She Changed History

8. Nellie Bly: The woman who dared to write the truth

• Vicky and Simon • Season 1 • Episode 8

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Unveiling Nellie Bly: Pioneering Investigative Journalism and Defying Societal Norms


In this episode, Vicky and Simon recount the extraordinary life and achievements of Nellie Bly, a pioneering investigative journalist of the 19th century. Starting with an angry letter in response to a misogynistic article, Bly's career quickly escalated as she tackled social injustices and corruption. She famously went undercover in a mental asylum, exposing horrific conditions and prompting significant reforms. Bly also achieved global fame by circumnavigating the world in 72 days, challenging societal expectations of women. Her relentless pursuit of the truth left a lasting legacy in journalism and women's rights.


00:00 Introduction and Casual Conversation

01:20 Weather and Local News

02:05 Podcast Recording Update

02:51 Introducing Nellie Bly

05:40 Nellie Bly's Early Life

07:05 Nellie Bly's Journalism Beginnings

14:43 Nellie Bly's Move to New York

17:25 Nellie Bly's Undercover Assignment

19:01 A Terrible Plan: The Psychopathy Test

20:20 Nellie Bly's Undercover Mission

21:15 Horrors of Blackwell's Asylum

25:11 Bly's Exposé and Its Impact

29:36 The Birth of Investigative Journalism

33:59 Nellie Bly's Legacy and Later Life

38:53 Conclusion and Call to Action


Sources today are



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He's feeling sorry for himself in front of the fire at the minute, so. In front of the fire. I'm sure he's doing all right. He's so hard to bite. I know, yeah. It's like whenever they bark at me, I just. I think, you haven't got anything to complain about. Yeah. I watch these videos on YouTube of like, stray dogs and those without families and the ones who are handed into rescues and everything. Do you sigh at you? Like, are they just for you? Yeah. Just, everything's so hard mum. Everything's just, I have no idea what it's like being me. Yeah. Well I did hear someone say that like, if a dog year is seven, Human years. If you work on that, then every day to a dog is a week to us, which is why they want to pack so much in. Yeah. And well, they just fed it with everything. Yeah. Yeah. By John's 49 in dog years. Like he's full of middle age now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He still looks like I'm 63. That's insane, isn't it? No wonder they finn and puffing and groaning and yawning and no wonder

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So, well, hi Vicky. Hi Simon! I'm good, how are you? Oh, really well, yeah. Good. Recording on a Friday. Yes. And it's been a lovely week, apart from the storms and the flooding and, you know. That sort of general weather drama, but, yeah. Lydney High Street is still shut, by the way. Why? Why is it still shut? I think the bridge has weakened, doesn't it?

