Kick-Ass Women from History #7: Nellie Bly

“To be happy, to know how to find happiness under all circumstances, is the acme of wisdom and the triumph of genius." — Nellie Bly

This marks the first Kick-Ass Woman from History I’m covering who is a white American woman. The choice to avoid European-descended women at first was conscious because, honestly, if you’re going to find documentation on a kick-ass woman, chances are it will be a woman of European descent, and I wanted to highlight other cultures’ kick-ass women first. But I also didn’t want to make those of European descent feel excluded, hence today’s choice.

This isn’t to say that Nellie Bly doesn’t earn her place in the ranks of Kick-Ass Women. She earns it in spades being … deep breath … an investigative journalist, a stunt journalist, a war correspondent, a novelist, an industrialist, an “agony aunt”, and a philanthropist.

So let’s take a bit of a dive into the life and times of Nellie Bly, shall we?

Background

Nellie was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in Cochran’s Mills Pennsylvania. She was the thirteenth child of her father, Michael Cochran (for whom the town is named after), and the third child of her mother, Mary Jane Kennedy. Her father died when she was six. As a young girl she was nicknamed “Pink” for her proclivity toward wearing that colour. Later, in her teens, when she decided she wanted to be taken more seriously, she changed her name to “Cochrane” and attended a “normal school” to become a teacher, having to drop out because of lack of funds. In 1880 the family moved to Allegheny City which was later annexed by Pittsburgh.

First Career: Women’s Journalism

While in Pittsburgh she wrote a passionate letter in response to an article in the Pittsburgh Dispatch that was largely dismissive of woman and so impressed the paper’s editor that he offered her a job. Choosing the pen name Nelly Bly (after a popular song of the tiem), a transcription error had it printed as Nellie Bly and the mistake stuck. This was her professional name from this point onward.

She initially (and very briefly) started her career as an undercover journalist going into factories and exposing the working conditions that women and children were forced to be in. Her passionate articles advocated for were praised by labourers for their calls for social reform, but soon complaints came from factories and she was reassigned to the women’s pages (or society pages) to write the kind of frivolous fluff that women were generally relegated to in newspapers. She chafed under these fluff assignments and swore she’d “do something no girl had ever done”.

Second Career: Investigative Journalism

Her career as a full-blown investigative journalist began after persuading her editor to let her try on a role as a foreign correspondent, moving to Mexico to, over the course of six months, report on the lives and customs of Mexican people. These dispatches were later published in book form as Six Months in Mexico. Her reports from Mexico came to a sudden end when, in one of her dispatches, she protested the imprisonment of a local reporter for publishing something critical of the government. The angry Mexican officials threatened her with arrest and forced her to flee back to the USA, from where she published a scathing report calling the then-dictator Porfirio Diaz a “tyrannical czar” who suppressed the people and the press.

This return to Pittsburgh brought Nellie back into the “women’s pages” which she could no longer stand. She quit her job and moved to New York City, joining Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. It was here, in 1887, where she made her name and became nationally (and internationally) famous by going undercover as a patient at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, exposing the mistreatment of mentally ill women. Her exposé, “Ten Days in a Mad-House” led to official investigations and significant reforms in mental health care. It is considered an important landmark in investigative journalism and a boundary-pushing one for women reporters on top of that.

Third Career: “Stunt” Journalism

After pioneering undercover investigative journalism (and serious reporting by women), almost redefining the profession, Nellie continued with her almost manic energy creating practically from whole cloth the field of “stunt journalism”. Inspired by Jules Verne and his Around the World in Eighty Days, Nelly undertook a record-breaking trip around the world, completing the journey in only 72 days, captivating the public with her regular travel dispatches and her columns when she returned home. Her travel dispatches were later compiled into the book Around the World in Seventy-Two Days.

Fourth Career: Novelist

The beginnings of her new career began even before she returned home from her tour around the world. Cashing in on the fanfare of her world tour she quit reporting and started writing novels, the first chapters of her first novel (Eva the Adventuress) having been published while she was still in transit. Between 1889 and 1895 she published eleven novels (which had been considered lost until their rediscovery in 2021). In 1893, though still writing novels, she returned to reporting for the 'World.

