 |
| Home eBooks Audio Books Lit Arts Language Pre-K Free ESL Resources Online Games Book of the Day Game of the Day |
| Alphabet Animals Colour & Concepts Family Numbers Nursery Rhymes Story Time Puzzles Scrapbooking Crafts Disney |
Home
About
Activities
Africa
Alphabet
Bible
Colour & Activity
Contact
Crafts
Curriculum
Calendar
Dolch Words
Freebies
Gallery
Games
Health
Homeschooling
Kids Fun Pages
Language
Links
Maths
Menus4Moms
Nursery Rhymes
Parents
Phonics
Pre-K
Services
Site Map
South Africa
Spelling
Surfnet Kids
Teens
Themes
WAHM
About
Activities
Africa
Alphabet
Bible
Colour & Activity
Contact
Crafts
Curriculum
Calendar
Dolch Words
Freebies
Gallery
Games
Health
Homeschooling
Kids Fun Pages
Language
Links
Maths
Menus4Moms
Nursery Rhymes
Parents
Phonics
Pre-K
Services
Site Map
South Africa
Spelling
Surfnet Kids
Teens
Themes
WAHM
| Nellie Bly aka Elizabeth Jane Cochran |
Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in Cochran's Mills, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, 40 miles
northeast of Pittsburgh, she was nicknamed "Pink" for wearing that color as a child. Her
father, a wealthy former associate justice, died when she was six. Her mother remarried 3
years later, but sued for divorce when Elizabeth was 14. Elizabeth testified in court
against her drunken, violent stepfather. As a teenager she changed her surname to
Cochrane, apparently adding the "e" for sophistication. She attended boarding school
for one term, but dropped out due to a lack of funds.
In 1880, Elizabeth & her family moved to Pittsburgh. A sexist column in the Pittsburgh
Dispatch prompted her to write a fiery rebuttal to the editor, who was so impressed with
her earnestness and spirit he asked her to join the paper. Female newspaper writers at
that time customarily used pen names, and for Cochran the editor chose "Nellie Bly", a
misspelling of the title character in the then-popular song "Nelly Bly" by Stephen Foster.
Nellie aka Elizbeth focused her early work for the Dispatch on the plight of working
women, writing a series of investigative articles on female factory workers. But editorial
pressure pushed her to the women's pages to cover fashion, society, and gardening, the
usual role for female journalists of the day. Dissatisfied with these duties, she took the
initiative and travelled to Mexico to serve as a foreign correspondent.
At the age of 21, she spent nearly six months reporting the lives and customs of the
Mexican people; her dispatches were later published in book form as Six Months in
Mexico. In one report, she protested the imprisonment of a local journalist for criticising
the Mexican government, then a dictatorship under Porfirio Díaz. When Mexican
authorities learned of Bly's report, they threatened her with arrest, prompting her to
leave the country. Safely home, she denounced Díaz as a tyrannical Czar suppressing the
Mexican people and controlling the press.
Asylum exposé
Burdened again with theatre and arts reporting, Bly left the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1887
for New York City. Penniless after 4 months, she talked her way into the offices of Joseph
Pulitzer's newspaper, the New York World, and took an undercover assignment for which
she agreed to pretend to be insane to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the
Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island.
After a night of practising deranged expressions in front of a mirror, she checked into a
working-class boardinghouse. She refused to go to bed, telling the boarders that she was
afraid of them and that they looked crazy. They soon decided that she was crazy, and
the next morning summoned the police. Taken to a courtroom, she pretended to have
amnesia. The judge concluded she'd been drugged.
She was then examined by several doctors, who all declared her to be insane.
"Positively demented," said one, "I consider it a hopeless case. She needs to be put
where someone will take care of her." The head of the insane pavilion at Bellevue
Hospital pronounced her "undoubtedly insane". The case of the "pretty crazy girl"
attracted media attention: "Who Is This Insane Girl?" asked the New York Sun. The New
York Times wrote of the "mysterious waif" with the "wild, hunted look in her eyes", and her
desperate cry: "I can't remember, I can't remember."
Committed to the asylum, Bly experienced its conditions firsthand. The food — gruel
broth, spoilt meat, bread that was little more than dried dough — she found inedible. The
inmates were made to sit for much of each day on hard benches with scant protection
from the cold. The bathwater was frigid, and buckets of it were poured over their heads.
The nurses were rude and abusive, telling the patients to shut up and beating them if
they didn't. Speaking with her fellow residents, Bly was convinced that some were as
sane as she was. On the effect of her experiences, she wrote:
"What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment? Here's a
class of women sent to be cured. I'd like the expert physicians who're condemning me for
my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman,
shut her up and make her sit from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. on straight-back benches, don't allow
her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of
the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it'll
take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck."
In 1916 Nellie was given a baby boy whose mother requested Nellie look after him and
see that he become adopted. The child was illegitimate and difficult to place since he
was half Japanese. He spent the next six years in an orphanage run by the Church For All
Nations in Manhattan.
As Nellie became ill towards the end of her life she requested her niece, Beatrice
Brown, look after the boy and several other babies in whom she'd become interested.
Her interest in orphanages may have been part of her ongoing efforts to improve the
social organisations of the day.
