Nellie Bly

Summary

Short History Of... Nellie Bly

Podcast: Short History Of...
Host: John Hopkins (Noiser)
Episode: Nellie Bly
Date: August 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of "Short History Of..." transports listeners into the remarkable life and career of Nellie Bly, a pioneering journalist whose daring, empathy, and audacity radically changed the field of investigative reporting. The episode traces Bly’s journey from her humble beginnings as Elizabeth Jane Cochran in Pennsylvania, through her groundbreaking stunts in journalism, to her impact on social reform and beyond. By focusing on her most famous investigations—such as going undercover in an asylum and her race around the world—this episode explores how Bly broke barriers for women and became a lasting symbol of courage and change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Early Life and Formative Experiences

• Childhood Hardship:
  • Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in 1864 ("Pink" due to her colorful dresses) in Pennsylvania, she was thrust into hardship after her father's death and an abusive stepfather ([07:27]).
  • Brooke Kroger: "Nellie, at 14 years old, testifies at the trial. The testimony is on record...what she reports having seen, the real abuse of her mother...This is her formative experience." ([08:09])
• Austral Independence:
  • Her mother’s rare and public divorce sets an early example of female agency, later mirrored in Bly’s own willingness to speak out ([08:27]-[09:11]).

Start in Journalism

• Pittsburgh Dispatch Breakthrough:

  • After responding to a misogynistic column, Bly is hired at the Pittsburgh Dispatch ([10:49]-[11:31]).
  • Brooke Kroger: “The editor looks at the letter, says, oh, the grammar’s terrible, the syntax is terrible, but I see a spirit here. Bring this girl in." ([11:06])
  • Launches the "Nellie Bly" pseudonym and makes waves with her column "The Girl Puzzle," arguing for women's rights ([12:00]).

• Gendered Limitations:

  • Women journalists were generally relegated to “scut work”—gossip, reviews, domestic coverage ([12:47]-[13:06]).

Developing Investigative Style

• Early Investigations:
  • Insisted on reporting on real issues—factory conditions for women and children—even when accesses was tightly managed by company bosses ([13:33]).
  • This taught her the value of undercover reporting:

    "That experience teaches her that if you don’t go undercover, you’re not going to get the real story in situations where people are trying to hide information from you." ([13:33])

  • Tackled tough subjects such as abusive marriages and restrictive divorce laws, shocking some readers and unsettling advertisers ([14:15]).

International Reporting in Mexico

• Travel as Opportunity:
  • Bly persuades her editor to send her and her mother to Mexico to cover social and political issues ([18:02]-[18:59]).
  • She exhibits early skill as an interviewer, asking unusual and penetrating questions:
    Brooke Kroger: "She’s watching a bullfight and she’s wondering, how do they keep their britches up?...you’re always taken on by her voice and by her mind." ([18:59])
  • Encountered censorship, corruption, and the real risks of journalism firsthand; narrowly escapes arrest for writing too candidly ([20:15]-[24:24]).

New York: Breaking Through the Big Leagues

• Struggles in New York:
  • Despite strong recommendations, facing discrimination:

    "Male editors are crusty...think a certain thing about women...You don’t want to send them on a dangerous assignment. We don’t even think you’re capable of doing it because of your limited brain power." ([25:25])

  • Bly turns her own struggle into a viral article, which finally garners the interest of The New York World ([26:49]).

"10 Days in a Madhouse": Stunt Investigation

• Undercover Asylum Exposé:
  • Bly famously fakes insanity to expose the horrors of Blackwell’s Island Asylum for Women—experiencing firsthand deprivation, cruelty, and witnessing many sane women wrongly institutionalized ([27:18]-[28:53]).
  • Brooke Kroger: "She forces those in a position of power to act...They raise the appropriation for this facility by a very substantial amount. She has what every journalist tries to do: expose wrong and get those in a position of power to act. This is the gold standard." ([28:53])
  • The resulting exposé leads to major reforms, earning Bly national celebrity ([29:29]-[29:40]).

Stunt Journalism & Its Consequences

• Genre Explosion:
  • Her success inspires a wave of “stunt journalism”—other women and fictional personas pursue sensational, immersive assignments ([30:42]).
  • Yet, “the very thing that made her famous begins to define and limit her”—she seeks to escape being typecast as merely a stunt reporter ([31:30]).

"Around the World in 72 Days"

• Inspired by Jules Verne’s novel, Bly proposes and executes a real-life race around the world, refusing a male chaperone ([31:30]-[33:50]).
• Highlights:
  • Meets Jules Verne, acquires a pet monkey, encounters a rival, and her journey becomes a nationwide media sensation ([34:01]). Brooke Kroger: "They are running a story every day. They are having guessing games. They create the board game...because the entire country is following Nellie Bly on this journey." ([34:01])
• Homecoming:
  • Completes the journey in 72 days, 6 hours, and 11 minutes, greeted by massive crowds—her status as a trailblazer cemented ([36:22]).

