September 26, 2024 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Nellie Bly was a writer, industrialist, inventor, and a charity worker who was widely known for her record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days in 1890.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
And we returned to our American stories, and up next
a history story. And of course, all of our stories
about American history are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, where you can go to learn
all the things that are good in life and all
the things that are beautiful in life. If you can't
get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with her
free and terrific online courses.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Go to Hillsdale dot edu.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
In this story, you're about to meet someone you've probably
heard of, but probably don't know. She set the world
record for the fastest trip around the world in the
year eighteen ninety and she did it in just seventy
two days. We're talking about Nellie Bly. She wrote a
book about her experiences, but in the life story of
(00:55):
Nellie Bly, this was just a chapter in the middle.
Nellie was born as Elizabeth Jane Cochrane in cochranes Mill, Pennsylvania.
Her Irish immigrant family had been successful enough to have
the town named after her father. Michael Cochrane had ten
children with his first wife, and after she died, he
(01:17):
remarried and had five more, including Nelly. When Michael died,
he left no will protecting his second wife or the
then six year old Nelly. The next years were rough.
Nellie's mother married and then divorced an abusive alcoholic. Nellie
went to school to become a teacher, but couldn't afford
(01:38):
tuition past the first semester. He spent the next few
years working odd jobs around a boarding house. But her
real break came when she read in Exchange in the
Pittsburgh Dispatch. An anxious father wrote in to ask Pittsburgh's
most popular columnist what he should do about his five
(01:59):
unmarried daughters. The columnist Erasmus Wilson wrote a reply titled
what girls are good for? According to Wilson, women belonged
in the home as a working woman was surely a monstrosity,
and he went further to suggest, possibly in jest, that
Americans might just have to kill baby girls.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Nelly was not amused.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
She wrote a fiery response under the pseudonym lonely orphaned Girl.
The papers additor recognized a good thing when he saw it,
so he took out an ad asking the mysterious writer
to visit his office. When she did, George Madden offered
her a job, and this was also when she took
her pen name of Nellie Bly after the Stephen Foster song.
(02:50):
Nellie covered what the media ignored. She took a job
in a factory and wrote a series of articles on
the conditions facing poor working girls and women, and a
twist straight out of Will Ferrell's Anchorman. The paper's editors
saw this fearless investigator and decided she would be put
to better use writing about fashion and flower shows for
the women's pages. Nellie somehow talked her way out of
(03:14):
this to become the paper's foreign correspondent in Mexico. There
she wrote about the everyday lives of Mexicans, but took
a special interest in how the dictator Dias had a
habit of throwing journalists in prison. So naturally, the government
threatened her with just that unless she left back in Pittsburgh.
The editors weren't going to let her wiggle out of
(03:35):
the Women's pages again, So Nellie did what you might expect.
She left her boss a note saying simply, I'm off
for New York.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Look out for me.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Blid Nellie spent six months, spendingless trying to break into
the New York scene. She finally got a meeting at
Joseph Pulitzer's New York World in the late eighteen eighties
New york One developing issue was the treatment of patients
in the city's mental institutions, and what might have been
an attempt to brush off this persistent little girl from Pennsylvania.
(04:09):
The New York World's managing editor, John Cockerel, asked Nellie
to write a piece on one of New York's major asylums. Well,
Nellie was game. Actually, that might be a bit of
an understatement. She stopped bathing and brushing her teeth. She
found the most tattered clothes she could. She stayed awake
(04:30):
all night, making faces at herself in the mirror, taking
notes like far away expressions, look crazy. Posing as a
Cuban immigrant Nellie moreno. She checked into a boarding house
and let loose her best crazy act. The staff and
other residents bought it, so did the police, a judge,
(04:52):
and several doctors at Bellevue Hospital's psyche board. Her impression
was so good, in fact, that other newspapers at the
time wrote articles about this so called mysterious waif with
the wild hunted look in her eyes, declaring Nelly bly
to be positively demented. The doctors sent her off to
a women's lunatic asylum on Blackwell's Island. This was America's
(05:16):
first municipal mental health hospital, opened in eighteen thirty nine.
