
Many live with a curiosity that people endure with the clinically insane. Mostly because we do not understand it. In 1887 Nellie Bly risked her life to “pull off one of the most courageous feats in the history of investigative reporting- posing as insane, she embedded herself at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island to bring public attention to the horrific brutality and neglects to which patients were subjected” (Popova). Nellie Bly’s courage and passion for what she thinks is right, opens eyes to what most people turn away from. Her actions changed the world for the better, but also created more humane ways to take care of clinically insane. 

Bly was asked to go undercover with the knowledge of risking her life yet went anyways. Her plan was simple. “She would assume the characteristics of insanity to such degree [as to fool] the doctors, and then write a plain and unvarnished narrative of the treatment of the patients therein and the methods of management’ (Popova). The discipline required for a plan like this to be successful needed delicacy and the understanding of its difficulty because if she had taken it too far, she may have driven herself insane. People are afraid of the brain and its power. The ideas that come from it and the power it has yet we do not even use it to its full capacity. She does not name the illness in which she was diagnosed to be admitted but research shows it was ‘hysteria,’ “an affliction doctors ascribed especially to young, independent and assertive women” (Hardmarden). Hysteria is also referred to as a sexual craving. She witnessed and was forced to take cold baths, forced starvation, beatings, the hovering of sexual harassment, and an atmosphere that related more to a concentration camp than to a health care establishment. 

As the days went on and she experienced the tortures that the women had to face weekly, she explained that the more-sane and ‘normal’ she acted, the more insane she looked. On the day of her first walk, while also making fun of all of the patients with their straw hats, she walked passed a low pavilion where she says “a crowd of helpless lunatics were confined” (P. 292). Then she read the most ironic and absurd words that the asylum had to offer. She writes, “I read a motto on the wall, ‘While I live I hope.’ The absurdity of it struck me forcibly. I would have liked to put above the gates that open to the asylum, ‘He who enters here leave hope behind.’” If Nellie Bly’s opinion and thoughts were specific to going undercover to become rich and famous, she probably would have payed no mind to this quote or written something about how it is there to remind the patients that life is a beautiful gift. Though that was not her intention. She wanted this investigation to change the world. Her intent is to change people’s thoughts and views. She looks to open eyes to the cruelty and harm that these innocent women were going through because they were unwanted by their families and “insane.” It seems to be that people of this time and the miserable souls that work in the asylum have a predetermined mindset of life as a miserable and short hell, yet in reality, life is the longest thing we will ever do. When Nellie Bly was going through this abuse, it seemed as though the nurse’s angers were taken out on the patients disguised as “taking care of the women” and “attempting to cure them.” Bly would not have invested herself if she had not there to better the world. 

Blackwell opened as America’s first municipal mental hospital in 1839 and was meant to be a cutting edge institution that focused on moral, humane rehabilitation of its patients (DeMain). But it ended up as an inhumane scary asylum staffed by inmates from a nearby penitentiary. Writers previous to Bly had visited, 1842- Charles Dickens went and described the asylum as “listless, madhouse air” and “very painful” yet Bly was the first to go undercover (DeMain). Despite the words that previous authors had written, Bly decided to still go undercover and what she reported exceeded her worst expectations. She verbally attacked all of the staff members ridiculing “oblivious doctors” and “coarse, massive” orderlies who “choked, beat, and harassed” patients and chewed and spit tobacco “in a manner more skillful than charming.” (DeMain). 

One of the biggest problems for Bly was the food that the patients were served. The taste was bitter to nothing and the patients were not even granted salt for some kind of flavor. When the patients were out walking, they caught glimpses of the dining area for the doctors and nurses and spotted melons, grapes, and fresh white bread. They talked about a German lady who did not eat for several days and finally one day went missing and was reported to have a fever of 150 degrees. This brought her into the choking and beating patients chapter. Hall 6 was where all of the newcomers where brought to. A girl named “Urena Little-Page” was brought in. She was actually insane as she was thirty-three years old but claimed to be eighteen, which gave the nurses ammunition to attack her. Each time they said something about her actual age and laughed about it, Urena grew more and more upset and cried and screamed and wanted to go home because she was treated so badly. Bly writes, “After they got all of the amusement out of her they wanted and she was crying, they began to scold and tell her to keep quiet. She grew more and more hysterical every moment until they pounced upon her and slapped her face and knocked her head in a lively fashion (P. 297.) She said they were also choking her and as she listened the cries grew more and more quiet from the closet.

When Bly’s investigation was over, and she requested that the committee of appropriation provided $1,000,000 more for the benefit of then insane (DeMain). She returned to Blackwell about a month after her series ran, again showing her passion and care for the subject to make sure that the money was used in the correct ways. DeMain says that “in her book she says that “when they made their tour, many of the abuses she reported had been corrected: the food service and sanitary conditions were improved, the foreign patients had been transferred, and the tyrannical nurses had disappeared. Her mission was accomplished.” 

People like Bly are the reason that so many people are inspired to continue to change the world, whether it be in large ways or smaller ways. Her planning, strategies, and suffering changed the cultural idea of asylums of the time and what they were perceived as doing as opposed to what was actually happening. She also changed journalism, pioneering undercover reporting influencing the way society not only looked at insane asylums but also the way they looked at journalists and their passion of bringing attention to social injustices. Her courage and passion to change what she believes in was the spark that was needed for these asylums to change and for people to pay more attention to the insane and helpless individuals. 
