Nellie Bly was an American journalist, writer, investigator, and revolutionary.  She is most famously known for her record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days and her published account of living in an asylum, Ten Days in a Mad-house.  Towards the end of the nineteenth century, no visitors were allowed in mental institutions.  Nellie Bly noticed that the public was being deceived in their exposure to the truth behind these institutions, specifically for women, and took her journalist initiative to reveal the actual conditions and call for reform.  A dedicated reporter, Bly admitted herself into a “mad-house” in order to write an exposé that was completely raw.  In the nineteenth century, the mentally insane were hardly treated, but rather secluded from society.  The institutions they were sent to were very poorly funded and scarcely maintained.

In the article “Mental Illness in the 19th Century,” Carrie Hughes discusses the origin of mental illness treatment in the United States.  The original colonists did not see mental illness as something that could be treated.  In the eyes of these early Americans, those with special needs were seen as cursed by the devil or results of witchcraft.  These people were secluded from the public, imprisoned, and even left entirely alone at times- never nurtured.  In the mid-nineteenth century, a woman named Dorothea Dix offered to teach Sunday school at a women’s prison.  She could not believe the conditions she encountered and decided to become an advocate for the proper treatment of the mentally ill.  She fought legislations regarding humane treatment rather than imprisonment for the way someone was born.  In 1851, the Jacksonville Insane Asylum was opened.   Moral treatment began to replace imprisonment.  The idea of brain trauma replaced the demonic assumptions that reined previously.  Inmates would become patients and would be treated with religion, exercise, and education.  This approach hardly lasted.  The lack of results and increase in frustration led many of these “supporters” to give up.  Conditions got worse and the mentally ill were neglected once again.  They were described as “genetically inferior” and therefore hopeless.  Careless doctors and nurses would find any excuse possible to prove that there was nothing that could be done.  “Many in the field believed that weak family and vices, like alcoholism and masturbation, could lead to madness,” Hughes remarked.  The neglect of the mentally ill is what encouraged journalists to take their own stand against treatment conditions.  Nellie Bly admitted herself to an institution around the time where the first attempts of change were deemed hopeless.  The employees of these hospitals had entirely given up, and for that reason, Bly’s experience was frankly a nightmare.  It was not until nearly the turn of the century when the public was educated about the truth that they felt the need to take another stab at a “psychiatric revolution” with the help of various legal battles.  Before the publishing of her experience, there was little to no hope that any changes would be made in the near future.  She truly revolutionized the treatment of the mentally ill with her brave dive into an institution.  She is credited with revealing the truth behind asylums in the United States and is the reason that improvement was called for and eventually made.

The asylum norm of the nineteenth century is the reason for the decline in mental health levels throughout North America.  Geoffrey Reaume acclaimed Janet Miron’s book “Prisons, Asylums, and the Public: Institutional Visiting in the Nineteenth Century for its accurate historical depiction of mental illness treatment.  He recognizes that Miron’s analysis is different from many of its historical context.  In the early nineteenth century, visitors were common in institutions- without the approval of a resident for entry.  Most visitors were middle class white people who wanted to make an impact by advocating for rights of mentally ill.  Because these asylums were publicly funded, people believed they had the right to see these institutions that were paid for with their taxes.  Though tours were allowed, they were incredibly skewed and only showed the best-maintained areas.  Religious hypocrites, as discussed by Janet Miron, came from all over so they could “advocate for reform”, but instead believed lies and did nothing to make an improvement.  The tours that were given created the voyeuristic idea of the residents being watched without consent.  The idea of residents being put on display for the general public to gawk at as they please turned residents into victims of voyeurism.  They were just there for the eyes of the public, as if it were a show.  Inmates became “spectacles of tourism” rather than patients, like animals in a zoo.  Visitors had a choice, inmates didn’t.  This lack of a choice contributed to the dehumanization of the residents.  People believed the tours, and then believed that the institutions weren’t so bad after all.  These people did not really care about the mentally ill; they instead used these tours to please their own minds by telling themselves they were “doing good.”  With the decline of public support for asylum reformation, wardens stopped letting visitors in.  Although the cease of tourism seemed like it would be a good thing, it was the opposite.  Due to the lack of a need to maintain some sort of tidiness, conditions declined even more.  Asylums became like “human warehouses,” turning into places to seclude rather than treat the mentally ill.  It was as if they were separating them for the well being of the general public, not the mental themselves.  This change that happened within asylums and disconnect from the public is why reporters like Nellie Bly were determined to find the truth behind mental institutions, because they were no longer accessible.  Nellie Bly felt urged to take her own private tour by admitting herself into an institution for 10 days.  Bly’s true journalistic nature helped her admit herself into an asylum in order to find raw proof.  The inhumane conditions she described were caused by this newfound secrecy behind mental hospitals.  Nellie’s exposé was meant to draw the public’s attention back to this severing reality that was widespread across the continent.  She worked to open the eyes of the public and make them really want to push for change.  It wasn’t until the truth was brought to the light by Bly that anything severe occurred in the means of reformation.

