Friday, March 9, 2007 9:37 PM CST
Nellie Bly: Much more than a global traveler
By HAL MALEHORN
In 1873 Jules Verne published his book, “Around the World in Eighty Days.” In its pages one Phileas Fogg circled the globe in that same span of time. And in 1956, actor David Niven (as Phileas Fogg) did it again n this time on the motion picture screen.
But in 1889 a real-life female newspaper reporter, Nellie Bly, accomplished what neither the fictive Phileas Fogg nor his movie impersonator, had achieved: she went around the world in only 72 days.
Still, however much publicity that singular feat generated, Nellie Bly was otherwise an accomplished investigative reporter. And she achieved widespread respect in an era when women were seldom employed outside the home -- much less encouraged to travel alone. More remarkably, Nellie was only in her teens when she began her journalistic career.
Nellie Bly was actually the pen name chosen by Elizabeth Cochrane, born in Cochran’s Mills, Pennsylvania, in May of 1867. As a child, Elizabeth had fanciful dreams, adding the letter “e” to her surname as a touch of elegance. Growing up with six brothers, Elizabeth fearlessly climbed, rode, swam, and raced alongside the boys. And she always hoped for adventures much farther afield.
In school, Elizabeth penned stories of heroines overcoming the opposition of males. And after her older siblings had left home, she moved in with a sister in Pittsburg (as it was then spelled), hoping to make a living as a writer.
There Elizabeth submitted a variety of articles to the local press n but without success. One day an article, “What Girls Are Good For,” appeared in the Pittsburg “Dispatch.” In it a male author took a firm stand against hiring women to work outside the home. A woman was expected to remain at home, caring for children and spouse, or parents, he said
Indignant at the chauvinism the article expressed, Elizabeth wrote a rebuttal, and mailed it anonymously to the editor, George Madden. Her rebuke fairly sizzled with logic and fire. Madden wished to know who had offered such an audacious opinion, and so advertised for its author in the Dispatch the following day.
After receiving a letter identifying the author as Elizabeth Cochrane, Madden challenged her, by mail, to write an article entitled “Girls and Their Spheres in Life.” Again, the article Elizabeth submitted was ardent and persuasive.
Once more Madden was impressed, and invited Elizabeth to come to his office. A few days later the door to the city room flung open and a girl, not yet eighteen, entered: “I am Elizabeth Cochrane,” she announced. “You sent for me.“
After pleasantries were exchanged, Madden suggested she choose another topic to explore. But when Elizabeth replied, “Divorce,” Madden was startled. “What do you know about divorce?” he asked.
“Never mind,” Elizabeth replied. “I’ll write the piece and you can decide how much I know.“
Elizabeth’s article on divorce turned into a compelling series; readers were impressed with her perceptiveness. As yet without a byline, Elizabeth chose to protect her privacy with the pseudonym, “Nellie Bly,” adapted from Stephen Collins Foster’s popular chorus, “Nelly Bly, Nelly Bly, bring the broom along.“
Displaying insights and a maturity well beyond her years, Nellie undertook other urban assignments: she fearlessly frequented, unescorted, the poorest sections of the city. She reported on firetraps, garbage collection, and rat infestations. She wrote of factories where women did piecework without benefit of adequate heat or light. She exposed the use of child labor in dangerous mills.
Nellie’s factual pieces unloosed an outpouring of letters of righteous indignation. And readers called for solutions to the problems she had described.
And then, in passing an art gallery one day, Nellie saw a picture of Aztec ruins; this rekindled in her the urge to travel afar. She proposed to Madden that she tour Mexico and send back articles detailing the people, their land, and their culture. However, Madden was difficult to persuade, as the dangers to an unescorted female weighed upon his mind.
Still, Nellie persisted, and Madden reluctantly agreed. Nellie was not yet nineteen.
For six months Nellie roamed Mexico solo, sending back descriptions of the splendors n and of the poor. She told of palaces and prisons, of parades and peons, of haciendas and huts.
Having safely returned to Pittsburgh (as it was by then spelled), Nellie broadened her hopes and her horizons. In 1887 she moved to New York City, in quest of a job with Joseph Pulitzer’s New York “World.” Employing her usually single-mindedness, she wangled a position. Then she proposed that she feign insanity, for the purpose of being committed to (and reporting on) Bellevue’s mental ward, and the insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island.
Housed in a run-down lodging room, and presenting herself as the fictitious deranged “Marina Moreno” from Cuba, Nellie’s pretended fighting, crying, clawing and babbling readily convinced a series of doctors that she indeed needed medical help. However, the treatment used on most inmates (she later reported), often consisted of beatings, ice-water baths, isolation rooms, and chains. In addition, floors were filthy, combs lice-ridden, bread moldy.
Terrible in its facts, Nellie’s series appearing in the World aroused her readers’ ire. A veil had been torn from one of the nation’s most shameful subjects. And all by a reporter yet a girl. Major societal improvements were soon underway.
Similarly, Nellie exposed the city’s sweatshops, lobbyists’ graft, and blemished dispensaries, soup kitchens, dance halls and jails.
Nellie’s round-the-world jaunt was almost an anti-climax. Against the better judgment of her editor, she packed a single bag and set off, alone, by ship and by rail. Neither discomforts, nor quarantines, nor monsoons, nor blizzards deterred her. In sum, she circumnavigated the globe with eight days to spare.
Public acclaim, a lucrative lecture tour, and further investigative reporting followed her return. Only marriage prompted her to quit writing.
When her husband died, she managed his hardware enterprise, and then wrote newspaper columns for New York’s “Evening Journal.” She died in 1922. By then, of course, many other women were employed in pressrooms. Elizabeth Cochrane, by wielding Nelly Bly’s journalistic broom, had helped sweep aside gender bias and had scrubbed up several social ills.
Hal Malehorn portrays Alfred Balch at Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site.
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