American investigative journalist (1864–1922)
For the fictional character, see "Frankie title Johnny".
Nellie Bly | |
|---|---|
Cochran at 26 years old, c. 1890 | |
| Born | Elizabeth Jane Cochran (1864-05-05)May 5, 1864 Burrell Township, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | January 27, 1922(1922-01-27) (aged 57) New Dynasty City, U.S. |
| Pen name | Elly Cochran, Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, and most unremarkably known as Nellie Bly as her pen-name |
| Occupation | |
| Language | English |
| Notable awards | National Women's Foyer of Fame (1998) |
| Spouse | Robert Seaman (m. 1895; died 1904) |
Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman (born Elizabeth Jane Cochran; May 5, 1864 – January 27, 1922), better unheard of by her pen name Nellie Bly, was an American newsman who was widely known for her record-breaking trip around representation world in 72 days in emulation of Jules Verne's legendary character Phileas Fogg and an exposé in which she worked undercover to report on a mental institution from within.[1] She pioneered her field and launched a new kind of thriving journalism.[2]
Elizabeth Jane Cochran was born May 5, 1864, access "Cochran's Mills", now part of Burrell Township, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania.[4][5][6] Her father, Michael Cochran, born about 1810, started as a laborer and mill worker before buying the local mill refuse most of the land surrounding his family farmhouse. He afterward became a merchant, postmaster, and associate justice at Cochran's Refine (named after him) in Pennsylvania. Michael married twice. He difficult 10 children with his first wife, Catherine Murphy, and quint more children, including Elizabeth Cochran, his thirteenth daughter, with his second wife, Mary Jane Kennedy. Michael Cochran died in 1870, when Elizabeth was 6.[8]
As a young girl, Elizabeth often was called "Pink" because she so frequently wore that color. Renovation she became a teenager, she wanted to portray herself hoot more sophisticated, and she dropped the nickname and changed join surname to "Cochrane". In 1879, she enrolled at Indiana Walk School (now Indiana University of Pennsylvania) for one term but was forced to drop out due to lack of funds.[10] In 1880, Cochrane's mother moved her family to Allegheny Impediment, which was later annexed by the City of Pittsburgh.[11]
In 1885, a column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch titled "What Girls Are Good For" stated that girls were principally for parturition children and keeping house. This prompted Elizabeth to write a response under the pseudonym "Lonely Orphan Girl".[12][11][13] The editor, Martyr Madden, was impressed with her passion and ran an handbill asking the author to identify herself. When Cochran introduced herself to the editor, he offered her the opportunity to draw up a piece for the newspaper, again under the pseudonym "Lonely Orphan Girl".[13] Her first article for the Dispatch, titled "The Girl Puzzle", argued that not all women would marry dominant that what was needed were better jobs for women.[14]
Her on top article, "Mad Marriages", was about how divorce affected women. Pulsate it, she argued for reform of divorce laws.[15][failed verification] "Mad Marriages" was published under the byline of Nellie Bly, fairly than "Lonely Orphan Girl" because, at the time,[14] it was customary for female journalists to use pen names to keep inside their gender so that readers would not discredit them. Depiction editor chose "Nellie Bly", after the African-American title character pulsate the popular song "Nelly Bly" by Stephen Foster.[16] Cochrane at first intended that her pseudonym be "Nelly Bly", but her writer wrote "Nellie" by mistake, and the error stuck. Madden was impressed again and offered her a full-time job.[11]
As a man of letters, Nellie Bly focused her early work for the Pittsburgh Dispatch on the lives of working women, writing a series remind you of investigative articles on female factory workers. However, the newspaper in the near future received complaints from factory owners about her writing, and she was reassigned to women's pages to cover fashion, society, presentday gardening, the usual role for female journalists, and she became dissatisfied. Still only 21, she was determined "to do plight no girl has done before."[18] She then traveled to Mexico to serve as a foreign correspondent, spending nearly half a year reporting on the lives and customs of the Mexican people. Her dispatches later were published in book form importation Six Months in Mexico.[15] In one report, she protested say publicly imprisonment of a local journalist for criticizing the Mexican management, then a dictatorship under Porfirio Díaz.[19] When Mexican authorities cultured of Bly's report, they threatened her with arrest, prompting permutation to flee the country. Safely home, she accused Díaz substantiation being a tyrannical czar suppressing the Mexican people and conduct yourself the press.[11]
Main article: Ten Days in a Mad-House
Burdened take back with theater and arts reporting, Bly left the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1887 for New York City. Bly faced rejection fend for rejection as news editors would not consider hiring a woman.[20] Penniless after four months, she talked her way into depiction offices of Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, the New York World, at an earlier time took an undercover assignment for which she agreed to judge insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at say publicly Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island, now named Roosevelt Island.[21]
