Nellie Bly & The Girl Puzzle
On May 5th, 1864, Elizabeth Jane Cochran was born, later to become famous with her pen name of Nellie Bly. She went on to be a trailblazer with a career that included being a journalist, industrialist, inventor, and charity worker. And these accomplishments are not even the top two reasons Nellie Bly became famous and an inspiring figure 157 years later.
Nellie decided to take on the challenge of beating Jules Verne's fictional Phileas Fogg in circumnavigating the world in less than 80 days. She started from New York on November 14, 1889. She traveled alone and carried with her just 200 pounds of currency and some personal items. The entire journey of over 40,000 kilometers needed to be covered by steamer ships and railroad. She traveled through England, France (where she met Jules Verne), Italy, Suez Canal, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Hongkong, China, Japan, and San Francisco after crossing the Pacific. After a plane ride across the US, she made the round trip in just 72 days - a world record at that time.
As a journalist, she took on an undercover role to report on the neglect and mistreatment of patients at a mental health asylum. Feigning insanity, she got herself admitted and suffered the same horrible treatment as her fellow inmates - unclean conditions, patient abuse including beatings, deplorable food, and little protection from the cold. Several doctors who "treated" her during her stay of 10 days pronounced her "positively demented" and "hopeless". After her newspaper secured her release, she reported her experience, including in the form of a book "Ten Days in a Mad-House". Her reporting had a far-reaching impact and directly led to increased investment in the diagnosis and care of those who are mentally ill. Through this work, Nellie Bly had also created the entirely new field of investigative journalism - another world's first by this amazing woman.
Nellie Bly not only inspired women with the self-reliant way she lived, but she also fought for equality of opportunity and income for women, decades before they even had the right to vote. In a letter titled "The Girl Puzzle" to the Pittsburgh Gazette newspaper, she wrote -
"Here would be a good field for believers in women’s rights. Let them forego their lecturing and writing and go to work; more work and less talk. Take some girls that have the ability, procure for them situations, start them on their way, and by so doing accomplish more than by years of talking. Instead of gathering up the “real smart young men” gather up the real smart girls, pull them out of the mire, give them a shove up the ladder of life, and be amply repaid both by their success and unforgetfulness of those that held out the helping hand."
These words from more than a century ago still ring true and continue to inspire us all to create a more equal society for all.
[https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/04/30/nellie-bly-letter/]
[https://www.biography.com/activist/nellie-bly]