Later Career and Setbacks

• Post-Glory Friction:
  • Pulitzer fails to fully recognize her accomplishment; feeling slighted, Bly leaves the paper ([36:22]).
  • Attempts fiction and lecturing but is eventually drawn back to journalism, this time focusing on serious interviews with significant political activists like Susan B. Anthony and Emma Goldman ([36:22]-[39:00]).
• Unexpected Reinvention:
  • Marries industrialist Robert Seaman (40 years her senior), takes over his company after his death, and institutes welfare improvements for workers ([42:33]-[44:20]). Brooke Kroger: “She does a lot of Nellie Bly-esque good things...a kind of social welfare attitude about her workers.” ([44:08])
  • Betrayed financially by a trusted manager, the company collapses; Bly is indicted but eventually cleared ([44:30]-[45:34]).

War Correspondence and Final Years

• World War I:
  • Stuck in Austria-Hungary at war’s outset, Bly becomes the first American female war correspondent on the eastern front ([47:09]-[47:22]). Brooke Kroger: “She is in her big fur coat gallivanting around the battlefields and does some typical Nellie reporting...there’s always her voice in everything she does.” ([47:43])
  • Her reporting focuses on the human cost of war, including widows and orphans.
• Return to the U.S.:
  • Continues to write for the New York Journal, advocates for justice and marginalized people ([49:23]).
• Death and Legacy:
  • Dies of pneumonia in 1922, aged 57. Lauded as “the best reporter in America.” Brooke Kroger: "The nature of the beast is it's not meant to last. So when someone could still have a legacy that we sustain till 2026 is something unbloody believable." ([50:54])
• Ultimate Impact:
  • Nellie Bly opened doors for generations of women in journalism and set standards for bravery, integrity, and making a real-world impact.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On her courage as a teenager:
  • “Nellie, at 14 years old, testifies at the trial...” —Brooke Kroger [08:09]
• Breaking into journalism:
  • “The editor...says, oh, the grammar’s terrible...but I see a spirit here. Bring this girl in.” —Brooke Kroger [11:06]
• Refusing to accept limitations:
  • “Women at this point are being hired into newspapers to do the scut work...This is absolutely what she does not want to do.” —Brooke Kroger [12:47]
• On undercover strategy:
  • “If you don’t go undercover, you’re not going to get the real story in situations where people are trying to hide information from you.” —Brooke Kroger [13:33]
• Systemic discrimination in New York journalism:
  • “Male editors are crusty and set in their ways...They believe that women are not good value.” —Brooke Kroger [25:25]
• On her asylum expose’s impact:
  • “She forces those in a position of power to act...This is the gold standard.” —Brooke Kroger [28:53]
• Global fame:
  • “The entire country is following Nellie Bly on this journey.” —Brooke Kroger [34:01]
• On the fickle nature of journalistic legacy:
  • “Journalism is ephemera...when someone could still have a legacy that we sustain till 2026 is something unbloody believable.” —Brooke Kroger [50:54]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Elizabeth's Childhood & Family Hardship: 07:27–09:11
• Breaking into Journalism: 10:23–12:47
• Factory Investigation & Early Career: 13:06–14:15
• Travel Reports from Mexico: 18:02–24:24
• Struggles in New York Media: 25:25–26:49
• Undercover in Blackwell’s Asylum: 27:18–28:53
• Blazing the “Stunt Reporter” Trail: 29:29–31:30
• Race Around the World: 31:30–36:22
• Business Career and Legal Troubles: 42:22–45:34
• First World War Reporting: 47:09–49:23
• Death and Reflection on Legacy: 50:54–51:22

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Themes & Tone

• Tone: Richly narrated, blending fast-paced adventure with expert reflection. Moves from dramatic scenes (e.g., asylum, globe-trotting) to thoughtful commentary on Bly’s motivations and the era’s gender norms.
• Themes: Social justice, gender equality, tenacity, innovation in journalism, the tension between celebrity and substance, lasting legacy against all odds.

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Takeaways

Nellie Bly was not just a fearless journalist—she redefined what was possible for women in reporting, brought about significant reforms through empathy and audacity, and left a legacy celebrated to this day. Her voice paved the way for investigative journalism as a tool for justice, and her story continues to inspire.

Transcript

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[Narrator]

