Nellie Bly Quotes

Energy rightly applied and directed will accomplish anything.

I said I could and I would. And I did.

It is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little sympathy and kindness there are in the world.

In 1896 the newspaperwoman Nellie Bly asked Susan B. Anthony if she’d ever been in love. Her answer: “Bless you, Nellie, I’ve been in love a thousand times! But I never loved any one so much that I thought it would last. In fact, I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man’s housekeeper.

I always liked fog, it lends such a soft, beautifying light to things that otherwise in the broad glare of day would be rude and commonplace.

As I always say: If you want to do it, you can do it. The question is: Do you want to do it? ―Nellie Bly

While I live I hope.

To have a good brain the stomach must be cared for.

Nonsense! If you want to do it, you can do it. The question is, do you want to do it?

I've always had the feeling that nothing is impossible is one applies a certain amount of energy in the right direction. If you want to do it, you can do it.

The insane asylum on Blackwell's Island is a human rat-trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out.

A stick beats more ugliness into a person than it ever beats out.

When Jules Verne was on everyone’s nightstand, Pulitzer ordered daredevil reporter Nellie Bly to travel around the world in eighty days; she accomplished it in seventy-two.

Compare this with a criminal, who is given every chance to prove his innocence. Who would not rather be a murderer and take the chance for life than be declared insane, without hope of escape?

I felt sure now that no doctor could tell whether people were insane or not, so long as the case was not violent. Later

A free American girl can accommodate herself to circumstances without the aid of a man.” -Nellie Bly

I write the truth because I love it and because there is no living creature whose anger I fear or whose praise I court." ~ Nellie Bly, The Evening World, 1895

I would like the expert physicians who are 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, do not 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 will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.

If one is traveling simply for the sake of traveling,” Bly liked to say, “and not for the purpose of impressing fellow travelers, the problem of baggage becomes a very simple one.

A pretty young Hebrew woman spoke so little English I could not get her story except as told by the nurses. They said her name is Sarah Fishbaum, and that her husband put her in the asylum because she had a fondness for other men than himself.

The attendants seemed to find amusement and pleasure in exciting the violent patients to do their worst.

That was the greatest night of my existence. For a few hours I stood face to face with “self!” I

CHAPTER V. PRONOUNCED INSANE

Dress is a great weapon in the hands of a woman if rightly applied. It is a weapon men lack, so women should make the most of it.

Unlike Nellie Bly and others before and after, David Rosenhan’s data was, at last, unimpeachable

As Anthony would tell the journalist Nellie Bly, “I’ve been in love a thousand times! . . . But I never loved any one so much that I thought it would last. . . . I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man’s housekeeper. When I was young, if a girl married poor, she became a housekeeper and a drudge. If she married wealth, she became a pet and a doll. Just think, had I married at twenty, I would have been a drudge or a doll for fifty-five years.”3 Of

After this, I began to have a smaller regard for the ability of doctors than I ever had before, and a greater one for myself. I felt sure now that no doctor could tell whether people were insane or not, so long as the case was not violent.

I always have a comfortable feeling that nothing is impossible if one applies a certain amount of energy in the right direction. When I want things done, which is always at the last moment, and I am met with such an answer: "It's too late. I hardly think it can be done;" I simply say: "Nonsense! If you want to do it, you can do it. The question is, do you want to do it?

In 1899, when American writer Nellie Bly set out on her record-breaking journey around the world in seventy-two days, she carried British gold coins and Bank of England notes with her.11 It was possible to circumnavigate the globe and use one form of money everywhere Nellie went.

The turned-down pages of my life were turned up, and the past was present.

Quando si vivono certe esperienze e ci si scontra con problemi mai concepiti, si realizza quanto il mondo pecchi in simpatia e gentilezza.

Determine Right. Decide Fast. Apply Energy. Act with Conviction. Fight to the Finish. Accept the Consequences. Move on.

VERY EARLY THE OTHER MORNING I started out, not with the pleasure-seekers, but with those who toil the day long that they may live.

What is this place?” I asked of the man, who had his fingers sunk into the flesh of my arm. “Blackwell’s Island, an insane place, where you’ll never get out of”.

It will be seen that if one is traveling simply for the sake of traveling and not for the purpose of impressing one's fellow passengers, the problem of baggage becomes a very simple one.