Nellie Bly went into excruciating detail of her time at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island.  She revealed her horror stories of sleeping, eating, being bathed, and living amongst madwomen.  Before Bly even entered the building, she was consumed by horrible scents and low expectations.  Just moments after stepping inside the asylum, Bly was greeted by rude nurses and unbothered doctors.  She was surrounded by women who tried to plead their sanity and were blatantly ignored.  There was even a woman who was not able to defend herself because the nurse refused to speak to her in her mother tongue, even though they shared the same descent.  It was clear from the start that the staff of the Lunatic Asylum had no intention of being of any assistance to the “patients.”  Bly’s meals were grotesquely described; the inmates were served hard dough as bread, rotten butter, copper-tasting tea, and spiders cooked into food.  Refusing to eat, she would not stop the women who tried to steal food off her plate when she was not looking.  At nighttime, the patients were nearly drowned in ice baths, and sent to bed without nightgowns, with damp bodies, and soaking wet hair.  Beds were stiff and dressed in a thin sheet with a blanket that was too small to cover from a small woman’s feet to shoulders.  It was not until the morning that the patients’ still wet hair was combed, after a sleepless, freezing night of twisting and turning that creates mats of hair.  Each day, the 1600 madwomen of Blackwell’s Island would go on a walk around the island.  They were forced to remain in two-by-two lines, some by scowls and some by belted ropes.  Bly depicted the terrifying faces and actions of the hopeless women, in the place where she said, “those who enter leave hope behind.”  Patients who were sick were never treated, but instead beaten down and choked as punishment.  Over the course of her horrific stay, Nellie Bly watched the sane be driven insane.  After finally being released, she recorded her experience and had it published.  The public was mortified by her exposé, and an investigation by the grand jury resulted in hope and success.  A $850,000 budget increase was allocated to the Department of Public Charities and Corrections for the care of the insane.  To ensure long-term progress, future examinations were scheduled to monitor the conditions and determine that only truly insane were sent to mental institutions.

The nineteenth century was a rollercoaster full of ups and downs for the mentally ill.  Progress was constantly made and retracted as attention wavered to and from the care of the insane.  The recurring changes in asylums were more harmful than beneficial to the patients.  After years of on and off visitation and “showcasing” of the insane, they were deemed hopeless and closed off from the real world.  The treatment given in institutions was never sufficient until Nellie Bly opened the public’s eyes.  She disproved the fallacies that were believed to be true by so many visitors of the early 19th century and drew more attention to the cause than ever before.  Bly’s revolutionary action of immersing herself in the chaotic reality she was reporting on literally saved lives.  As a result of her exposé, sane women were no longer misdiagnosed and admitted into madhouses, asylums became better maintained, and both the government and public paid closer attention to a severe area of need.