is October 1887 in the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. Standing in New York's East river on a narrow iron bed, a 23 year old woman going by the name Nellie Brown lies listening as another patient cries out. Suddenly, somewhere along the corridor now, a female warden marches into the ward and orders the patients to rise. Nelly, who has been here less than a day, sits up immediately, but most move slowly, staring blankly ahead. The breakfast bell rings and she joins the other patients as they shuffle into a long hall where thin, sour smelling gruel is ladled into tin bowls. Nellie finds a place to sit. To her left is a frail young woman whispering anxiously to herself in German. On her other side is an older patient rocking silently back and forth, seemingly oblivious to a nurse who passes berating her and demanding she sit still. As soon as the meager meal is over, the women are marched towards the washroom. Their attendants forced them to strip before throwing buckets of icy water over their heads. Shivering so hard she can barely dress herself after what passes as a bath here Nelly looks up and catches the eye of another inmate, a middle aged woman who'd spoken kindly to her when she arrived yesterday. She had insisted she wasn't mad, that she'd been sent here by her husband who had taken up with another woman and wanted her out of the way. Nellie can't help but believe her. She seems angry and exhausted, but aren't those sane responses to what she's experiencing? Filing out of the washroom, Nelly tries to speak to another patient. Through mime and broken English, the woman explains that she came to America looking for work. She doesn't understand how she's ended up in this place. Though she's been here just a short time, Nelly has heard several similar stories. What she hasn't offered in return is that she has been locked up among them by her own volition, because outside of the asylum she is better known as Nellie Bly, an investigative reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. And she volunteered to come here to discover the truth about what happens inside these walls. In their damp clothes, the women are marched from the washroom into the long, bare room where they must spend much of their days. Straight backed wooden benches line the walls. One by one the patients are directed onto them until the room is filled with silent, motionless figures forbidden to speak. Nellie lowers herself onto the hard bench between two women wrapped tightly in thin shawls. The silence stretches out and the cold seeps into every inch of Nelly's flesh. But there is nothing to be done. Every time a woman speaks, she is silenced with a swift rebuke. And as the hours pass, Nelly understands something deeply unsettling. This is not treatment. It is a brutal regime which will surely induce madness in even the most sanguine. And as its victims have been deprived not just of their dignity and freedom, but also their voices, it's up to her to tell the world about. Nellie Bly was one of the most famous journalists on earth, a trailblazer who forged a unique path through an industry in which few women had ever worked. Challenging powerful institutions and exposing hidden injustice. She chased danger across continents, shocking readers with the places she was willing to go in pursuit of a story. But how did an ordinary young woman convince major editors to give her a chance to become a pioneer in journalism? What drove her to fake insanity in order to expose abuse inside a New York asylum and risk her life and reputation in pursuit of a story? And how did she help change not just journalism, but the way women could move through the modern world? I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Podcast Network this is a short history of Nellie Bly, The woman who will become famous under the pen name. Nellie Bly is born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in 1864 in a small town around 30 miles from Pittsburgh. The family is enormous, combining the 10 children her father had with his late first wife and the five he fathers with Nellie's mother, Mary Jane. Vibrant and energetic, Elizabeth stands out from an early age and is known as Pink, thanks to the bright colors her mother dresses her in. Her father, Michael Cochran, is a mill owner and local judge, and the family is comfortable and respected. But that security does not last. When Elizabeth is just six years old, her father dies without leaving a will, and the stable life she has known is upended. Brooke Kroger is a journalist, author and writer of Nellie Bly Daredevil, reporter, feminist.

[Brooke Kroger]

So remember, there are 15 children of Michael Cochran. He dies, the estate is divided, a third for the widow's dower and the rest divided among all these children. So nobody got very much.

[Narrator]

Elizabeth's mother remarries businessman John Jackson Ford, hoping the marriage will provide the security she needs for her five children. But Ford drinks, and when the relationship turns abusive, she takes the rare step of filing for divorce. She is forced to present evidence of cruelty in open court. But then Elizabeth also takes the stand, speaking publicly about her stepfather's alcoholism and violence.

[Brooke Kroger]

Nellie, at 14 years old, testifies at the trial. The testimony is on record. It was quite remarkable. It's handwritten by a transcriber, obviously, but what she reports having seen the real abuse of her mother and growing up in that household. This is her formative experience.

[Narrator]

Her testimony helps secure the divorce the following year. It is an early glimpse of the quality that will define her life, a willingness to speak out when convention tells women to keep quiet. When Elizabeth is 15, her mother uses the little money she has left to enroll her in the Indiana State Normal School, where she begins training as a teacher, one of the few professions readily available to women at the time. But the money runs out, and after just one semester, she is forced to leave. Plunged into financial hardship, the family moves to Pittsburgh, where Nellie helps her mother run a boarding house. They have a roof over their heads, but not a whole lot more.

[Brooke Kroger]

That whole constellation of issues creates her. In my opinion, she is mostly driven not by the desire to become a journalist, but by it is the desire to accumulate wealth and support her family that is really what she is after and a better life for herself, the life she feels she was born to for herself.

[Narrator]

Elizabeth works in childcare to supplement the family Income with little formal education. Her options for advancement are limited, but she remains determined and outspoken. It's only a matter of time before her circumstances and character combine to change the course of her fortunes. Her new home of Pittsburgh is a booming industrial center driven mainly by steel, coal, and manufacturing. Luckily for Elizabeth, it also has a lively and competitive newspaper industry. In 1885, she reads a column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch entitled what Girls Are Good For. Its argument is blunt. Paid work should remain the domain of men, and women belong in the home.

[Brooke Kroger]

It just enrages her because she is looking for real work. And he is basically saying young women who are now trying their muscle in the workforce are getting in the way of young men who need jobs, not really understanding that among the human beings involved, there are people who need to earn a living for their family, who happen also to be women.