I have watched patients stand and gaze longingly toward the city they in all likelihood will never enter again. It means liberty and life; it seems so near, and yet heaven is not further from hell.

But here was a woman taken without her own consent from the free world to an asylum and there given no chance to prove her sanity. Confined most probably for life behind asylum bars, without even being told in her language the why and wherefore. Compare this with a criminal, who is given every chance to prove his innocence. Who would not rather be a murderer and take the chance for life than be declared insane, without hope of escape?

I said I believed I could. I had some faith in my own ability as an actress and thought I could assume insanity long enough to accomplish any mission intrusted to me. Could I pass a week in the insane ward at Blackwell’s Island? I said I could and I would. And I did.

As I passed a low pavilion, where a crowd of helpless lunatics were confined, 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 leaveth hope behind”.

But here let me say one thing: From the moment, I entered the insane ward on the Island, I made no attempt to keep up the assumed role of insanity. I talked and acted just as I do in ordinary life. Yet strange to say, the more sanely I talked and acted the crazier I was thought to be by all except one physician, whose kindness and gentle ways I shall not soon forget.

Another thing quite as noticeable, I had more men try to get up a flirtation with me while I was a box-factory girl than I ever had before. The girls were nice in their manners and as polite as ones reared at home. They never forgot to thank one another for the slightest service, and there was quite a little air of "good form" in many of their actions. I have seen many worse girls in much higher positions than the white slaves of New York.

SINCE my experiences in Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum were published in the World I have received hundreds of letters in regard to it. The edition containing my story long since ran out, and I have been prevailed upon to allow it to be published in book form, to satisfy the hundreds who are yet asking for copies. I am happy to be able to state as a result of my visit to the asylum and the exposures consequent thereon, that the City of New York has appropriated $1,000,000 more per annum than ever before for the care of the insane. So, I have at least the satisfaction of knowing that the poor unfortunates will be the better cared for because of my work.

A fire is not improbable, but one of the most likely occurrences. Should the building burn, the jailers or nurses would never think of releasing their crazy patients. This I can prove to you later when I come to tell of their cruel treatment of the poor things intrusted to their care. As I say, in case of fire, not a dozen women could escape. Everyone would be left to roast to death. Even if the nurses were kind, which they are not, it would require more presence of mind than women of their class possess to risk the flames and their own lives while they unlocked the hundred doors for the insane prisoners. Unless there is a change there will someday be a tale of horror never equaled.

Several books provided inspiration, including Stephen Birmingham’s Life at the Dakota; Andrew Alpern’s The Dakota: A History of the World’s Best-Known Apartment Building; Elizabeth Hawes’s New York, New York: How the Apartment House Transformed the Life of the City (1869–1930); Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House; and Tessa Boase’s The Housekeeper’s Tale: The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House.

I noticed some rather peculiar things on my trip to and from the factory. I noticed that men were much quicker to offer their places to the working-girls on the cars than they were to offer them to well-dressed women.

Well, I don't care about that," she said. "You are in a public institution now, and you can't expect to get anything. This is charity, and you should be thankful for what you get.

I am assistant matron.

The marriage festivities are often kept up for a week. After that the husband claims his bride, and right jealously does he guard her. Her life is spent in seclusion - eating, drinking, sleeping, smoking. The husband is desperately jealous and the wife is never allowed to be in the company of another man. Life to a Mexican lady in an American's view is not worthsliving.

I am removing myself from enemy territory to take up my best weapon. A free press.

Remember, he is in the newspaper business, and that consists of doing just two things: informing the public and selling papers. Always aim for the first, never forget the second.

To the canon of women explorers like Gertrude Bell and Nellie Bly, add journalist Eliza Scidmore to the list of exceptionals. This meticulously researched biography brings to life the woman whose curiosity and passion for travel bought the wonder of distant lands in words and pictures to American readers.

I have often moralized on the repulsive form charity always assumes! Here was a home for deserving women and yet what a mockery the name was. The floor was bare, and the little wooden tables were sublimely ignorant of such modern beautifiers as varnish, polish and table-covers.

When Miss Grupe came in I asked if I could not have a night-gown. "We have not such things in this institution," she said. "I do not like to sleep without," I replied. "Well, I don't care about that," she said. "You are in a public institution now, and you can't expect to get anything. This is charity, and you should be thankful for what you get.