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Oh, is that what it is? Yeah, that makes sense, because it was closed at the bridge. We were trying to get Jammer's medication yesterday. It was a right drama. Oh, no. I know, and then all the banks had all their furniture out on the street, because Obviously, it's all wet and damp. Greg's was still there though. Greg's was flying high. Oh, Greg's, Greg's is quite close to the high street, isn't it? Nothing can stop Greg's from selling you sausages. Nothing can stop your sausage, right? Yeah, absolutely. Love it. So, it's a funny one this week. So, this week was meant to be last week's podcast, but we recorded ages ago and turns out we've got better since then. So we thought we're going to re record aren't we? We're going to come again and hopefully it'll be a better version than what we did when we first started. Yeah? And I, yeah, I'm not sure I got any better but I have got a new microphone. I think, as in better, as in not as our equipment has improved. I don't know if we've improved. I did, I did latches onto there, didn't I? Yeah, I think the first recording sounded like we were talking from down in a well. Underwater, definitely different countries, everything, it took us a while to figure out the tech, but we're here, which is very exciting. Um, so the story I've got for you today is, some people might know of this one, but I do think she's still relatively unknown. Her name is Nellie Bly. And I've got a little intro for you. So from exposing the horrors of mental asylums to racing around the world before aeroplanes, Nellie Bly shattered the boundaries of what women could achieve in the 19th century. Today, we uncover the fearless life of the pioneering investigative journalist who challenged societal norms and changed journalism forever. This is the story of Nellie Bly, a woman who dared to write the truth. So, as with all our ladies, she covers lots of ground. Journalist and traveling around the world and mental asylums. Why not? Why not? That's covering a lot. Whack it all in. Yeah. So, sources today are an article from Britannica, an independent article By Diane Bernard in 2019, a book by Brooke Kroger called Nellie Bly Daredevil Reporter Feminist, loads of other ones that will pop in our show notes. a lot of the sources were around 2019 because she is one of the few women we talk about who actually has a statue. So she's been like, Oh wow, into, yeah, immortalized, which is really cool. In New York, JFK Island, an island in New York. I say it later down. I can't remember exactly what it's called. I feel like everything's called JFK though. So I don't know if I've just made that up. Like they have JFK airport, don't they and stuff. Yeah. Can we fact check that one please, Susie? We will. Absolutely. Susie's our imaginary producer. Susie's just me silently in the background panicking. Panic googling. That's who Susie is. I'm glad we didn't get Susie. Absolutely. That would improve the podcast. Susie in the background. So I envisage Nellie Bly as kind of a scrappy female Sherlock Holmes. So she has this beautiful coat in a lot of pictures when you Google her, which is like a duck tooth coat. It's like really long. She has a little hat. a little bit like Sherlock Holmes does and she is tenacious as we'll find out as we go through. So, I love that picture you've got of her. It's very cool, isn't it? I see what you mean about Sherlock Holmes, yeah. Yeah, love it. She's got some sort of corset style thing on but Yeah, and I think that kind of, you know what we were talking about last week with Ella, it's kind of the practicalities, so she was changing her dress slightly for practicalities because when you're an investigative journalist, petticoats aren't going to help you. Yeah. Yeah. That's the first thing they teach you in journalism school. Get rid of this petticoat, yeah. Nellie is actually born Elizabeth. She's born on the 5th of May, 1864, in Pennsylvania, USA. Her father was a guy called Michael Cochrane. He owned a mill, but when Nellie was six, her father died very suddenly, unexpectedly, but most importantly, without a will. So, not good. And that's, that's the same for today. If you're listening and don't have a will, go and get a will. It's causes an absolute nightmare So unable to maintain the land or the house because of the lack of will, Nellie's family move, to Pittsburgh. Her mother remarries and then divorces again in 1878 due to abuse. And because of this loss, the abuse, the family is struggling financially, right? It's not a very lucrative time. so she leaves school after one term, Nellie. So this is late 1800s America Nellie looks for work. So as Elizabeth, she looks for work to support her family But found less opportunities than her brothers, even though her brothers were at school for less time So they're less educated, but they get more choice. She has two older brothers And this enrages Nelly, which is quite right. She's like, I'm clever. I'm smart. I've got this, but no one will hire me. So she takes matter into her own hands, particularly in 1885 when the Pittsburgh Dispatch publishes an article called what women are good for. And this article basically just slugs off women. It's just this guy having a real Already doesn't sound good. The article disparages the ability of female