[Narrator]

She sends a response under the pseudonym Lonely Orphan Girl. The editor, George Madden, is so impressed that he places a notice in the paper asking for the anonymous writer to identify herself. When she comes forward, he offers her a job.

[Brooke Kroger]

The incredibly amazing thing that happens, and any journalist listening will know how extraordinary this is. The editor looks at the letter, says, oh, the grammar's terrible, the syntax is terrible, but I see a spirit here. Bring this girl in. So he actually runs an ad in the paper. Would she come forward? Which she does and gets the job.

[Narrator]

It's both a stroke of luck for Elizabeth and a shrewd move by Madden, who understands the value of his female readers.

[Brooke Kroger]

You suddenly realize this is a whole readership that we can attract, who advertisers want to appeal to because they're consumers. So it's very, very practical in that sense. He's going to overlook everything not okay about her and say, bring this girl in and let's have a look.

[Narrator]

But though the women's sections that have recently begun appearing in newspapers tend to cover uncontroversial domestic subjects, Elizabeth's first published piece is written in response to the column that sparked her letter. In the article, entitled the Girl Puzzle, she challenges widely accepted gender norms, arguing for broader opportunities for women's careers and education. Instead of using her real name, she publishes under the byline Nellie Bly, launching the pseudonym that will one day be known around the world. She is now a rookie reporter, albeit one earning $5 a week, half that of a man doing the same job. But while the Dispatch has opened a door to her, many still remain closed.

[Brooke Kroger]

Women at this point are being hired into newspapers to do the scut work. They're hired to do the behind the scenes things. Book reviews, gossip, flower shows. This is what they're asked to do. And this is absolutely what she does not want to do.

[Narrator]

What she wants to do is make waves. She has plenty of ideas and she's not afraid of going after the story. One such pitch involves looking at conditions in some of Pittsburgh's factories to find out what life is like for the many women and children who work in them. Bly persuades the dispatch to let her investigate, but the strict stage management of her visits presents a major obstacle.

[Brooke Kroger]

So she gets the assignment. But she's young and not very experienced, so of course this is all organized through the management of the firms. And she realizes she is not going to get to talk a lot about child labor. She is not going to get to talk a lot about how awful the working conditions are because she's being guided by the management's view of this situation. But she can get in a line from an 8 year old. You know, there's a little like hints of what she's trying to get at. That experience teaches her that if you don't go undercover, you're not going to get the real story in situations where people are trying to hide information from you.

[Narrator]

Soon she moves to an issue closer to her heart. Drawing on her own experience, she examines the difficulties women face in unhappy or abusive marriages. She criticizes laws that make it hard for women to divorce or achieve financial independence, often using interviews or case studies of wives trapped in restrictive domestic situations. Readers are captivated and unsettled in equal measure, with many shocked by her coverage of stories that have traditionally been off limits. But the pioneering approach does not go down well with the paper's advertisers, who are by nature averse to upsetting their paying readers. She's moved away from reporting and back to the women's pages. But if anything, the attempt to sideline her only sharpens her ambition. She has discovered that telling uncomfortable truths can make powerful people nervous. And she likes that.

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[Narrator]

reporting on foreign affairs from abroad remains overwhelmingly male territory, one of the ways female reporters can break out of the women's pages is through travel writing. In 1886, after just two years in Pittsburgh, she persuades her editor to send her to Mexico. Politically stable but undemocratic, the nation has seen rapid economic growth, which creates prosperity alongside grinding poverty. These stark contrasts make it appealing to American journalists and travel writers, drawn by its accessibility, exotic culture and growing importance to US Business interests. Being young and unmarried, Bly is unable to travel alone. So when she sets off on the journey of almost 2,000 miles to the border, she does so with her mother in tow as a chaperone determined to make a name for herself.

[Brooke Kroger]

Well, she does a lot of diary like stuff, travelogue. What struck me most about it was her skill at interviewing is already coming out. She asks the question nobody thinks to ask, like she's watching a bullfight and she's wondering, how do they keep their britches up? You know, asking some oblique questions. That makes her writing kind of preposterous and interesting and engaging, like a train wreck all the time, you know, you're always taken on by her voice and by her mind, you know, the way she thinks about things.

[Narrator]

Over six months, she sends regular dispatches back to Pittsburgh. There, the Dispatch publishes them under recurring headlines like Nelly in Mexico, turning her into part of the story. As she travels, she speaks to anyone and everyone, from officials to laborers, journalists to shopkeepers, not to mention dissidents. Thanks to Bly's gift for persuading people to speak candidly. Despite the risks, a picture emerges of censorship, corruption, and a press that survives only by avoiding any condemnation of the regime.

[Brooke Kroger]

She tries to show some political sophistication at a certain point. At the end of the five months, she gets herself in some trouble because she talks about some journalists who've been subjected to censorship that she shouldn't have talked about.