Others had reported on conditions in the asylum, including Charles Dickens,
who described it as a very painful experience, but no
journalist was as courageous or creative as Nellie blythe From
(05:36):
the inside, Nelly witnessed the plight of patients surrounded by
oblivious doctors and orderlies who choked, beat and harassed patience.
Some weren't insane at all, just recent immigrant women who
didn't speak English. Regarding the daily conditions of the committed women,
Nelly wrote this quote, what accepting torture would produce insanity
(05:56):
quicker than this treatment. Take a perfectly sane and healthy woman.
Shut her up and make her sit from six am
to eight pm on straight back benches. Do not allow
her to talk or move during these hours.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Give her no.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Reading and let her know nothing of the world or
its doings. Give her bad food and harsh treatment, and
see how long it will take to make her insane.
Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.
When the patients weren't kept in isolation, other so called
therapies weren't necessarily better. Quote, my teeth chattered and my
(06:32):
limbs were goose flushed with blue and cold. Suddenly I
got one after another, three buckets of water over my head,
ice cold water too into my eyes, my ears, my nose,
my mouth. I think I experienced the sensation of drowning
as they dragged me, gasping, shivering and quaking from the tub.
For once, I did look insane. The funny thing is
(06:56):
that as soon as Nellie entered the asylum, she largely
dropped her in act, but the staff only took that
as a further confirmation of her craziness. After ten days
locked up, Nellie's paper sent a lawyer to get her out,
and she went to work. Her first article ran just
two days later. The doctors and others responsible hemmed and hawd,
(07:18):
trying every line in the book.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
To excuse the inexcusable.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
A grand jury launched its own investigation and asked Nellie
to assist, because presumably few of them wanted to experience
the ransom food forced feeding experience firsthand. The story made
waves across America, driving broad reforms in how asylums were
run and patients were screened. Nellie went on to write
several investigative and editorial series on the conditions in New
(07:44):
York jails and corruption among legislators. By eighteen eighty nine,
she wanted a change of pace. Inspired by Jules verne
novel Around the World in eighty Days, Nellie told her
editors she wanted to have a try at just such
an adventure. Her boss was intrigued, but the people with
the check books less so no one had attempted to
(08:06):
make such a trip in so little time. Besides, she's
an unchaper owned woman. When some of the newspaper management
seized on that point, Nellie said, well, very well, start
the man, and I'll start the same day for some
other newspaper.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
And beat him. So Nellie got the green light.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
In addition to the dress she was wearing, Nelly packed
a coat, several changes of underwear, a small bag of toil, trees,
and some banknotes and gold.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
As she later wrote, it will be seen that if one.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Is traveling simply for the sake of traveling, and not
for the purpose of impressing one's fellow passengers, the problem
of baggage becomes.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
A simple one.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
She departed Hoboken, New Jersey, and journeyed by ship, rail, horse,
rickshaw and burrow. Along the way, she visited Jules Verne
himself in France, stopped by a leper colony in China,
and bought that monkey in Singapore. Thanks to telegraphs submarine cables,
she fouled dispatches along the way. In one of the
great media publicity stunts of the era, she made it
(09:03):
home in seventy two days, six hours, eleven minutes, and
fourteen seconds, beating both the titular eighty days in her
own target time of seventy five. Back in America, Nelly
married and again working in her husband's business, the Ironclad
Manufacturing Company, which made everything from milk cans to oil drums.
(09:24):
She received patents for her new ideas of a milk
container and stacking garbage cans. When the company went under
because of her embezzling employees, Nellie went back to journalism.
She died at age fifty seven, as another fearless American innovator.
Our words are inadequate to describe. Perhaps we should remember
(09:44):
this remarkable woman not just by the fake insanity or
her pet monkey but by some words that launched her career.
Here is some of her advice to that anxious father
wondering what to do about his poor helpless daughters.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Many wealthy and great men could be pointed out who
started in the depths, But where are the many women.
Let a youth start as errand boy, and he will
work his way up until he is one of the firm.
Girls are just as smart, a great deal quicker to learn.
Why then, can't they do the same, she continued, Here
would be a good feel for believers in women's rights.
(10:21):
Let them forego their lecturing and writing and go to work.
More work, less talk. Take some girls that have ability,
procure for them situations, start them on their way, and
by doing so, accomplish more than by years of talking.
Nellie Blygh, what a story, What a classic American story?