workers and criticizes women for pursuing careers or education. It expressed that women were only there for having children and for doing housework. And then it even went further and praised the Chinese law at the time for killing female babies, saying it saved women from a lifetime of drudgery. And the guy who wrote this, on top of everything, it's a damning article anyway, right? look at, yeah, that face, that face is the right reaction. And like, we keep coming up against these sort of men writing about that and having that opinion, whether it's for the Olympics and our women shouldn't be allowed to run or hysteria idea. And then. Bringing it to the China practice at the time this guy who wrote the article had daughters himself. Oh my god Oh my god So, can you imagine your dad right and I haven't included his name in here because I didn't think it was I just don't want Anything to do with him? whisper me afterwards. Yeah. Nelly reads this and she's somewhat educated and, she's very upset about it, which makes sense because it only speaks about women. Women negatively. So what does she do? She writes a letter to the editor expressing how annoyed she is. And, how angry she is. Her letter turns out to be so good that the editor both replied and printed it in the newspaper. Oh, awesome. The same editor who let the article in there in the first place. Right? That's what I was thinking, his name is George Adam. Yeah, and he takes it even further, and he wants to find this writer because she wrote it anonymously. and he wants the writer to write a longer rebuttal piece, Women writers at the time typically used pen names, and for her second piece, so she is tracked down, Elizabeth adopts the name Nellie, so that's where Nellie comes in, and she borrowed it from a popular Stephen Foster song at the time. So it's a pen name, but she's still obviously a woman. like J. K. Rowling was advised, wasn't she, to just use her initials? P. D. James? I don't know, but a lot of women will use their initials, so it's not obvious that they're women. Yeah, it was really common practice back in the day, yeah. You're right, practice for women was very much pen names. So you, she actually gets a job out of this angry letter, which I love. George Madden is very impressed by her, hires her full time. She's mainly commissioned to write about the lives of working class women in Pittsburgh, She covers slum life, different topics, particularly of, ingenuity and concern at the time when a woman's contribution to a newspaper was generally confined to the women's pages. Um, women's pages makes me feel a bit weird. I feel I understand target marketing but what it does is it indicates that the rest of the paper is for men, doesn't it? That's why, that's what having a women's section makes by default the rest for men. And I think that's what I feel a bit uncomfortable about it. And it's a practice that still happens today. So the Daily Mail have female, don't they? Just about to mention female. Yeah. Were you? Yeah. So I have mixed feelings. It feels like a really old school thing where the assumption being that women wouldn't be interested in actual current theatres. We don't want to trouble them with those nonsense things, you know. Just leave them to their hair and beauty Well, taking females specifically as an example, sort of makes out that that section is specifically not for men, where I think a lot of men could probably benefit from reading more about these things, and just getting, because everyone's got a mum. Just like embrace it, learn about it, be curious. I'm right on the flip side, isn't it? It's just the same. Yeah. Also I had a really crazy fact that Um, I don't know how true it is, but like something like 80 percent of men don't realize that menstrual blood is red. They think it's blue because of the adverts, right? And I don't know how true that is, but you know, if they read the women's pages. It'll probably work out that menstrual blood is red. Maybe that's, that's our, yeah, message of the day. This is like a public service announcement. Well, we've got to get a will and menstrual blood is red. Yeah, that's all you need to know, guys. That's all you need to know. Okay, let's put that in the pod summary. They've changed adverts now though, haven't they? They don't use the blue liquid anymore. What do they use? I don't watch ads really. It is red these days. Oh, it is red. Ah, maybe I'm a bit behind the times. That's because I only watch Netflix. I don't have any ads. That just shows how sheltered I've become. so this is where the dates go a little bit hazy. So Nelly's, She's doing these women's pages, as you can probably guess, she's getting a bit tiresome of that. She feels like she's been put in a box. And so what she starts doing is pushing that box as far as it can. So she's very critical of life in Pittsburgh and it gets to the point where advertisers of the newspaper actually want to pull out because she's so critical of like working conditions When people say, oh, cause she was so critical of us, what they mean is that she's calling them out on malpractice. That's so true, yeah. Yeah, she's not just being mean, is she? I assume. And you know the advertisers are the people who employ the people in the world, so if you're criticising working conditions, yeah, of course, of course.

