Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran on May 5, 1864, Nellie Bly was known as an adventurous, bold and rebellious writer who supported her family after her father died. After she read an article by the “Quiet Observer” in the Pittsburgh Dispatch that labeled women who worked outside the home as a “monstrosity”… and Bly wasn’t having that.
She wrote an angry letter (mind you, this was before social media) and she wrote so well that they offered her a job and gave her the nom de plume “Nellie Bly”. She soon became a prominent journalist, blazing the trail in investigative journalism. Her first article spotlighted disenfranchised working girls in Pittsburgh and worked as a foreign correspondent in Mexico after living there on her own. But after her editors tried to push her to write more about fashion and flowery things that would stereotypically be expected of women, she said “Peace out!” and headed to New York.
At the age of 23, she went undercover at a mental institution located in Blackwell Island to expose the horrible conditions of the hospital and cruel treatment of patients in her report titled “Ten Days in a Mad House”. This eventually led to a push to improve the hospital. Her skills led her to interview Susan B. Anthony and she was celebrated for traveling around the world in 72 days, beating the fictitious Phileas Fogg from Around the World in 80 Days.
Bly was journalists who broke the mold and was a voice for the working class that called out corruption from people in power – an impact that we still feel today.
