Nellie Bly

Broacast: June 20, 2004

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VOICE ONE:

I'm Shirley Griffith.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Ray Freeman with the Special English program, People in
America. Every week we tell about a person important in the history
of the United States. Today, we tell about a reporter of more than
one-hundred years ago.

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VOICE ONE:

The year was eighteen-eighty-seven. The place was New York City.
A young woman, Elizabeth Cochrane, wanted a job at a large
newspaper. The editor agreed, if she would investigate a hospital
for people who were mentally sick and then write about it.

Elizabeth Cochrane decided to become a patient in the hospital
herself. She used the name Nellie Brown so no one would discover her
or her purpose. Newspaper officials said they would get her released
after a while.

To prepare, Nellie put on old clothes and stopped washing. She
went to a temporary home for women. She acted as if she had severe
mental problems. She cried and screamed and stayed awake all night.
The police were called. She was examined by doctors. Most said she
was insane.

VOICE TWO:

Nellie Brown was taken to the mental hospital. It was dirty.
Waste material was left outside the eating room. Bugs ran across the
tables. The food was terrible -- hard bread and gray-colored meat.

Nurses bathed the patients in cold water and gave them only a
thin piece of cloth to wear to bed.

During the day, the patients did nothing but sit quietly. They
had to talk in quiet voices. Yet, Nellie got to know some of them.
Some were women whose families had put them in the hospital because
they had been too sick to work. Some were women who had appeared
insane because they were sick with fever. Now they were well, but
they could not get out.

Nellie recognized that the doctors and nurses had no interest in
the patients' mental health. They were paid to keep the patients in
a kind of jail. Nellie stayed in the hospital for ten days. Then a
lawyer from the newspaper got her released.

VOICE ONE:

Five days later, the story of Elizabeth Cochrane's experience in
the hospital appeared in the New York World newspaper. Readers were
shocked. They wrote to officials of the city and the hospital
protesting the conditions and patient treatment. An investigation
led to changes at the hospital.

Elizabeth Cochrane had made a difference in the lives of the
people there. She made a difference in her own life too. She got her
job at the New York World. And she wrote a book about her experience
at the hospital. She did not write it as Nellie Brown, however, or
as Elizabeth Cochrane. She wrote it under the name that always
appeared on her newspaper stories: Nellie Bly.

VOICE TWO:

The child who would grow up to become Nellie Bly was born during
the Civil War, in eighteen-sixty-four, in western Pennsylvania.

Her family called her Pink. Her father was a judge. He died when
she was six years old. Her mother married again. But her new husband
drank too much alcohol and beat her. She got a divorce in
eighteen-seventy-nine, when Pink was fifteen years old. Pink decided
to learn to support herself so she would never need a man.

Pink, her mother, brothers and sisters moved to a town near the
city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pink worked at different jobs but
could not find a good one.

One day, she read something in the Pittsburgh Dispatch newspaper.
The editor of the paper, Erasmus Wilson, wrote that it was wrong for
women to get jobs. He said men should have them. Pink wrote the
newspaper to disagree. She said she had been looking for a good job
for about four years, as she had no father or husband to support
her. She signed it "Orphan Girl".

VOICE ONE:

The editors of the dispatch liked her letter. They put a note in
the paper asking "Orphan Girl" to visit. Pink did. Mister Wilson
offered her a job.

He said she could not sign her stories with her real name,
because no woman writer did that. He asked news writers for
suggestions. One was Nellie Bly, the name of a girl in a popular
song. So Pink became Nellie Bly.

For nine months, she wrote stories of interest to women. Then she
left the newspaper because she was not permitted to write what she
wanted. She went to Mexico to find excitement. She stayed there six
months, sending stories to the Dispatch to be published. Soon after
she returned to the Pittsburgh Dispatch, she decided to look for
another job. Nellie Bly left for New York City and began her job at
the New York World.

VOICE TWO:

As a reporter for the New York World, Nellie Bly investigated and
wrote about illegal activities in the city. For one story, she acted
as if she was a mother willing to sell her baby. For another, she
pretended to be a woman who cleaned houses so she could report about
illegal activities in employment agencies.

Today, a newspaper reporter usually does not pretend to be
someone else to get information for a story. Most newspapers ban
such acts. But in Nellie Bly's day, reporters used any method to get
information, especially if they were trying to discover people
guilty of doing something wrong.

Nellie Bly's success at this led
newspapers to employ more women. But she was the most popular of the
women writers. History experts say Nellie Bly was special because
she included her own ideas and feelings in everything she wrote.
They say her own voice seemed to speak on the page.

Nellie Bly's stories always provided detailed descriptions. And
her stories always tried to improve society. Critics said Nellie Bly
was an example of what a reporter can do, even today. She saw every
situation as a chance to make a real difference in other people's
lives as well as her own.

VOICE ONE:

Nellie Bly may be best remembered in history for a trip she took.

In the eighteen-seventies, French writer Jules Verne wrote the
book "Around the World in Eighty Days." It told of a man's attempt
to travel all around the world. He succeeded. In real life, no one
had tried. By eighteen-eighty-eight, a number of reporters wanted to
do it. Nellie Bly told her editors she would go even if they did not
help her. But they did.

VOICE TWO:

Nellie Bly left New York for France on November fourteenth,
eighteen-eighty-nine. She met Jules Verne at his home in France. She
told him about her plans to travel alone by train and ship around
the world.

From France she went to Italy and Egypt, through South Asia to
Singapore and Japan, then to San Francisco and back to New York.
Nellie Bly's trip created more interest in Jules Verne's book.
Before the trip was over, "Around the World in Eighty Days" was
published again. And a theater in Paris had plans to produce a stage
play of the book.

VOICE ONE:

Back home in New York, the World was publishing the stories Bly
wrote while travelling. On days when the mail brought no story from
her, the editors still found something to write about it. They
published new songs written about Bly and new games based on her
trip. The newspaper announced a competition to guess how long her
trip would take. The prize was a free trip to Europe. By December
second, about one-hundred-thousand readers had sent in their
estimates.

Nellie Bly arrived back where she started on January
twenty-fifth, eighteen-ninety. It had taken her seventy-six days,
six hours, eleven minutes and fourteen seconds. She was twenty-five
years old. And she was famous around the world.

VOICE TWO:

Elizabeth Cochrane died in New York in nineteen-twenty-two. She
was fifty-eight years old. In the years since her famous trip, she
had married, and headed a business. She also had helped poor and
homeless children. And she had continued to write all her life for
newspapers and magazines as Nellie Bly.

One newspaper official wrote this about her after her death:

"Nellie Bly was the best reporter in America. More important is
the work of which the world knew nothing. She died leaving little
money. What she had was promised to take care of children without
homes, for whom she wished to provide. Her life was useful. She
takes with her from this Earth all that she cared about -- an
honorable name, the respect and affection of her fellow workers, the
memory of good fights well fought and many good deeds never to be
forgotten. Happy the man or woman that can leave as good a record."

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VOICE ONE:

This VOA Special English program, People in America, was written
by Nancy Steinbach. Your narrators were Shirley Griffith and Ray
Freeman.