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Um, so either she was sent to Mexico, um. Or she was given an opportunity to go to Mexico How political were her articles that she had to go to deported to Mexico or she decided to go off her own back and, you know, it's a very hazy, um, the research. so either way she goes to Mexico for many months and she basically does what she was doing to Pittsburgh there,

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so she reports on official corruption and the conditions of the poor. And then Mexico did exactly what the advertisers did. They were like, leave. She's an absolute fabulous menace. But like you said, she's probably just saying the truth. She's probably not that dramatic. It's just calling people out, isn't it? It sounds like, because she's moving on to like these bigger and bigger things. She's writing a letter, then she's a journalist on a newspaper, then she's a journalist writing about corruption in Mexico, like this is quite a leap from the women's pages, isn't it? Oh, a hundred percent. Why, what do you think drove her onto that? I don't have a definite answer, but I do think it's that piece that we spoke about really at the beginning of being denied opportunities. And I think the injustice of it and I think the fact that, yes, she picked up on that one article in the best dispatch when she was, I think she was like eight or 10. But imagine how many times she's had that messaging over those eight years. I think sometimes the more you say no to someone, the more they go off and do it anyway, no, I'm going to go and do that. Actually, I'm going to prove you wrong. But it feels quite a natural drive. So when she comes back from Mexico First thing she does is she puts her articles into a book, which is really smart. So not only is she writing for the paper, she's then got a second revenue stream of an actual collection of articles called Six Months in Mexico that was released in 1888 and then, After that, she found herself being bored again. So I think some of it is like you said, just boredom and not being pushed enough because you're expected to be in this box. So she leaves a note on the desk of the dispatch in the most dramatic, mad one men way. It says, I'm off to New York. Look out for me. Lie. That's how she ends it. So that says goodbye to Pittsburgh. I'm off baby, which I absolutely love, love, love, love. when she arrives in New York, she finds it hard. Harking back to what we were just saying, as a female to find work as a newspaper reporter in New York, she finds that difficult. She does pick up some freelance work until she gets a job at New York World, which is owned by Joseph, Pulitzer. When she originally approached New York World, she was originally given a no, so that it wasn't an easy thing to get a job. She had to keep knocking on the door of New York World until they actually gave her a job. I assume that's Pulitzer of Pulitzer Prize fame. Correctamundo, yes. I talk a little bit about what journalism was like in New York at the time because when Nellie was entering Pulitzer's world, she was entering at a really key time in journalism. So this period, the late 1800s, was called yellow journalism. And this is when the idea of sensationalized news in publishing, to attract readers and increase circulation. The phrase was coined in the 1890s to describe the tactics employed in furious competition. And I say furious because there was only two papers in the city. There was The New York World and the New York Journal and that was it. So there was no wonder they were like fighting cat and dog for the biggest headlines because you're going to pick up one, aren't you? You're not going to read two newspapers a day. Nellie knew it was competitive, but she also knew what she was capable of because you're brightly so at this point, she's got six months of Mexico behind her, right? She's taken on Mexico. Yeah. New York's nothing then. It was nothing. So she went undercover to expose government corruption particularly when railroad workers in Chicago staged a strike to protest the lowering of wages at the same time that their rent was going up as well. And Nellie was the only one to tell the truth. That story from the striker's perspective, everybody else was talking about, the rail companies and the landlords, but she was the only one to talk about it from the writer's perspective. So she's really got this sort of theme of social injustice, and power disparities and abuse of power. Absolutely. she promised Joseph Pulitzer, who himself was five years into owning the paper, so he was very much into his tenure, that she could deliver a major story. Joseph was impressed by her very much like George was at the dispatch. And he gave her a whopper of an assignment. he gave her the challenge to go and report on mental health asylums. 19th century mental asylums sound quite harrowing. They do. This is a excerpt of what Joseph asked Nellie to do. He said, We do not ask you to go there for the purpose of making sensational revelations. Write up things as you find them, good or bad. Give praise or blame as you think best and the truth at all times. But I am afraid of that chronic smile of yours. Nelly replies, I will smile no more then. So she was taking this very seriously. And there had been rumors of abuse at the asylum. So I think that's why Joseph is trying to be so, open minded about it because it was, it's very much like you hear on every BBC thing. It's allegations, Bly herself was quite reluctant to believe that such an institution could be mismanaged and that cruelties could be underneath its roof until she experiences them first hand. It's really important to know at this point, like Nellie's 23 when this conversation is about. 