Among the Insane: Nellie Bly’s Daring Undercover Journalism

THIS WEEK'S BLOG IS BORDERLINE CRAZY! Last year, I had the privilege of attending the bi-annual Historical Novel Society Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland. For lovers of Historical Fiction, it's an incredible treat to be around like-minded people for three heavenly days, where the focus is on the craft of writing, developing author skills, marketing books, and networking. Each time I attend this event, I make lasting friendships with fabulous authors.

Last summer was no exception, and one debut author in the crowd really stood out. Tonya Mitchell was in the process of signing a publishing contract with Cynren Press. Her book should be out this fall and sounds utterly fascinating. Tonya's got a passion for the Victorian/Gothic period (19th century) and I've asked her to tell us more about the premise behind her book and share an enticing thing or two about what we'll all get to read this fall.

A Desperate Situation

When young reporter Nellie Bly approached the managing editor of the New York World for a job in September of 1887, she was desperate. She’d been in the city four months and her cash had dwindled to almost nothing. At the time, she was working as a correspondent for a paper in Pittsburgh where she got her start, but the pay wasn’t regular. She longed to get hired on in the capital of newspaperdom, where the best of the best worked for the leading dailies: The Times, The Tribune, The Sun, The Herald, and the largest of them all, Joseph Pulitzer’s World. So clustered were they along Park Row in Manhattan, the area was dubbed Newspaper Row.
 
The problem was, she was a woman. The World already had two on staff and wasn’t looking to add a third.
 
So, what could a young woman reporter do when she was running out of time and money?  How could she convince the editor, John Cockerill, to change his mind?


​A Bold Plan
Bly stepped out of her cab-for-hire on a crisp September morning and paid the driver with money she’d borrowed from her landlady. Minutes later she was ushered into Cockerill’s office. She’d met him once before on a story she’d written previously for the Pittsburg Dispatch. Even so, he must’ve been surprised to see her. 
 
She wasted no time in presenting him with a list of story ideas. But they weren’t the garden variety topics women journalists—few that there were at the time—tended to pursue (fashion, theater news, gossip).
 
Bly’s ideas were much bolder. They had to be in order to get Cockerill’s attention. But Bly was also a spunky young woman who abhorred the ladies’ pages. She found them dull to read and boring to write. No, the ideas she handed Cockerill required her to take on daring aliases for the purpose of getting a story that would draw attention to her and the particular brand of stunt journalism she would become known for: provocative stories that exposed the plots of the greedy and dishonest, or aroused pity in the misunderstood or marginalized.
 
Cockerill didn’t turn her down, nor did he offer her a job. Instead, he told her to come back in two weeks for his answer. He paid her twenty-five dollars and told her to go nowhere else with her list.
 
His stall tactic was most likely to seek Pulitzer’s blessing. Cockerill was Pulitzer’s right-hand man and carried more than a little power, but Pulitzer was a fanatical micro-manager involved in the minute details of his paper.

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The Assignment
When Bly returned on September 22, Cockerill had his answer. He wanted Bly to fake her way into an insane asylum for women on Blackwell’s Island, a slim strip of land in the East River that was home to the city’s misfits and malcontents. She was to remain for ten days and report upon what she found when she returned.
 
For a woman who was just twenty-three, Bly had already shown a remarkable predisposition to grasp whatever opportunities that came her way and think about the risks later. Cockerill, for his part, was just the sort to dish them out without compunction. He was also, of course, testing Bly. Did she really have the nerve to execute such a bold feat?
 
He left all the planning to her. She’d have to figure out on her own how to convince nurses and doctors (and a judge and a few police officers as it turned out) that she was mad. All Cockerill promised was that, in ten days’ time, a representative of the paper would come get her out.
 
Bly accepted.

​A Place of Despair
Why the Blackwell’s Insane Asylum? For one, the island itself was just the sort of vulgar backdrop that would pique the interest of the World’s legion of readers. The island had long been known as a place of misery. A ferry ride over was often a one-way trip to hell.
 
It was home to a penitentiary for the criminal, a charity hospital for the poor and infirmed, an almshouse for the poor and disabled, and a workhouse for minor criminals, vagrants and the able-bodied poor. The women’s asylum housed the lunatic poor, where 1600 female inmates lived in a space originally built to accommodate just 850.
 
The asylum had a long history of mismanagement but in the summer of 1887, just months before Bly showed up in Cockerill’s office, some interesting tidbits had surfaced in the papers. The Times reported that two young nurses had filed charges against doctors that brought the doctors’ characters into question (a veiled Victorian reference, no doubt, of unwanted, ungentlemanly behavior toward them). Both the nurses and the two doctors were later suspended.
 
Additionally, the World alleged in two editorials that on Ward’s Island (which housed the city’s lunatic males), gross mistreatment of the inmates had taken place. Two attendants at the Ward’s asylum were indicted for manslaughter for the killing of an inmate.
 
These stories, and others, triggered the papers to call for an overhaul of the men’s and women’s facilities. However, further investigation by the press was thwarted. Those who ruled at Blackwell’s and Ward’s apparently wanted to keep their goings-on under wraps.
 
Bly’s assignment couldn’t have come at a better time.

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More About Tonya Mitchell

Tonya Mitchell is the author of A Feigned Madness, the tale of pioneering journalist Nellie Bly and her ten-day undercover ordeal in an insane asylum in 1887. It will be published by Cynren Press in October 2020 but is available for pre-order here. Tonya’s short fiction has appeared in The Copperfield Review, Words Undone, and The Front Porch Review, as well as various anthologies, including Furtive Dalliance, Welcome to Elsewhere, and Glimmer and Other Stories and Poems for which she won the Cinnamon Press award in fiction. She is a self-professed Anglophile and is obsessed with all things relating to the Victorian period. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society North America and resides in Cincinnati, OH with her husband and three wildly energetic sons.


Find her on social media:
Website: https://www.tonyamitchellauthor.com/
Twitter @tremmitchell
Instragram @tmitchell.2012
Facebook @TonyaMitchellAuthor
Email: tremitchell.2012@gmail.com

To pre-order A Feigned Madness, click on the bookcover icon below:

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