Every Wednesday I will be sharing a story of an inspirational woman, who has either changed the world for women or is just simply a credit to womankind, in a piece called ‘Wonder Woman Wednesday’.
Aspiring female journalists need look no further for their role model than risk taking investigative journalist Nellie Bly.
Pen name for American born Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, Bly’s work was both ground breaking and record breaking. From going undercover to expose neglect at a women’s asylum, to travelling around the globe in 72 days, and even covering World War I, this lady reads as a definite force to be reckoned with.
Born into a modest labouring family in 1864, the importance of hard work and determination was instilled in Elizabeth from a young age. Education was brief, attending boarding school for just one term, being forced to drop out due to lack of funds. Life started to change for Elizabeth when in 1880, she moved with her family to Pittsburgh.
The fiery 16 year old noticed an article in the local Pittsburgh Dispatch entitled ‘What Girls are Good For’. The article is exactly as it sounds, implying that women are only suited for raising families and keeping a nice clean home.
Instead of begrudgingly accepting this misogynistic view she decided to fight back on behalf of her sex, writing a response to the papers editor, signed ‘Lonely Orphan Girl’. The passionate outcry caught the attention of the editor George Madden, who ran an advert calling for the writer to identify herself.
Madden offered her a job at the newspaper, constraints for women at the time meant she must take a pen name. Writing under her new name Nellie Bly, she began to write investigative pieces on the plight of women in the workplace and their rights in the increasingly industrialised society.
Bly was outspoken and honest, a trait that didn’t lie well with some of the times leading businessmen. After advertisers threatened to withdraw their business from the newspaper, Bly was time-outed to the fashion and beauty pages, I guess women were good for that too!
Not one to do what she was told, Bly decided to up sticks and travel to Mexico where she would write about the corruption and 
poverty that was occurring under the rule of dictator Porfirio Diaz. Threatened with arrest for her protest, she fled back to the United States and headed straight for New York, the epicentre of world news.
Landing a job in New York World, Bly was about to take on her biggest investigative story yet. Taking the initiative to go undercover for ten days as a patient in the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island in New York to expose the much rumoured neglect and brutality of its patients. She published her findings in a book called ‘Ten Days in a Mad-House’. Her findings revealed that patients were not only being held in horrific conditions but most were locked away with physical illnesses, not mental, or by family members for various unrelated reasons.
Her revelations shamed the authorities into no longer ignoring the situation and a grand jury was set up to put actions into place that would ensure only clinically insane were detained and to change the conditions in asylums for years to come.
Deserving a well earned holiday, Nellie decided to take a trip around the world, after being inspired by Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. On November 14th 1889 Nellie set off from New York city, updating over 1 million New York World readers with daily articles recounting her adventures. Returning to New York to immense fanfare 72 days later after breaking the record, Nellie published her story in her book ‘Around the World in Seventy-Two Days’ … ok so the title wasn’t very inspired but it did grant her worldwide notoriety.
After all this, you wouldn’t blame Nellie if she retired to some small island with her rich husband never to be heard of again. But as you can probably guess, Nellie wasn’t one for the relaxing, instead she went on to run an iron manufacturing company with her husband where she turned her hand at inventing, taking the US patent of the simple milk can all dairy farmers know and love today!
After her husbands death in 1904 she took over sole responsibility for the company, introducing improved employee benefits, she also brought in recreation centres and libraries for her factory workers, unheard of at the time. She fast became one of the worlds leading industrialists, not bad for a woman of the early 1900s! However, her employees paid her good deeds back by embezzlement and the company trailed into bankruptcy.
Nellie sailed away from her financial woes to England in 1914, the outbreak of World War One didn’t scare Nellie back home. Instead she stayed in Europe until after the war, reporting for the New York Evening Journal as a war correspondent. Producing headlines such as, ‘Suffragists Are Men’s Superiors’. What a title!
In 1919 she returned to New York and continued to write for the paper on subjects such as poverty and women’s right to vote. She 
became a confidant for women who had fell on hard times, helping them find work and raising money, as well as helping local orphanages.
Nellie Bly passed away in 1922, aged 57, the next day the Evening Journal posted a tribute entitled, ‘The Best Reporter in America’ where they called her a pioneer in the field of investigative journalism.
Nellie Bly’s legacy stands strong, she has even inspired a Broadway musical and in 2002 she was one of four women journalists honoured with a U.S postage stamp. She continues to inspire exhibitions, plays, and on screen characters years later. She is a true example of standing up for what you believe in, fighting until the end, and never forgetting about your fellow woman.
Truly a Wonder Woman!
Don't Minchin It! 