23 she is. It's really important for him to know as well that what happens next is all her own doing. No one asked her to do this. All she was asked to do was report on it. That was the extent of the assignment. Bligh herself decides to act as a deranged woman with the goal of getting committed into the asylum undercover. That's her, that's her choice, right? This is a terrible plan. I can straight up say this is a terrible plan. This is a terrible plan. I was watching a, John Ronson, TED talk about, psychopaths and the psychopathy test. And he gave the example of, a prisoner who, was on trial because he beat up, quite seriously beat up a guy in like a fight in a pub and he'd been recommended by a fellow sort of prisoner, oh if you just say you're mental and then you won't go to prison, they'll just send you to some nice cushty hospital. Seriously. So he claimed that he was and he did such a good job of it that they sent him to Broadmoor. And then, so his original sentence, if he had just taken it, would have been about four years. He was in Broadmoor for over 12 years, because then everything that he did, they would attribute to him being a psychopath. Classic. So if he said he was, he wasn't crazy, they would say, Oh, that's classic manipulative psychopath behavior. And it took him all this time to give him 12 years to convince. Yeah, he was, he was ultimately released. It also begs the question, like, don't listen to your mate down the pub, doesn't it? Sorry, ending up in Broadmoor. Things have gone seriously wrong at that point. Because she lifts into Dave at the pub. Oh God. Bly practice looking insane in front of the mirror, much like your guy did, with the idea of having far away expressions, because she thinks they have a crazy air. That's what she wrote in her article. And then she checks herself into a working class boarding house, hoping to frighten the other boarders so much that they would kick her out. Isn't that just a smart way? She makes, it's a slow burn, very strategic. Um, she uses the name Nellie Brown, she pretends that she's from Cuba, and she rants about searching for her missing trunks, which obviously don't exist. And she scares the people in the boarding house so much so the police arrest her and then she actually has a hearing at New York City Court, where a judge orders her to Blackwells, which is now Roosevelt Island. That's what Susie would have found. Roosevelt, not JFK. so that's where her statue is today. Roosevelt Island, is home to Blackwell, which is basically a poor house. It also has a small pox hospital, a prison and an insane asylum all on this one island. The mental health hospital is crammed with 1600 people in a facility that's only designed to hold 1000 people. Mental health hospital is a much nicer term than insane asylum. Yeah, you can tell, um, the stuff I've ad libbed in, haven't you? And the stuff that was actually from the articles of the, uh, of the 1800s. Yeah. So many of the people here Did you have a plan for getting out? Hold that thought. Okay. So, many of the people in the asylum who weren't even mentally ill, some of them were basically immigrants who were unable to speak English and communicate with the law enforcement officers who had taken them in. So that's the attitude we're up against here, right? Like they must be crazy they're speaking in tongues, but in fact it's just Spanish. Ah, it's just Spanish. other women, uh, were victims of horrific abuse and were struggling to survive in poverty and were hidden away at the hospital. Bly also discovered rampant abuse from speaking with the other women that she meets in the asylum. 16 doctors, were responsible for numerous patients and um, the doctors and staff showed 100 patients each. Basically, that's insane isn't it, under 24 7 care. It is. And they showed little compassion towards the inmates. Yeah. She wrote that the tea they had tasted as if it had been made in copper. bread was spread, oh god that's made me feel a bit sick. Bread was spread with rancid butter. The bread was hard with a dirty black colour. she said she found a spider in her slice one day so she didn't eat it. The meals were wretched. And nearly all night long I listened to a woman cry, she says, about the cold and beg for God to let her die. Another one yelled murder at frequent intervals and police at others until my flesh felt creepy. That's Nelly's actual account there. they were forced to take freezing baths and to stay in wet clothes for hours. They were forbidden to speak. If anyone complained, they were just beaten. People seeking a thrill would even pay visits to come and gawk at the mentally ill. It's disgusting, isn't it? It's just totally inhuman. I mean, what's the point of having them there? It's obviously not to help them. And I'm basing that on, these people having mental illness, but some of them just talk a foreign language. And it sounds like they're either just fine or destitute. Hmm. It does sound like it was women only in, so I don't know if they'd got to the point yet where they'd separated men from women and children.

