Summary:
Born Elizabeth Cochran on May 5, 1864, in Cochran's Mills, Pennsylvania, journalist Nellie Bly began writing for The Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1885. Two years later, Bly moved to New York City and began working for the New York World. In conjunction with one of her first assignments for the World, she spent several days on Blackwell's Island, posing as a mental patient for an exposé. In 1889, the paper sent her on a trip around the world in a record-setting 72 days. Bly died on January 27, 1922, at age 57, in New York City. ESSAY: Famed investigative journalist Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran (she later added an "e" to the end of her name) on May 5, 1864, in Cochran's Mills, Pennsylvania. The town was founded by her father, Michael Cochran, who amply provided for his family by working as a judge and landowner. Her grandfather had immigrated to America from Ireland in the 1790s. Bly's mother was Michael Cochran's second wife, Mary Jane Cochran; their marriage produced five children, the third of which was Bly. (Prior to their union, Michael and Mary Jane were both widowed. Michael had 10 children by his first wife; Mary Jane had no children from her first marriage.)
Bly suffered a tragic loss in 1870, at the age of 6, when her father died suddenly. Amidst their grief, Michael Cochran's death presented a grave financial detriment to his family, as he left them without a will, and, thusly, no legal claim to his estate.
In an effort to support her now-single mother, Bly enrolled at the Indiana Normal School, a small college in Indiana, Pennsylvania, where she studied to become a teacher. However, not long after beginning her courses there, financial constraints forced Bly to table her hopes for a higher education. After leaving the school, she moved with her mother to the nearby city of Pittsburgh, where, together, they ran a boarding house.
Bly's future finally began to look brighter in the early 1880s, when, at the age of 18, she submitted a racy response to an editorial piece that had been published in The Pittsburgh Dispatch. In the piece, writer Erasmus Wilson (known to Dispatch readers as the "Quiet Observer," or Q.O.) claimed that women were best served in the home, conducting domestic duties such as raising children, cooking and cleaning, and called the working woman "a monstrosity." Aghast by Wilson's sexist statements, it didn't take long for Bly to craft her fiery rebuttal. Bly's letter grabbed the attention of the paper's managing editor, George Madden, who, in turn, offered her a position.
Bly followed her Blackwell's exposé with similar investigative work, including editorials detailing the improper treatment of individuals in New York jails and factories, corruption in the state legislature and other first-hand accounts of malfeasance. She also interviewed and wrote pieces on several prominent figures of the time, including the likes of Emma Goldman and Susan B. Anthony.Bly went on to gain more fame in 1889, when she traveled around the world in an attempt to break the faux record of Phileas Fogg, the fictional title character of Jules Verne's 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days, who, as the title denotes and the story goes, sails around the globe in 80 days. Given the green light to try the feat by the New York World, Bly embarked on her journey from Hoboken, New Jersey in November 1889, traveling first by ship but later also via horse, rickshaw, sampan, burro and other vehicles. She completed the trip in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds—setting a real world record, despite her fictional inspiration for the undertaking. (Bly's record was beaten a few months later, in 1890, by George Francis Train, who finished the trip in 67 days.) Bly later published a book about the experience: Around the World in 72 Days (1890).
In 1895, at the age of 30, Bly married millionaire industrialist Robert Seaman, who was 40 years her senior, and subsequently became legally known as Elizabeth Jane Cochrane Seaman (in full). Also around this time, she retired from journalism. After her husband's death in 1905, however, Bly faced dwindling finances and thusly reentered the newspaper industry. She began working for the New York Journal in 1920.
Just two years after reviving her writing career, on January 27, 1922, Nellie Bly died from pneumonia in New York City. She was 57 years old.