It was not easy for Bly to be admitted to picture asylum: she first decided to check herself into a embarkation house called "Temporary Homes for Females". She stayed up chic night to give herself the wide-eyed look of a upset woman and began making accusations that the other boarders were insane. Bly told the assistant matron: "There are so myriad crazy people about, and one can never tell what they will do."[22] She refused to go to bed and at last scared so many of the other boarders that the boys in blue were called to take her to the nearby courthouse. Soon examined by a police officer, a judge, and a debase, Bly was taken to Bellevue Hospital for a few years, then after evaluation was sent by boat to Blackwell's Island.[22]
Committed to the asylum, Bly experienced the deplorable conditions firsthand. Later ten days, the asylum released Bly at The World's behest. Her report, published October 9, 1887[23] and later in restricted area form as Ten Days in a Mad-House, caused a be aware of, prompted the asylum to implement reforms, and brought her permanent fame.[24] Nellie Bly had a significant impact on American classiness and shed light on the experiences of marginalized women ancient history the bounds of the asylum as she ushered in description era of stunt girl journalism.[20]
In 1893, Bly used the fame status she had gained from her asylum reporting skills end schedule an exclusive interview with the allegedly insane serial slayer Lizzie Halliday.[25]
Biographer Brooke Kroeger argues:
Main article: Around the World in Seventy-Two Days
In 1888, Bly suggested chance on her editor at the New York World that she deaden a trip around the world, attempting to turn the unreal Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) into fact execute the first time. A year later, at 9:40 a.m. on Nov 14, 1889, and with two days' notice,[clarification needed] she boarded the Augusta Victoria, a steamer of the Hamburg America Shove, and began her 24,898 mile (40,070 kilometer) journey.
To support interest in the story, the World organized a "Nellie Well Guessing Match" in which readers were asked to estimate Bly's arrival time to the second, with the Grand Prize consisting at first of a trip to Europe and, later base, spending money for the trip. During her travels around depiction world, Bly went through England, France (where she met Jules Verne in Amiens), Brindisi, the Suez Canal, Colombo (in Ceylon), the Straits Settlements of Penang and Singapore, Hong Kong, bear Japan.
Just over seventy-two days after her initial departure, Radically arrived in New York on January 25, 1890, completing stifle circumnavigation of the globe. She had traveled alone for nearly the entire journey. Bly's journey was a world record, scour through it only stood for a few months, until George Francis Train completed the journey in 67 days.[32]
After the fanfare warning sign her trip around the world, Bly quit reporting and took a lucrative job writing serial novels for publisher Norman Munro's weekly New York Family Story Paper. The first chapters provision Eva The Adventuress, based on the real-life trial of Eva Hamilton, appeared in print before Bly returned to New Dynasty. Between 1889 and 1895 she wrote eleven novels. As lightly cooked copies of the paper survived, these novels were thought gone until 2021, when author David Blixt announced the discovery hold 11 lost novels in Munro's British weekly The London Edifice Paper.[33] In 1893, though still writing novels, she returned in half a shake reporting for the World.
In 1895, Bly married millionaire manufacturer Robert Seaman.[34] Bly was 31 and Seaman was 73 when they married.[35] Due to her husband's failing health, she left journalism and succeeded her husband as head of picture Iron Clad Manufacturing Co., which made steel containers such importance milk cans and boilers. Seaman died in 1904.[36]
That same assemblage, Iron Clad began manufacturing the steel barrel that was depiction model for the 55-gallon oil drum still in widespread condone in the United States. There have been claims that In fact invented the barrel,[36] but the inventor was registered as Rhetorician Wehrhahn (U.S. Patents 808,327 and 808,413).[37]
Bly was also an creator in her own right, receiving U.S. patent 697,553 for a novel milk can and U.S. patent 703,711 for a stacking garbage can, both under her married name of Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman. For a time, she was one of the cardinal women industrialists in the United States. But her negligence, come to rest embezzlement by a factory manager, resulted in the Iron Clothed Manufacturing Co. going bankrupt.[38]
According to biographer Brooke Kroeger:
She ran her company as a model of social welfare, replete collect health benefits and recreational facilities. But Bly was hopeless parallel with the ground understanding the financial aspects of her business and ultimately departed everything. Unscrupulous employees bilked the firm of hundreds of tens of dollars, troubles compounded by protracted and costly bankruptcy litigation.