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So while Nellie is there, she meets a lady called Mrs. Cotter. She describes Mrs. Cotter as a pretty delicate she told Bly that for crying, the nurses would beat me with a broom handle and jump on me. She said the nurse then tied her hands and feet and threw a sheet over her head to muffle her screams and put her in a bathtub of cold water. They held me under until I gave up hope and became senseless. Nelly also speaks to someone called Bridget McGuinness. The beatings I got there were something dreadful. I was pulled around by the hair, held under water until I was strangled and choked and kicked. Bridget. It was hopeless to complain to the doctors for they always said it was the imagination of our diseased brains. And besides, we'd get another beating for telling off. So that's dreadful manipulation, isn't it? Yeah, that's just torture. Yeah, absolutely. Nurses also drugged the inmates with so much morphine and chloro that the patients were actually made crazy. So even if you didn't have an illness when you went in, you definitely came out with one. The attendants seem to find amusement and pleasure in exciting the violent patients to do their worst. I feel so crap reading it. Yeah. So ten days after her entry into the asylum, Nellie was absolutely exhausted and starving, and lawyers from the New York world arranged for her release. Oh, Thank goodness Joseph had good lawyers. Yeah, because you can't just turn around and say, ah, it's just, yeah, going to write an article on. So on the 9th of October, 1887, the New York work printed the first of, Bly's two part illustrated series on the front page of the Sunday feature. And it was called Inside the Madhouse. Again, old terminology. It absolutely shocked the public and in 000 words on there, which is a hell of a lot of words. It's really interesting, so Kroger says in her book that certain writers like Charles Dickens and Margaret Fuller had toured the insane asylum. So you know earlier I said, oh, when you pay to tour them, Charles Dickens and Margaret Fuller did that. But. to write an article on it, but because they'd paid and the nurses and the doctors knew they were there, they obviously cleaned the place up and hid most of the trauma. So Nelly found a way to get the truth, basically, which is really interesting, like going up against Charles Dickens and coming out as a better storyteller at the end is really fascinating, isn't it? Just FYI, um, Inside the Madhouse is available for free in the Archive of American Journalism. Hey, very cool. it might be a bit depressing, but good to know. The story made a splash, and it was so good that other newspapers basically piggybacked on it. So they reproduced their own accounts, a bit like we do in the world today, don't we? If like the BBC does an article, then BuzzFeed has one five minutes later. Then the reform comes. So this is where it gets really interesting. Nellie then brings a grand jury panel back with her to the asylum. So not only does she write about it, she enforces change and brings back a grand jury. And when they got there, the idea was that they were going to do an inspection, basically, because of what Nellie had said was going on. But the asylum got whiff of it and the inmates that Nellie had spoken to, so Mrs. Cotter, for example, had either been released or transferred. Buildings had been scrubbed down. Patients had better food and water, as soon as the jury got there. I mean, at least they were improving things. You want those people to be held to account, don't you? Right, exactly. And they were trying to discredit Nellie's writings, But because her writing was so good, and her expose was of such good quality, the officials ended up believing Nellie. And what they did was add 1 million. To the budget for the asylums. It was just one asylum, but they added 1 million to that