Nellie Bly: The Journalist Who Faked Insanity to Expose an Asylum and Won

In 1887, a 23-year-old journalist walked into a New York City boarding house, spent the night awake practicing her most deranged facial expressions in a mirror, and then started acting so erratically that the other residents called the police. She was committed to one of the worst psychiatric institutions in the country. That was the plan. Her name was Nellie Bly, and she had ten days to find out what was happening inside the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island.

What she found changed American journalism and mental health policy permanently.

How She Got In

Bly’s real name was Elizabeth Cochran. She grew up in Pennsylvania, started writing for the Pittsburgh Dispatch, and moved to New York in 1887 determined to work for a bigger paper. For months, nobody would hire her. Eventually, she talked her way into the offices of the New York World, the newspaper run by Joseph Pulitzer, and left with an assignment that most reporters would have declined immediately.

Getting herself committed turned out to be disturbingly easy. Bly checked into a boarding house for women, stayed awake all night to give herself that hollow-eyed look, and started behaving strangely enough to alarm the other residents. Within a few days, the police escorted her to a judge, a judge sent her to Bellevue Hospital, and a doctor at Bellevue diagnosed her with dementia. Nobody at any point suspected she was faking. A boat then took her to Blackwell’s Island, in the East River, which was built to hold about 1,000 patients and was currently crammed with over 1,600.

What She Found Inside

Once inside, Bly immediately stopped pretending to be insane. She behaved completely normally, spoke clearly, explained that she should not be there, and asked repeatedly to be examined and released. None of it worked. In fact, the more lucid she appeared, the more the staff took it as evidence of her illness. Her requests for release were noted in her file as symptoms.

The conditions inside were genuinely horrifying. Nurses beat patients who did not comply with orders. The food consisted of rotten meat, moldy bread, spoiled broth, and water so contaminated Bly refused to drink it. Staff gave patients ice-cold baths in the same filthy water shared by dozens of other people, then forced them to sit in wet clothes for hours afterward. Patients spent up to 12 hours a day sitting in silence on hard benches, forbidden from speaking or moving. Some were tied together with ropes. There was no heating. Bugs and rats moved freely through the facility, including through the food.

More troubling still, Bly found that many of the women inside were not mentally ill at all. Several were recent immigrants who spoke little or no English and had no way to communicate with the doctors evaluating them. Others had ended up there simply for being poor and alone, with no family to advocate for them. The asylum had effectively become a warehouse for women that society had no better plan for.

Meanwhile, the doctors examining them were not paying much attention. Bly later wrote that the physician who certified her as insane spent most of her evaluation staring at the nurse assisting him.

What Happened After

The New York World arranged Bly’s release after ten days. Her two-part series, “Behind Asylum Bars” and “Inside the Madhouse,” ran in October 1887 and became an immediate sensation. The articles were later published as a book called Ten Days in a Mad-House, which remains in print.

The response was swift. A grand jury launched its own investigation and took testimony directly from Bly. As a result, the city increased the budget of the Department of Public Charities and Corrections by nearly $1 million, which at the time was an enormous sum. Reforms followed quickly: better food, improved sanitation, translators hired specifically for patients who spoke other languages, and the dismissal of the most abusive staff. The asylum eventually shut down entirely in 1894.

Bly went on to become one of the most famous journalists in America. In 1889, she traveled around the world in 72 days, beating the fictional record from Jules Verne‘s Around the World in 80 Days. She investigated corrupt politicians, abusive factories, and a scheme to sell unwanted babies. She invented and patented a new type of stacking barrel.