[Narrator]

Though much of her work is more gossip than hard nosed investigation, she understands the risks of exposing things others want to keep hidden. Having reported on cases of journalists imprisoned for criticizing the regiment, she has seen for herself the appalling conditions inside Mexican jails. The last thing she wants is to end up in one herself. It is spring, 1886. In a bustling marketplace in Mexico City, Nellie Bly weaves between tables and blankets piled high with goods. She walks with unhurried calm, taking in the bright piles of produce for sale. But she does not stop, because the leisurely air she projects is an act. She urgently needs to get back to her boarding house, find her mother and gather their things. Earlier this morning, she received word that her reports for the Dispatch have been seen by the Mexican authorities, and they are not happy. If she doesn't get out soon, she could be arrested. Keeping a sharp eye out for anyone who might be police, she heads from the market and onto the street leading towards her temporary home. After a few minutes, she arrives outside the boarding house, wedged between a tobacconist's and a tailor's shop. Nelly mounts the worn stone steps two at a time and pushes through the heavy front door. She hurries across the tiled hallway and up the narrow wooden staircase, listening for anything suggesting the authorities have beaten her to it. As she reaches the top landing and unlocks the door, she finds her mother is already there, anxiously gathering belongings from the washstand and bed. One look passes between them, enough to confirm the danger without explanation. Nelly moves quickly, pulling dresses from hooks, folding clothes into a case, gathering notebooks and loose papers from the bedside table. Minutes later, carrying their bags, the two women descend the stairs and step back out into the heat of the morning, where a waiting carriage stands ready at the curb. They climb in, and after a short ride, the rail station comes into view and the horses is slow to a stop. The women quickly make their way to the platform, which is mercifully busy enough with passengers and porters to make it easy to blend in. Gripping her own case, Nelly's mother reaches quietly for her hand. She squeezes it once briefly before letting go. When the hiss of steam signals the arrival of their train, they climb aboard quickly, moving down the narrow corridor of the carriage as passengers settle into their seats around them. A whistle blows, and soon they're watching through the window as the countryside slides by. But although they're past some of the danger, they're not yet beyond it. The American border is still days away, and until they cross it, she must remain vigilant. Every stranger could be an official sent to intercept her. Every stop could be the one at which she is forced from the train and turned back. If she reaches the safety of the United States, she will have escaped with the final installment of an astonishing story. If she does not, she may vanish into the punitive system of a regime she has challenged in print. By the time Nellie makes it home, she has done more than enough to establish herself as a serious reporter, someone worthy of recognition, respect, and money. Or so she thinks.

[Brooke Kroger]

This was like her first professional, big risk idea. And remember, she's not doing it for the risk. She is fearless. I mean, she is a daredevil, but she's doing it to establish herself in this field. She wants to be preeminent, and she is going after that, risk in the ways that she thinks can get her there. And they assign her to write theater.

[Narrator]

The message she returns to is clear. Even after risk, even after success, the boundaries remain. So in 1887, aged 23, she says goodbye to her mother and siblings and leaves Pittsburgh to take her chances in New York. Nellie arrives broke, unemployed and naive about the realistic prospect of finding decent work. Though she might have had a lucky break back home. Here in the center of America's media, no one is looking to hire a 23 year old woman with a couple of years experience on a Pittsburgh paper.

[Brooke Kroger]

Male editors are crusty and set in their ways and think a certain thing about women. They believe that women are not good value. You know, they need a chaperone to go out at night. You don't want to send them on a dangerous assignment. We don't even think you're capable of doing it because of your limited brain power. I mean, they have all these stereotypes that are ingrained in the culture and have been for 300 years. She thought it would be nothing. She had great recommendations, she had letters of entree, she had all the things you need. And she was getting nowhere because it's New York, the media capital of the universe. She is getting nowhere. She is from provincial Pittsburgh and that is how she is viewed.

[Narrator]

For months she struggles, living cheaply off what meager earnings she can scrape together, filing occasional freelance pieces back to the Pittsburgh Dispatch. But everywhere she turns, she finds closed doors. She cannot get anywhere near a New York editor, let alone pitch an idea to one. Nellie Bly, however, is nothing if not resourceful. Turning the situation to her advantage, she writes a piece about the workplace realities for women journalists and the kind of stories they ordinarily get to cover if they get hired at all.

[Brooke Kroger]

What they're good at, gossip, society, fashion, they don't want to do. But of course, these are the things that men absolutely don't want to do. So that is what women are managing to get hired for. So that story, which she publishes in the Pittsburgh Dispatch, goes what we would today call viral. It's everywhere. And it really gives her a marker to find her way in the door in New York.