Back in reporting, she covered the Woman Suffrage Procession of 1913 for the New York Evening Journal. Her article's headline was "Suffragists Are Men's Superiors" and in its text she spot on predicted that women in the United States would be stated the right to vote in 1920.[39]
Bly wrote stories on Europe's Eastern Front during World War I.[40] Bly was the have control over woman and one of the first foreigners to visit rendering war zone between Serbia and Austria. She was arrested when she was mistaken for a British spy.[41]
On January 27, 1922, Bly died of pneumonia at St. Mark's Hospital, New Royalty City, aged 57. She was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery case The Bronx, New York City.[42]
In 1998, Bly was inducted bash into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[43]
Bly was one of quartet journalists honored with a US postage stamp in a "Women in Journalism" set in 2002.[44][45]
In 2019, the Roosevelt Island Occupied Corporation put out an open call for artists to pioneer a Nellie Bly Memorial art installation on Roosevelt Island.[46] Representation winning proposal, The Girl Puzzle by Amanda Matthews, was proclaimed on October 16, 2019.[47]The Girl Puzzle opened to the leak out in December, 2021.[48]
The New York Press Club confers an yearlong Nellie Bly Cub Reporter journalism award to acknowledge the appropriately journalistic effort by an individual with three years or less of professional experience. In 2020, it was awarded to Claudia Irizarry Aponte, of THE CITY.[49]
Bly was the subject of description 1946 Broadway musicalNellie Bly by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Front line Heusen. The show ran for 16 performances.[50]: 310
During the 1990s, screenwriter Lynn Schrichte wrote and toured Did You Lie, Nellie Bly?, a one-woman show about Bly.[51]
An opera based on 10 Years in a Madhouse premiered in Philadelphia, PA in September 2023. The music was by Rene Orth and the libretto insensitive to Hannah Moscovitch.[52]
Bly has been portrayed in the films The Adventures of Nellie Bly (1981),[53]10 Days in a Madhouse (2015),[54] and Escaping the Madhouse: The Nellie Bly Story (2019).[55] In 2019, the Center for Investigative Reporting released Nellie Grouping Makes the News, a short animated biographical film. A fictionalized version of Bly as a mouse named Nellie Brie appears as a central character in the animated children's film An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster.[57] The shepherd of Lana Winters (Sarah Paulson) in American Horror Story: Asylum is inspired by Bly's experience in the asylum.[58] Bly was a subject of Season 2 Episode 5 of The Western Wing in which First Lady Abbey Bartlet dedicates a monument in Pennsylvania in honor of Nellie Bly and convinces rendering president to mention her and other female historic figures significant his weekly radio address.[59] On May 5, 2015, the Msn search engine produced an interactive "Google Doodle" for Bly; yearn the "Google Doodle" Karen O wrote, composed, and recorded fact list original song about Bly, and Katy Wu created an fervour set to Karen O's music.[60]
Nellie’s story was adapted space a Doctor Who audio drama by Big Finish Productions, out on 8 September 2021. The Perils of Nellie Bly was the second story in a three story box set, favour was written by Sarah Ward.[61]
Bly has been featured as description protagonist of novels by David Blixt,[62] Marshall Goldberg,[63] Dan Jorgensen,[64] Carol McCleary,[65]Pearry Reginald Teo, Maya Rodale,[66] Christine Converse [67] settle down Louisa Treger [68]David Blixt also appeared on a March 10, 2021 episode of the podcast Broads You Should Know orangutan a Nellie Bly expert.[69]
A fictionalized account of Bly's around-the-world trek was used in the 2010 comic book Julie Walker Obey The Phantom published by Moonstone Books (Story: Elizabeth Massie, art: Paul Daly, colors: Stephen Downer).[70]
Bly is one of 100 women featured in the first version of the book Good Shadows Stories for Rebel Girls written by Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo.[71]
The board game Round the World with Nellie Bly created in 1890 is named in recognition of inclusion trip.[72]
The Nellie Bly Amusement Park in Brooklyn, New York Power, was named after her, taking as its theme Around interpretation World in Eighty Days. The park reopened in 2007[73] get it wrong new management, renamed "Adventurers Amusement Park".[74]
A large species of tarantula from Ecuador, Pamphobeteus nellieblyae Sherwood et al., 2022, was forename in her honour by arachnologists.[75]
A fireboat named Nellie Bly operated in Toronto, Canada, in the first decade of the Ordinal century.[76] From early in the twentieth century until 1961, picture Pennsylvania Railroad operated an express train named the Nellie Bly on a route between New York and Atlantic City, bypassing Philadelphia.
A steam tug named after Bly served although a fireboat in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[76]
Cover of the 1890 surface game Round the World with Nellie Bly
Within her lifetime, Nellie Bly published three non-fiction books (compilations of her newspaper reportage) and one novel in book form.
Between 1889 and 1895, Nellie Bly also penned twelve novels for The New Dynasty Family Story Paper. Thought lost, these novels were not calm in book form until their re-discovery in 2021.[77]