homepage at www dot how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

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Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to

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Speaker 1: check out the stuff you missed in History Glass blog

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Speaker 1: on the how stuff works dot com home page