[Narrator]

Off the back of this story, she persuades Joseph Pulitzer's New York World to give her an assignment. It is audacious even by the standards of the era. The plan is to fake insanity, get herself committed to the women's lunatic asylum on what is now Roosevelt island, and report from the inside. To prepare, she practices a wide eyed, demented stare in front Of a boarding house mirror. Then, after going without sleep for some time to complete the look, she starts speaking incoherently, dropping in some of the Spanish she learned on assignment in Mexico. Witnessing her act, her landlady calls the police, and after a doctor's examination lasting less than 10 minutes, a judge signs the committal order. What she finds in her new home is even worse than she imagined. This time, there is no stage management of what she gets to see. And much of what the institution has to offer she experiences firsthand. The freezing baths, the rotten food, the filth, the cruelty, and the women who do not appear insane at all. After a week and a half, the world arranges her release. Her expose, later published as 10 Days in a Madhouse, causes a sensation, but it also prompts official scrutiny, leading to reform, including increased funding for the asylum.

[Brooke Kroger]

She forces those in a position of power to act. There is an investigation, There is a grand jury, There is a tour of the facility. Much of what she says can't be corroborated because, of course, they've cleaned things up and fired some people before the grand jury can convene. But there is real impact. They raise the appropriation for this facility by a very substantial amount. She has what every journalist tries to do, expose wrong and get those in a position of power to act. This is the gold standard.

[Narrator]

And it does wonders for her career, too. Her pioneering of a new style of investigative reporting that becomes known as stunt journalism makes Nellie Bly famous.

[Brooke Kroger]

This is really the be all and end all. It really is. I mean, everything else she did is interesting and remarkable and terrific and yay for Nellie. But this was so ast.

[Narrator]

After the asylum story, Bly becomes one of the most recognizable reporters in America. She continues to work undercover, gaining fame for her immersive journalism, Exposing social issues by experiencing them firsthand. In one investigation, she poses as a prospective parent hoping to adopt an infant, Revealing how vulnerable children can be bought and sold. She goes undercover in a box factory to document the harsh realities faced by working women and exposes the unsanitary, overcrowded living conditions Endured by many of New York's poorer inhabitants. It's not long before other reporters want in on the action.

[Brooke Kroger]

So then in her wake, immediately come a battalion of young women with names like Dorothy Dare and Holly Pry and whatever else, doing exactly sort of what Nellie is doing. After Nellie, the world sets up someone called Meg Merrilies who doesn't exist, so that nobody would get as big a reputation as Nellie got. Cause who wants that head in Your midst. And then they just run a whole bunch of girls through the name Meg Merrilies to do stunts. So the stunts are up in a balloon, down in a diving bell. I'm putting on a bulletproof vest, Shoot me. They just do the gamut. And so that's why it gets its moniker of stunt journalism, because a lot of this was stunts which brought readership.

[Narrator]

Stunt journalism opens up a whole new field for female reporters, allowing them to move off the women's sections and onto the front pages. But for Bly, it becomes a new kind of constraint. The very thing that made her famous begins to define and limit her. After three or four years, she's looking to escape. The opportunity presents itself in 1889, when she finds a way to turn her skill of blending reporting nerve and public appeal into the biggest story of her life. Inspired by Jules Verne's hugely popular 1873 novel, around the World in 80 Days, Bly proposes a thrilling new project. She will circle the globe herself and beat the fictional record. Her editor of the New York World initially rejects the plan, dismissing it as too dangerous and difficult for a woman. He argues she would need a male companion and needs too much luggage, and even suggests that a man should be sent instead. Her reply is both characteristic and persuasive. If they send a man, she will leave, make the journey for a rival newspaper and beat him. Understanding by now who he's dealing with, the editor relents. So it is that on November 14, 1889, she sets out to circumnavigate the globe. Dressed in what will become her signature black and white houndstooth coat and carrying just a small bag and a few hundred dollars. She boards a steamship from New Jersey to England. Despite considerable bouts of seasickness, she presses on through France to Egypt, Hong Kong, Japan and China, using ships, trains, rickshaws and even the occasional horse. Her dispatches are brief. She is in a race against time, and there is little opportunity to linger or fully explore the places she visits. But she tells her readers enough about her meeting with Jules Verne in France or her purchase of a pet monkey named McGinty in Singapore. There's even a moment when she encounters a rival journalist, Elizabeth Bisland, attempting the same journey in the opposite direction. Back home, readers follow her progress avidly. The New York World turns her journey into a national event, even running a contest for readers to guess her return time.

[Brooke Kroger]

The world is vamping. I mean, they are running a story every day. They are having guessing games. They create the board game. They have geography lessons. I mean, they're doing anything they can to keep interest going because the entire country is following Nellie Bly on this journey.

[Narrator]

By the time she arrives back in the States, she is no longer a mere journalist, but a global celebrity.