(10:44):
Here on our American stories,
And we returned to our American stories, and up next
a history story. And of course, all of our stories
about American history are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, where you can go to learn
all the things that are good in life and all
the things that are beautiful in life. If you can't
get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with her
free and terrific online courses.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Go to Hillsdale dot edu.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
In this story, you're about to meet someone you've probably
heard of, but probably don't know. She set the world
record for the fastest trip around the world in the
year eighteen ninety and she did it in just seventy
two days. We're talking about Nellie Bly. She wrote a
book about her experiences, but in the life story of
(00:55):
Nellie Bly, this was just a chapter in the middle.
Nellie was born as Elizabeth Jane Cochrane in cochranes Mill, Pennsylvania.
Her Irish immigrant family had been successful enough to have
the town named after her father. Michael Cochrane had ten
children with his first wife, and after she died, he
(01:17):
remarried and had five more, including Nelly. When Michael died,
he left no will protecting his second wife or the
then six year old Nelly. The next years were rough.
Nellie's mother married and then divorced an abusive alcoholic. Nellie
went to school to become a teacher, but couldn't afford
(01:38):
tuition past the first semester. He spent the next few
years working odd jobs around a boarding house. But her
real break came when she read in Exchange in the
Pittsburgh Dispatch. An anxious father wrote in to ask Pittsburgh's
most popular columnist what he should do about his five
(01:59):
unmarried daughters. The columnist Erasmus Wilson wrote a reply titled
what girls are good for? According to Wilson, women belonged
in the home as a working woman was surely a monstrosity,
and he went further to suggest, possibly in jest, that
Americans might just have to kill baby girls.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Nelly was not amused.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
She wrote a fiery response under the pseudonym lonely orphaned Girl.
The papers additor recognized a good thing when he saw it,
so he took out an ad asking the mysterious writer
to visit his office. When she did, George Madden offered
her a job, and this was also when she took
her pen name of Nellie Bly after the Stephen Foster song.
(02:50):
Nellie covered what the media ignored. She took a job
in a factory and wrote a series of articles on
the conditions facing poor working girls and women, and a
twist straight out of Will Ferrell's Anchorman. The paper's editors
saw this fearless investigator and decided she would be put
to better use writing about fashion and flower shows for
the women's pages. Nellie somehow talked her way out of
(03:14):
this to become the paper's foreign correspondent in Mexico. There
she wrote about the everyday lives of Mexicans, but took
a special interest in how the dictator Dias had a
habit of throwing journalists in prison. So naturally, the government
threatened her with just that unless she left back in Pittsburgh.
The editors weren't going to let her wiggle out of
(03:35):
the Women's pages again, So Nellie did what you might expect.
She left her boss a note saying simply, I'm off
for New York.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Look out for me.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Blid Nellie spent six months, spendingless trying to break into
the New York scene. She finally got a meeting at
Joseph Pulitzer's New York World in the late eighteen eighties
New york One developing issue was the treatment of patients
in the city's mental institutions, and what might have been
an attempt to brush off this persistent little girl from Pennsylvania.
(04:09):
The New York World's managing editor, John Cockerel, asked Nellie
to write a piece on one of New York's major asylums. Well,
Nellie was game. Actually, that might be a bit of
an understatement. She stopped bathing and brushing her teeth. She
found the most tattered clothes she could. She stayed awake
(04:30):
all night, making faces at herself in the mirror, taking
notes like far away expressions, look crazy. Posing as a
Cuban immigrant Nellie moreno. She checked into a boarding house
and let loose her best crazy act. The staff and
other residents bought it, so did the police, a judge,
(04:52):
and several doctors at Bellevue Hospital's psyche board. Her impression
was so good, in fact, that other newspapers at the
time wrote articles about this so called mysterious waif with
the wild hunted look in her eyes, declaring Nelly bly
to be positively demented. The doctors sent her off to
a women's lunatic asylum on Blackwell's Island. This was America's
(05:16):
first municipal mental health hospital, opened in eighteen thirty nine.
Others had reported on conditions in the asylum, including Charles Dickens,
who described it as a very painful experience, but no
journalist was as courageous or creative as Nellie blythe From
(05:36):
the inside, Nelly witnessed the plight of patients surrounded by
oblivious doctors and orderlies who choked, beat and harassed patience.
