Into The Madhouse: The Complete Reporting Surrounding Nellie Bly's Expose of the Blackwell's Island Insane Asylum
About this ebook
“No young writer has ever leaped into such sudden fame in New York as Miss Nellie Bly, who did that lunatic asylum exposure for the New York World. She is a bright, handsome young lady, less than twenty years old, who came to the metropolis from Pittsburg a few months ago, and pluckily undertook to make her living by newspaper work in the great city. She deceived the expert physicians who examined her, and pronouncing her insane they consigned her to one of the insane wards of Blackwell’s Island, where she dwelt among horrors for ten days, noting down in her quick brain all that she saw and heard. The old song says:
“Nellie Bly, shuts her eye
When she goes to sleep,”
but she seems never to have closed a peeper during the whole of that trying ordeal. Her narrative of the horrors of the place—the indifference of doctors, the neglect and cruelty of the nurses and the tortures inflicted upon the unfortunates, is told in a plain, straightforward manner and attests at once to her humanity and truth.” - November, 1887
This volume collects for the first time ever all the reporting surrounding Nellie Bly’s blockbuster undercover story that launched her to fame, including all three versions from her own pen:
- Bly's initial account across three articles for the New York World
- Bly's bestselling book Ten Days In A Mad-House
- Bly's long-form 1889 article Among The Mad for Godey's Lady's Book
Also included are over two dozen contemporary articles relating to Bly's madhouse stay, including the attempt by the New York Sun to scoop Bly on her own story! With a foreword by David Blixt, author of What Girls Are Good For: A Novel Of Nellie Bly, The Master Of Verona, and Her Majesty's Will.
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About the author
Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth “Pink” Cochran. Her father, a man of considerable wealth, served for many years as judge of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. He lived on a large estate called Cochran’s Mills, which took its name from him.
Being in reduced circumstances after her father’s death, her mother remarried, only to divorce Jack Ford a few years later. The family then moved to Pittsburg, where a twenty-year-old Pink read a column in the Pittsburg Dispatch entitled “What Girls Are Good For.” Enraged at the sexist and classist tone, she wrote a furious letter to the editor. Impressed, the editor engaged her to do special work for the newspaper as a reporter, writing under the name “Nellie Bly.” Her first series of stories, “Our Workshop Girls,” brought life and sympathy to working women in Pittsburgh.
A year later she went as a correspondent to Mexico, where she remained six months, sending back weekly articles. After her return she longed for broader fields, and so moved to New York. The story of her attempt to make a place for herself, or to find an opening, was a long one of disappointment, until at last she gained the attention of the New York World.
Her first achievement for them was the exposure of the Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum, in which she spent ten days, and two days in the Bellevue Insane Asylum. The story created a great sensation, making “Nellie Bly” a household name.
After three years of doing work as a “stunt girl” at the World, Bly conceived the idea of making a trip around the world in less time than had been done by Phileas Fogg, the fictitious hero of Jules Verne’s famous novel. In fact, she made it in 72 days. On her return in January 1890 she was greeted by ovations all the way from San Francisco to New York.
She then paused her reporting career to write eleven novels, which were lost for over a century until discovered by Author David Blixt. Bly returned to the World after a three year hiatus. In 1895 she married millionaire industrialist Robert Seaman, and a couple years later retired from journalism to take an interest in his factories.
She returned to journalism almost twenty years later, reporting on World War I from behind the Austrian lines. Upon returning to New York, she spent the last years of her life doing both reporting and charity work, finding homes for orphans. She died of pneumonia in 1922.
David Blixt is an author and actor living in Chicago. An Artistic Associate of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival, where he serves as the resident Fight Director, he is also co-founder of A Crew Of Patches Theatre Company, a Shakespearean repertory based in Chicago. He has acted and done fight work for the Goodman Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Steppenwolf, the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington DC, and First Folio Shakespeare, among many others.
As a writer, his Star-Cross’d series of novels place the characters of Shakespeare’s Italian plays in their historical setting, drawing in figures such as Dante, Giotto, and Petrarch to create an epic of warfare, intrigue, and romance. In Her Majesty’s Will, Shakespeare himself becomes a character as Blixt explores Shakespeare’s “Lost Years,” teaming the young Will with the dark and devious Kit Marlowe to hilarious effect. In the Colossus series, Blixt brings first century Rome and Judea to life as he relates the fall of Jerusalem, the building of the Colosseum, and the coming of Christianity to Rome. And in his bestselling Nellie Bly series, he explores the amazing life and adventures of America’s premier undercover reporter. In 2019 David discovered eleven lost novels by Bly herself.
David continues to write, act, and travel. He has ridden camels around the pyramids at Giza, been thrown out of the Vatican Museum and been blessed by John-Paul II, scaled the Roman ramp at Masada, crashed a hot-air balloon, leapt from cliffs on small Greek islands, dined with Counts and criminals, climbed to the top of Mount Sinai, and sat in the Prince’s chair in Verona’s palace. But David is happiest at his desk, weaving tales of brilliant people in dire and dramatic straits. Living with his wife and two children, David describes himself as “actor, author, father, husband - in reverse order.”
