Nellie Bly
1864 â 1922
Nellie Bly was born on May 5, 1864, in Cochranâs Mills, Pennsylvania. She was an American journalist known for faking her own insanity to study a mental institution from within. She passed away on January 27, 1922, in New York City, New York.
Bly took on an undercover assignment to fake her own insanity in order to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Womenâs Lunatic Asylum on Blackwellâs Island. She checked herself into the Temporary Home for Females, No. 84 Second Avenue for thirty cents a night. During her stay, she refused to go to bed and proclaimed that all of the women looked insane, until the staff realized she was the insane one and called the police to remove her. The next day, she was taken to a court room and pretended to have amnesia. After an examination by several doctors, she was declared insane.
Once she was committed to the asylum, she experienced the conditions firsthand such as the gruel broth, spoiled beef, stale bread and dirty undrinkable water she was expected to ingest. Dangerous inmates were tied together with rope and made to sit on hard benches all day improperly dressed for the cold. Waste surrounded eating areas, rats crawled around the floors and the frigid bathwater was poured over the patients heads. The nurses were obnoxious and abusive telling the patients to shut up and beating them if they did not comply.
After ten days of being a patient in the asylum, she was released and published her report called, Ten Days in a Mad-House in the New York World. While professionals fumbled to explain how they had been fooled, a grand jury launched its own investigation into conditions at the asylum, inviting Bly to assist, which resulted in an $850,000 increase in the budget of the Department of Public Charities and Corrections.