She died of pneumonia at St. Mark's Hospital in New York City in 1922, at age 57 and
was interred in a modest grave at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, NY.
Download this Biography in PDF format
Credits and Thanks Wikipedia & Totally Explained
northeast of Pittsburgh, she was nicknamed "Pink" for wearing that color as a child. Her
father, a wealthy former associate justice, died when she was six. Her mother remarried 3
years later, but sued for divorce when Elizabeth was 14. Elizabeth testified in court
against her drunken, violent stepfather. As a teenager she changed her surname to
Cochrane, apparently adding the "e" for sophistication. She attended boarding school
for one term, but dropped out due to a lack of funds.
In 1880, Elizabeth & her family moved to Pittsburgh. A sexist column in the Pittsburgh
Dispatch prompted her to write a fiery rebuttal to the editor, who was so impressed with
her earnestness and spirit he asked her to join the paper. Female newspaper writers at
that time customarily used pen names, and for Cochran the editor chose "Nellie Bly", a
misspelling of the title character in the then-popular song "Nelly Bly" by Stephen Foster.
Nellie aka Elizbeth focused her early work for the Dispatch on the plight of working
women, writing a series of investigative articles on female factory workers. But editorial
pressure pushed her to the women's pages to cover fashion, society, and gardening, the
usual role for female journalists of the day. Dissatisfied with these duties, she took the
initiative and travelled to Mexico to serve as a foreign correspondent.
At the age of 21, she spent nearly six months reporting the lives and customs of the
Mexican people; her dispatches were later published in book form as Six Months in
Mexico. In one report, she protested the imprisonment of a local journalist for criticising
the Mexican government, then a dictatorship under Porfirio Díaz. When Mexican
authorities learned of Bly's report, they threatened her with arrest, prompting her to
leave the country. Safely home, she denounced Díaz as a tyrannical Czar suppressing the
Mexican people and controlling the press.
Asylum exposé
Burdened again with theatre and arts reporting, Bly left the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1887
for New York City. Penniless after 4 months, she talked her way into the offices of Joseph
Pulitzer's newspaper, the New York World, and took an undercover assignment for which
she agreed to pretend to be insane to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the
Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island.
After a night of practising deranged expressions in front of a mirror, she checked into a
working-class boardinghouse. She refused to go to bed, telling the boarders that she was
afraid of them and that they looked crazy. They soon decided that she was crazy, and
the next morning summoned the police. Taken to a courtroom, she pretended to have
amnesia. The judge concluded she'd been drugged.
She was then examined by several doctors, who all declared her to be insane.
"Positively demented," said one, "I consider it a hopeless case. She needs to be put
where someone will take care of her." The head of the insane pavilion at Bellevue
Hospital pronounced her "undoubtedly insane". The case of the "pretty crazy girl"
attracted media attention: "Who Is This Insane Girl?" asked the New York Sun. The New
York Times wrote of the "mysterious waif" with the "wild, hunted look in her eyes", and her
desperate cry: "I can't remember, I can't remember."
Committed to the asylum, Bly experienced its conditions firsthand. The food — gruel
broth, spoilt meat, bread that was little more than dried dough — she found inedible. The
inmates were made to sit for much of each day on hard benches with scant protection
from the cold. The bathwater was frigid, and buckets of it were poured over their heads.
The nurses were rude and abusive, telling the patients to shut up and beating them if
they didn't. Speaking with her fellow residents, Bly was convinced that some were as
sane as she was. On the effect of her experiences, she wrote:
"What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment? Here's a
class of women sent to be cured. I'd like the expert physicians who're condemning me for
my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman,
shut her up and make her sit from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. on straight-back benches, don't allow
her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of
the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it'll
take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck."
In 1916 Nellie was given a baby boy whose mother requested Nellie look after him and
see that he become adopted. The child was illegitimate and difficult to place since he
was half Japanese. He spent the next six years in an orphanage run by the Church For All
Nations in Manhattan.
As Nellie became ill towards the end of her life she requested her niece, Beatrice
Brown, look after the boy and several other babies in whom she'd become interested.
Her interest in orphanages may have been part of her ongoing efforts to improve the
social organisations of the day.
She died of pneumonia at St. Mark's Hospital in New York City in 1922, at age 57 and
was interred in a modest grave at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, NY.
Download this Biography in PDF format
Credits and Thanks Wikipedia & Totally Explained
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
2009 Educator's Calendar
2008 Educator's Calendar
2007 Educator's Calendar
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
2009 Educator's Calendar
2008 Educator's Calendar
2007 Educator's Calendar
Nellie Bly (born May 5, 1864 – Died January 27,
1922) was an American journalist, author,
industrialist, and charity worker. She is most
famous for an undercover exposé in which she
faked insanity to study a mental institution from
within. She's also well-known for her record-
breaking trip around the world.
1922) was an American journalist, author,
industrialist, and charity worker. She is most
famous for an undercover exposé in which she
faked insanity to study a mental institution from
within. She's also well-known for her record-
breaking trip around the world.
| The thousands of downloads and teaching resources are free, with our compliments. Unfortunately however, the maintenance, upgrading and webhosting are not. Your support is greatly appreciated. Please consider making a donation by using the secure Paypal Button. Thank you |