Fifth Career: Industrialist

In 1895 Nellie married manufacturer Robert Seaman. She was 31 and he 73, and his failing health caused her to leave journalism and take over the running of his company the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co., a manufacturer of steel containers like milk cans, or boilers or their ilk. Under her stewardship the company invented what would later become the standard 55-gallon drum, and she herself had two famous patents (of a reported 25) to her name exclusively for a new kind of milk can and a stacking garbage can. Nellie’s own patents, and those of others in her company, contributed significantly to the body of knowledge surrounding industrial packaging in the dairy and shipping industries.

Unfortunately Nellie was not as successful in this career as she had been in others. Her husband died in 1901 and she foolishly trusted some of the senior managers of the company who embezzled from the company so badly it collapsed. She tried to run it humanely with health benefits, recreational facilities, and many of the other things she’d advocated for as a journalist, but her negligence of business affairs led to her downfall and bankruptcy.

So she did what she seemed to always do in times of hardship: she reinvented herself.

Sixth Career: War Correspondent

Using the last of the funds she had available, Nellie travelled to Europe looking for other opportunities. The outbreak of WWI during her voyage brought these in spades. Stuck in Vienna, Nellie decided to embark on a new career trajectory: that of the war correspondent. Using her fame and some government connections she wrangled herself a path to the front where the Austrians were clashing with the Russians. Only four correspondents were permitted to do this, and Nellie was the only woman of the four.

The New York Evening Journal would publish Nellie’s coverage of the war under the repeating headline “Nelly Bly on the Firing Line”. The public hung off of every word she wrote as she described the punishing conditions at the front, the horrors of the war, all shown through her unflinching and sympathetic eyes. Her stories were still sought out even when they were weeks behind the rapidly changing circumstances at the front. She reported of shells exploding only 50 feet from her, spending weeks among the soldiers in active fire before travelling to Budapest … to move on to the Serbian front. She also reported on the women of Austria-Hungary and their support behind the lines for the men at the fronts.

Interlude: Family Problems

The continuing legal problems that haunted her while she was in Europe as her company completed its immolation started to cause significant stress with her family. One disaster and mis-step after another led to her mother being forced out of the house Nellie had kept for her, causing her to move in with Nellie’s brother instead. Some of the legal moves she’d attempted to keep the surviving elements of her company alive pitted her and her brother against each other until in the end she was persona non grata with both her mother and her brother.

Seventh Career: Agony Aunt and Orphan Placement

Being out of money, and in expensive disputes with her family, Nellie returned to journalism at the 'Evening Journal. She was given free rein in topics to write about. After a letter she received from a woman wondering if she should give up her two year old child (Nellie advised against), her column slowly turned into an advice column (a so-called “agony aunt”). This then further morphed into an impromptu agency for helping orphans and abandoned babies find good homes, all through the column-inches of her work at the newspaper.

This is the End

By 1920 Nellie was swamped with work. She was writing two columns a week, managing an impromptu and unofficial adoption agency, and embroiled in continuing legal battles with her family. The overexertion of her war reportage spilled over into her life in New York taking a severe toll on her health. She ate only sporadically and suffered a crippling bout of bronchitis that had her hospitalized. Since she would never be able to reconcile with her mother and brother, helping children became her overriding comfort. In 1921 she produced as much work as she had as a star reporter decades earlier.

Her last column ran in January of 1922. She was then hospitalized again, this time for bronchopneumonia with complications from heart disease. She had her will made while hospitalized, leaving what turned out to be worthless shares in a long-dead company to her younger brother and one of her sisters. Death paid her a visit on the 27th of January, 1922 at the age of 57.

Aftermath

Newspapers from all over eulogized Nellie after her passing, and the New York World, the paper that made her famous, ran a long piece illustrating the highlights of her almost unbelievable life. In her wake, Nellie made lasting changes to the world:

• as a champion of the working class;
• as the practical inventor of both undercover investigative journalism and stunt journalism
• as a shatterer of boundaries for women in realms long-considered for men only
• as a sympathetic succourer of lost children
• even as a progressive industrialist (despite her failure at the managerial level)

She never fought wars (only reported on one). She didn’t rule nations. Yet she still stands as a Kick-Ass Woman from History.