budget, which today is 33 million, so a good, a healthy amount. As a little side note, Roosevelt Island was actually called Welfare Island in the 1900s due to all the hospitals and facilities on there. So I guess the argument is that one million pounds for that one facility probably isn't going to go very far. by 1901, there was 13 state hospitals for the insane in the state of New York. All of these hospitals buried their dead anonymous in unmarked graves, according to willard. com. So it is a bit of a splash in the ocean. But the other thing that Nelly did was actually get some proper reform in place. real steps were taken. Officials were fired, abusive staff members were let go and they set a new sanitation code. On top of that, multilingual support staff were finally hired to assist with immigrant patients and their families. New examination procedures were established, so that only the seriously ill went to the asylum. So, I mean, this is proper change. All change has got to start somewhere, hasn't it? Yep. Sounds like these are meaningful reforms. this journalism, what do you call it, yellow journalism? That's it, yeah. Before, this is such a change, isn't it, from sensationalist, like, tabloid style headlines. This is proper, hard hitting, reformed stuff. did that, impact other newspapers at the time? Was this a marked shift, then, in how things were reported, and what was reported? Massively. So this hands on approach to reporting developed into a new practice now called investigative journalism. Before Nelly, this had never ever happened before. Nelly's writing was really straightforward and compassionate, which I think actually resonated with the audiences. So it was still sensational, but it, was hard hitting, and it often motivated people to take action, which is what I just spoke about, just that, And Nellie continued to do this. She provided regular exposés. So she uncovered the abuse of women by male police officers. She exposed corrupt politicians. She also interviewed influential, but controversial figures, including Emma Goldman, Who was a Lithuanian anarchist. I think we should do an episode on her. We should add her to the list because her stories are wild. And the fact that Nelly was the only one to listen to her and get her story just shows that, she was always pushing boundaries. Lithuanian anarchist. I'm hooked. Yeah? Alright, alright. We'll whack it on the list. Yeah, nice. Like you said, more people started doing it. It so mm-Hmm. it really, really took off. And people like Nelly were eventually known as muck breakers and they were a really important part of reform movements. which is really fascinating and absolutely a kudos to her. That's what we sort of aim for these days with journalism and news reporting, is it should be holding the powerful to account. Yeah, we should be exposing these things. that's what we hope for from the best journalism that we have these days. And that's what seems to be under threat in so many countries. And like this is a proper middle finger to that original article, isn't it? It's beautiful women, it's so full circle. So full circle. I'll show you and often telling the stories of women as well. So there was women in this asylum. There was also an expose she did on unethical employment agencies and the black market for buying infants So, you know actually buying and selling human beings really really difficult topics that affect women so actually those pages of health and beauty or whatever we've been talking about earlier. She's really smashed that box hasn't she? One of the next stories that Nellie pitches was to see if she could travel the world, so circumnavigate it, in 80 days, as per the famous book by Jules Verne, Around the World in 80 Days. Sorry, I think I just had a momentary fever dream when you said she, her next job she was going around the world. Okay, that's a pivot. Um,

