After leaving the Pittsburgh Dispatch in disgust, author Nellie Bly wasn't able to find a job for a number of months. Broke and desperate after getting rejected by countless newspapers across New York, Bly worked her way into the office of acclaimed publisher Joseph Pulitzer and talked her way into a job.
Pulitzer gave her an assignment which few others would likely have accepted: feign insanity and get committed to Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island in New York where rampant abuse and mistreatment of patients had been reported. Bly quickly agreed to the assignment under only three conditions: 1) she must use the pseudonym Nellie Brown so that Pulitzer could track her location, she should report her experiences honestly, and she should stop smiling since it might give her intentions away. Subsequently, she wrote a series of articles about her experience which would later be compiled into Ten Days in a Mad-House.
After one day at a boardinghouse where she acted like a "Far Away" foreigner, Bly was deemed to be "crazy" and later, "insane" by staff members and other doctors. She was swiftly committed to the asylum on Blackwell's island, where she saw horrible physical and mental abuse being perpetrated against patients. Among many horrendous things, patients were given rotten food, beaten, bathed in freezing and unhygienic conditions, and essentially, tortured.
Bly also spoke with many women who she felt were perfectly normal and should not have been committed. One woman, for example, was committed by her vindictive and cruel husband. Through her ten days at the asylum, Bly discovered that the mental health system in the United States (and New York particularly) was corrupt, cruel, and unethical - and her book changed all of that.
Bly was a pioneer in the field of investigative journalism. It was her work in the articles for Pulitzer and the subsequent Ten Days in a Mad-House that created a field of journalism which has been integral in helping to instigate reform across the world. Bly's reporting also inspired countless female journalists to enter what was a male-dominated and sexist profession.