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[Narrator]

it is January 21, 1890, and after 68 days circling the globe, Nellie Bly is standing on the deck of a steamship as San Francisco harbor comes into view. The air is sharp with salt and coal smoke. Ahead, the city rises through a light haze as tugboats chug across the water, their whistles cutting through the morning air. Even before the ship docks, Nelly can see movement along the waterfront. Clusters of people gather at the pier, men in hats shading their eyes, waving handkerchiefs in the air, a ripple of anticipation spreading through them all as the vessel draws closer, news of her journey has crossed the country faster than she has. Every leg, every delay, every mile gained or lost has been printed and reprinted, but still it takes her a moment to realize this crowd has gathered here for her. The vessel slows and is secured with ropes, and as the gangway is lowered, the noise swells. She steps down into the crowd, reporters pressing forward, notebooks in hand. Voices call her name, shouting questions, but there's no time to give them any answers. Even after weeks at sea, she can't waste a moment. Representatives from the New York world are already waiting, cutting through the crowd, ushering her urgently forwards. Just as it has been since she set out almost 10 weeks ago. Everything is about speed. She is guided quickly from the dock, past the crush of onlookers, towards a waiting carriage. The harbor, the city spectacle of her arrival, all of it passes in a blur. One journey has come to an end, but another is now beginning. Within minutes, she is on her way to the station. There, waiting for her is a special train arranged in advance for a single purpose. To carry Nellie Bly across America as fast as possible. The moment she's on board, the train pulls out with a lurch as she settles into the final leg of the journey. Outside, the landscape transforms. Hours and then days pass as coastline gives way to mountains, mountains to plains. Snow appears in places at towns and cities along the route. People gather at the tracks just to glimpse her. Crowds wave as the train roars past. At last, just before 4pm on January 25, the train begins to slow as it pulls into Jersey City Station. Thousands of people line the platforms, hopeful of a glimpse of her through the clouds of steam. There is a final lurch as the brakes are applied. Nellie adjusts her coat, takes a breath, and then the carriage door opens. With the noise of the jubilant crowd surging all around her, she steps down, completing the journey in 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes as she is swallowed by the crowd of journalists and well wishers. Cannon fire sounds from the battery across the water, announcing to New York that Nellie Bly has arrived. At just 25 years old, she has traveled around the world faster than anyone before her. For the thousands watching and the millions reading, Nellie Bly is no longer just a journalist. She is proof that a woman can do what the world has always said she cannot. The trip cements her place as a celebrity reporter, but it also marks the beginning of a turning point in her career. Though her journey has dramatically boosted newspaper sales, the reality of her success does not match the recognition she expects. Her editor, Joseph Pulitzer, fails to properly honor her achievement, promising a medal that never comes, though she receives a bonus. She also gets the strong sense that the paper valued the story more than the woman who had made it possible. Angered by the lack of appreciation, Bly leaves her post. At first, it seems she no longer needs journalism. She embarks on a lecture tour and tries her hand at writing popular fiction. But neither path proves sustainable. The novels fail to find success and the excitement surrounding her journey begins to fade. Within a few years, she finds herself drawn back to reporting, although she is no longer the same journalist. Moving away from stunts to focus on building a reputation as a serious interviewer. She speaks with figures like Susan B. Anthony, a leading light in the women's suffrage movement and radical political activist Emma Goldman. But lives like Bly's rarely move in straight lines. And the next reinvention is one almost no one would have predicted. In 1895, at the age of 31, Nellie Bly marries Robert Livingston Seaman, a wealthy New York industrialist. He owns the Ironclad Manufacturing Company which produces steel goods for an industrializing America. He also happens to be 40 years her senior. To the public, it is bewildering. Here is a woman who has spent her career curating an image of the ultimate modern woman. Independent, restless, impossible to contain. Now she appears to be stepping into the most conventional role imaginable as the young wife of an elderly millionaire.

[Brooke Kroger]

She is gold digging. There is just no doubt about it. And, you know, there may have been a little affection, but it didn't last long. Though she stays with the marriage the first eight years he lasts, the marriage

[Narrator]

brings Bly money, status and a foothold in a world that appears very different from the newsroom. She moves in with her new husband, but though it's certainly a respectable address, it's far from a happy home.

[Brooke Kroger]

He has a gloomy, bleak townhouse on 37th Street. It had never been renovated, and he lives there with his brother, who, of course, is not very happy to have her come along. She is going out every night to eat with friends, to have dinner with friends because the table is so awful in the house, as she will report.

[Narrator]

Suspicious of his new wife's movements, Seaman even hires a detective to follow her. But though the household is tense and the marriage uneasy, Bly is determined to endure it and shifts her attention towards the source of Seaman's wealth. After his death in 1904, she takes over Ironclad herself. She now becomes a serious business leader, running a manufacturing concern in a field almost entirely dominated by men. And she is not merely a figurehead. Bly involves herself in operations, promotion and product development. Patents are registered in her name for improvements to steel containers. And though she may or may not originate every idea herself, she certainly understands the importance of a brand of which she has become a part. Yet still she brings with her the instincts of a reformer. Inside the factory, she introduces measures designed to improve workers lives.

[Brooke Kroger]

She does a lot of Nellie Bly esque good things. She establishes recreation rooms, turkeys at Christmas, a kind of social welfare attitude about her workers.

[Narrator]

But after a time, the company's finances grow unstable. Bly begins a relationship with a manager, but she's placed her trust in the wrong hands and things begin to unravel.

[Brooke Kroger]

He's robbing her blind and she she puts a Brooklyn townhouse in his name. All kinds of stuff going on that's financially really messy. And it gets so bad that she is in jeopardy of prosecution.