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succeeded and it brought loads of acclaim to both herself and the newspaper. So Joseph's living life, he was like, I've made a great decision here with Nelly. She's brilliant. the world built up the story of circumnavigating the globe, by running daily articles and it ended up being a contest. So the person closest guessed the right time Nelly could travel the world would win a trip to Europe, which sounds to me you know, GMTV or This Morning, those little competitions you get. It sounds so like that. guess how many sweets are in the jar and we'll send you to Magaluf. Yeah, basically. And, You know what we were just talking about earlier, like how many people she influenced? There was nearly 1 million entries into this contest. And this was back in, around 1900 now. She, really got people behind her and people were, really interested in what she was doing. She rode on ships and trains and in rickshaws, on horses. She went on a real adventure when she was doing this. And she just did this on her own? she had, yeah, pretty much on her own. this must have changed like people's perception of what a woman can do. Damn right. This is the thing that made her famous. This is the thing that got her at people's dining tables and stuff like that. On the final leg of her journey, the world transported her from San Francisco to New York by special train. She was greeted everywhere by brass band, fireworks. It was Proper celebration and her actual time was 72 days, six hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds. So hopefully someone got that. I don't know. I imagine someone, and. As a true content creator, she then wrote a book called Around the World in 72 Days. Nellie Bly became cemented as a female star reporter. and like I said earlier, she'd done it all herself, basically. She had, she was really self sufficient in that regard. And, it was her idea to go to the asylum. And it was her idea to, go for these exposés and go around the world. She came home from this massive, journey with this massive parade at the end, and She kind of expected, and this is a little bit out there Simon, she expected a bonus when she came back. She was like, I've probably earned this, right? I've probably earned a little bit more recognition. How about a promotion? And that's what Joseph said. He barely acknowledged what she'd done. And wouldn't give her a promotion, wouldn't give her a bonus, wouldn't give her any more recognition even though she'd created this absolute frenzy all of her own back. In response, Nellie quit the New York world, basically out of disgust. Yeah, so it really echoes that early story of her in the Pittsburgh, doesn't it? She's so angry she just leaves. In my notes, right, it says, Bly unfortunately got married, which, you've got your wedding coming up, so I'm sorry about that, Simon. Unfortunately, she got married and because she got married, she ended up retiring from journalism. She was 31 when this had happened, so she'd achieved all this by the time she was 31. but she didn't give up writing. After the death of her husband, she took over her husband's manufacturing company and provided gyms, library and healthcare to their employees. These were policies that were completely unheard of at the time. The business itself actually submitted patents that are still in use today. For example, there's a patent for the 55 gallon steel oil drum, which is now an industry standard. She did that patent. Yeah, I know. How cool is that? It was cool. And so reminds me of Be Blanc like Payton. Yes. Something that you just take for granted and is still around. Yeah. Episode six, if you wanna learn about Besie Blanc So she goes off and manages to have this whole second career, which is amazing. It sounds like she just had the attitude of, a sort of almost belligerent attitude of of course I can do it. Because running a manufacturing company is very different to travelling around the world is very different to reporting on insane asylums. But she was just capable. Yeah, undetermined, and tenacious. And yeah, really strong qualities. So much drive and self motivation. Yeah. She returned to journalism briefly when a vacation in Europe found her witness to the start of World War I, and she became the first American woman to report as a war correspondent. She also reported on the beginning of the women's suffrages movement in America. That's very much right place, right time. I don't think there's many people that were witness to the start of World War One. But again, it's her establishing herself and establishing a female perspective within headlines of newspapers and challenging these restrictive ideologies surrounding gender, right? And even class to a certain extent, because there is a lot of class talk, isn't there, in her. She's very much the voice of the people, I'd say. she has a monument today at the Lighthouse Park in New York City on Roosevelt Island. She was even, Memorialized as the tough newspaper woman Ella Kay in the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. So he even did like a little ode to her in that which is really nice. Yeah, yeah. only two years after her return to journalism, Nellie Bly died at the age of 57 from pneumonia. She leaves behind a legacy for all women writers as well as words that inspire a relentless pursuit of the truth. quote from Nellie here is, I have never written a word that did not come from my heart and I never shall. And that is the story of Nellie Bly. Incredible. It's packed, isn't it? She's packed a lot in her 57 years. I probably say this at the end of every episode, but I think she's my favourite. Yeah, these seats have changed that she set in motion, I guess, not only on, the insane asylums, but also just the concept of investigative journalism, and holding the powerful to account in uncovering these injustices. I mean, we still have that today. There are stories breaking today about investigations into these sorts of abuses of power. Yeah, and so to have kicked off that revolution, oh yeah. We wouldn't have panorama without Nellie. Yeah, she is the mother of investigative journalism I love her. I love her drive and her sod this kind of attitude. I'm just going to go and do it anyway. you can't put me in a box Yeah, if she was around today, she'd probably be on Newsnight. She'd probably be like a Kirstie Walk sort of character. Yeah, 100%. I find her so inspiring. So yeah, really cool story. Amazing. Well, thank you, Vicky. Thank you. Loved it. If you enjoyed that, please like, comment, subscribe, rate us, five star rating would be tremendously helpful. We have actually had some lovely reviews and thank you so much for everyone who's listening and supporting and sharing and I feel like we're bringing joy to people and then in turn that gives us joy. So it's like this joy circle and it's just so sweet. It's just so nice. And hopefully people are learning and if you have any other topics that you want us to cover, like any other women, please do. We've got SheChangedHistory at Gmail. com, so please submit them to that. And the Facebook group is SheChangedHistory we're everywhere. Come, come find us. Thank you everyone. Thanks all. Bye.

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