Summary:
In 1887, Nellie Bly accepted an assignment from publisher Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and went undercover at the lunatic asylum on Blackwell Island, America’s first municipal mental hospital. Calling herself “Nellie Brown,” she was able to convince policemen, a judge, and a series of doctors of her madness with a few well-practiced facial expressions of derangement.
My take: 3 looks
More of a report than a book or novella, this is a very fast read, and worth a few hours in an afternoon.
Normally relegated to writing fluff pieces on women’s issues such as fashion, cooking, and society life, Bly felt herself more and more dissatisfied. She talked her way onto the staff of Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper in New York, and was a mere 23 years old when she had herself committed to a New York mental institution in order to report on the treatment from an insider’s view.
The conditions were far from ideal, and the coarseness, lack of empathy, and, at times, downright cruelty of the hospital staff added to the bleak lives of the women who found themselves committed. Rotten food, no heat in the midst of winter, coupled with inadequate warm clothing, led many women who were not already sick to develop fevers and and serious illnesses. Baths were given without heated water, not changing it after bathers, and hard scrubbing by attendants. Towels were reused by women without being cleaned, regardless of skin ailments and open sores.
All of this caused an uproar when it was published in a two-part presentation. Positive changes were made, including additional funding.
Bly got to know several of the women in the ten days that she was with them, and came to care about their fate. She was very aware that she was able to go back to a “normal” life at the conclusion of her stay, but these women were at the mercy of the system.
In all of this, Nellie Bly broke down boundaries for women in the publishing industry, but more importantly, she was a harbinger of investigative reporting. Stating that she “wanted to do something no girl has done before,” I’d say that she definitely did.
Recommended.