[Narrator]

The same qualities that once made Bly formidable her confidence, her appetite for risk, her belief that she could bend events to her will now begin to work against her. She may have outmaneuvered editors, deceived doctors and navigated foreign dangers, but business, it seems, is far less forgiving. By 1911, ironclad collapses into bankruptcy. It is a sharp and public fall. She is indicted by a grand jury for forgery. And though the criminal charges are eventually dismissed, the long battle to clear her name and retrieve the funds leaves her almost destitute, with her reputation in ruins.

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[Narrator]

later, Bly leaves for Europe to stay with a friend, just as the continent edges towards the greatest conflict the world has ever. When the First World War begins, Bly finds herself stuck in Austria, Hungary. America is not yet involved, but borders are tightening, movement is restricted, and foreign visitors are viewed with growing suspicion. It's hard for her to leave, but she is well placed to observe. And so she does what she has always done.

[Brooke Kroger]

So what can you do to bring in some money? What does she know how to do? So she starts by doing this fantastic tour of the battlefield. She is the first woman on our side of the battle to cover Eastern Europe.

[Narrator]

Bly begins filing dispatches to the New York Evening Post from the Eastern Front. A striking, determined woman in her 50s, she moves through devastated landscapes, observing soldiers, refugees and the machinery of modern conflict.

[Brooke Kroger]

By this point, she's not the comely young lady with the wasp waist and the million dollar smile. She may still have the million dollar smile, but she's very portly now. So she's in her big fur coat gallivanting around the battlefields and does some typical Nellie reporting. She's telling you about the dirty tablecloths and everything else. There's always her voice in everything she does.

[Narrator]

That voice remains her defining tool. Even in war, Bly does not focus only upon strategy or politics. She writes about the human cost. Widows, orphans, the ordinary lives broken by forces far beyond their control. At one point, she is challenged by officials who suspect she is a spy and demand papers that she has left behind at the station. She is briefly arrested before being recognized by a doctor who then secures her release. Being pocketless, she later writes of her inability to produce the correct papers is the greatest hardship a woman has to endure. She eventually returns to the United States, but by then the world she comes back to has changed and so has journalism. A new generation of women reporters is emerging. Bly now appears to some a figure from an earlier age, a pioneer overtaken by the world she helped to create.

[Brooke Kroger]

In the office of the Journal, she comes in this kind of portly figure that these young whippersnappered women of the twenties who are coming into journalism in droves now look at and go, oh, she was somebody sometime.

[Narrator]

Still, Bly continues to write. In 1919, she begins a column for the New York Journal, returning once more to social issues, injustice, inequality and the people society prefers not to see. During this period, she loses her mother, who has been her closest confidant through thick and thin, and enters a lengthy dispute with her brother over her estate. And then, on January 27, 1922, Nellie Bly herself dies of pneumonia, aged 57. It is an unremarkable end for a life that had so often sought out risk and spectacle. No thrilling final assignment, no great moment of drama, just illness followed swiftly by death. The next day, newspapers across America carry her name. One calls her the best reporter in America. It is a bold claim, but if anyone was entitled to it, it was Elizabeth Jane Cochran, the girl once nicknamed Pink in a small Pennsylvania town, who had traveled further in every sense than almost anyone could have predicted. In the years since, Nellie Bly has been remembered for many things. A pioneer of daring investigative journalism, a practitioner of stunt reporting, a celebrity reporter, a businesswoman and a war correspondent.

[Brooke Kroger]

Journalism is ephemera. It is meant to disappear. No one is meant to have a legacy in journalism. It's fish paper the next day. As we know, the nature of the beast is it's not meant to last. So when someone could still have a legacy that we sustain till 2026 is something unbloody believable. It just is. That's the thing about her, I think.

[Narrator]

In an age when women were expected to stay quiet, Nellie Bly insisted on being heard and demanding the world listen. She didn't just report the news, she stepped into it, risking her own safety to expose injustice and prove that courage has no gender. From the halls of asylums to a race around the globe, Nellie Bly turned determination into action and action into change, long after the headlines faded. Her legacy remains, not just in what she uncovered, but in the doors she forced open for those who would. Next time on Short History Hub, we'll bring you a short history of Salvador Dali.

[Dali Expert]

Dali's had a tremendously prolific resonance across popular culture. His posters are, of course, very common to find, or calendars and things in mass culture. A big part of what Dali was doing, which seemed very controversial at the time, of making money, of being a greedy artist, of putting his images on fashion design and commercials and putting his face on Alka Seltzer commercials or whatever it might be. Those are all things that an artist in his own time thought were just completely strange and not something a serious person would do. But I think now we have a much different view of what an artist is. I mean, an artist can be a personality. An artist can be much freer. And that kind of success isn't looked down upon today like perhaps it was before.

[Narrator]

That's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of Short historyof right now without waiting and without adverts by subscribing to NoiserPlus. Just hit the link in the episode description or head to www.noiser.comsubscriptions to unlock more episodes today.

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