Some weren't insane at all, just recent immigrant women who
didn't speak English. Regarding the daily conditions of the committed women,
Nelly wrote this quote, what accepting torture would produce insanity
(05:56):
quicker than this treatment. Take a perfectly sane and healthy woman.
Shut her up and make her sit from six am
to eight pm on straight back benches. Do not allow
her to talk or move during these hours.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Give her no.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Reading and let her know nothing of the world or
its doings. Give her bad food and harsh treatment, and
see how long it will take to make her insane.
Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.
When the patients weren't kept in isolation, other so called
therapies weren't necessarily better. Quote, my teeth chattered and my
(06:32):
limbs were goose flushed with blue and cold. Suddenly I
got one after another, three buckets of water over my head,
ice cold water too into my eyes, my ears, my nose,
my mouth. I think I experienced the sensation of drowning
as they dragged me, gasping, shivering and quaking from the tub.
For once, I did look insane. The funny thing is
(06:56):
that as soon as Nellie entered the asylum, she largely
dropped her in act, but the staff only took that
as a further confirmation of her craziness. After ten days
locked up, Nellie's paper sent a lawyer to get her out,
and she went to work. Her first article ran just
two days later. The doctors and others responsible hemmed and hawd,
(07:18):
trying every line in the book.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
To excuse the inexcusable.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
A grand jury launched its own investigation and asked Nellie
to assist, because presumably few of them wanted to experience
the ransom food forced feeding experience firsthand. The story made
waves across America, driving broad reforms in how asylums were
run and patients were screened. Nellie went on to write
several investigative and editorial series on the conditions in New
(07:44):
York jails and corruption among legislators. By eighteen eighty nine,
she wanted a change of pace. Inspired by Jules verne
novel Around the World in eighty Days, Nellie told her
editors she wanted to have a try at just such
an adventure. Her boss was intrigued, but the people with
the check books less so no one had attempted to
(08:06):
make such a trip in so little time. Besides, she's
an unchaper owned woman. When some of the newspaper management
seized on that point, Nellie said, well, very well, start
the man, and I'll start the same day for some
other newspaper.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
And beat him. So Nellie got the green light.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
In addition to the dress she was wearing, Nelly packed
a coat, several changes of underwear, a small bag of toil, trees,
and some banknotes and gold.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
As she later wrote, it will be seen that if one.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Is traveling simply for the sake of traveling, and not
for the purpose of impressing one's fellow passengers, the problem
of baggage becomes.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
A simple one.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
She departed Hoboken, New Jersey, and journeyed by ship, rail, horse,
rickshaw and burrow. Along the way, she visited Jules Verne
himself in France, stopped by a leper colony in China,
and bought that monkey in Singapore. Thanks to telegraphs submarine cables,
she fouled dispatches along the way. In one of the
great media publicity stunts of the era, she made it
(09:03):
home in seventy two days, six hours, eleven minutes, and
fourteen seconds, beating both the titular eighty days in her
own target time of seventy five. Back in America, Nelly
married and again working in her husband's business, the Ironclad
Manufacturing Company, which made everything from milk cans to oil drums.
(09:24):
She received patents for her new ideas of a milk
container and stacking garbage cans. When the company went under
because of her embezzling employees, Nellie went back to journalism.
She died at age fifty seven, as another fearless American innovator.
Our words are inadequate to describe. Perhaps we should remember
(09:44):
this remarkable woman not just by the fake insanity or
her pet monkey but by some words that launched her career.
Here is some of her advice to that anxious father
wondering what to do about his poor helpless daughters.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Many wealthy and great men could be pointed out who
started in the depths, But where are the many women.
Let a youth start as errand boy, and he will
work his way up until he is one of the firm.
Girls are just as smart, a great deal quicker to learn.
Why then, can't they do the same, she continued, Here
would be a good feel for believers in women's rights.
(10:21):
Let them forego their lecturing and writing and go to work.
More work, less talk. Take some girls that have ability,
procure for them situations, start them on their way, and
by doing so, accomplish more than by years of talking.
Nellie Blygh, what a story, What a classic American story?
(10:44):
Here on our American stories,
Host
Lee Habeeb
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