After we were back to the sitting-room a number of women were ordered to make the beds, and some of the patients were put to scrubbing and others given different duties which covered all the work in the hall. It is not the attendants who keep the institution so nice for the poor patients, as I had always thought, but the patients, who do it all themselves--even to cleaning the nurses' bedrooms and caring for their clothing.

I took upon myself to enact the part of a poor, unfortunate crazy girl, and felt it my duty not to shirk any of the disagreeable results that should follow. I became one of the city's insane wards for that length of time, experienced much, and saw and heard more of the treatment accorded to this helpless class of our population, and when I had seen and heard enough, my release was promptly secured.

That such an institution could be mismanaged, and that cruelties could exist 'neath its roof, I did not deem possible.

I always had a desire to know asylum life more thoroughly--a desire to be convinced that the most helpless of God's creatures, the insane, were cared for kindly and properly.

I could hear her gently but firmly pleading her case. All her remarks were as rational as any I ever heard, and I thought no good physician could help but be impressed with her story. She told of her recent illness, that she was suffering from nervous debility. She begged that they try all their tests for insanity, if they had any, and give her justice. Poor girl, how my heart ached for her! I determined then and there that I would try by every means to make my mission of benefit to my suffering sisters; that I would show how they are committed without ample trial. Without one word of sympathy or encouragement she was brought back to where we sat. Mrs. Louise Schanz was taken into the presence of Dr. Kinier, the medical man.

Eagerly I accepted the mission to learn the inside workings of the Blackwell Island Insane Asylum. "How will you get me out," I asked my editor, "after I once get in?" "I do not know," he replied, "but we will get you out if we have to tell who you are, and for what purpose you feigned insanity--only get in.

They grabbed her, and my heart ached as she cried: "For God sake, ladies, don't let them beat me." "Shut up, you hussy!" said Miss Grady as she caught the woman by her gray hair and dragged her shrieking and pleading from the room. She was also taken to the closet, and her cries grew lower and lower, and then ceased.

I asked some of them to tell how they were suffering from the cold and insufficiency of clothing, but they replied that the nurse would beat them if they told.

In the conversation with me, he said: "I am glad you did this now, and had I known your purpose, I would have aided you. We have no means of learning the way things are going except to do as you did. Since your story was published I found a nurse at the Retreat who had watches set for our approach, just as you had stated. She was dismissed.

We do not ask you to go there for the purpose of making sensational revelations. Write up things as you find them, good or bad; give praise or blame as you think best, and the truth all the time.

How much I admired that little woman's courage and kindness. How I longed to reassure her and whisper that I was not insane, and how I hoped that, if any poor girl should ever be so unfortunate as to be what I was pretending to be, she might meet with one who possessed the same spirit of human kindness possessed by Mrs. Ruth Caine.

In spite of the knowledge of my sanity and the assurance that I would be released in a few days, my heart gave a sharp twinge. Pronounced insane by four expert doctors and shut up behind the unmerciful bolts and bars of a madhouse!

The one who tried to beat Jules Verne’s around-the-world-in-eighty-days record?” “The same. Verne’s Phileas Fogg did it in eighty days in fiction. Nellie Bly did it in fact in 1889 and 1890. She went around the world in seventy-two days. Anyway, before that, while just starting out as a cub reporter on the New York World, Nellie Bly undertook a story about insane people who had been committed to Blackwell’s Island and how they were being treated. But instead of doing the story in an orthodox way, Nellie disguised herself in ragged clothes, gave herself a deranged look, feigned insanity, and got herself committed to Blackwell’s Island. As a patient, she saw the miserable conditions and the cruelty to the other patients firsthand. When she got out, she wrote two front-page stories about the experience. This exposé made her famous overnight.

Travel, she had discovered, was a delightful means of gratifying the intelligent curiosity that Dr. Johnson had called the root of all wisdom and culture. “I go to bed exhaustedly happy,” she wrote in her notebook, “and wake up expectantly smiling.

After the period of sex-attraction has passed, women have no power in America.” -Elizabeth Bisland

Her official name was Liberty Enlightening the World, but she was most often referred to simply as “Bartholdi’s statue.” The Alsatian sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi had originally meant for her to stand at the entrance to the Suez Canal, where, in the veil and dress of an Egyptian peasant woman, she would have held up a lantern that symbolized the light of Egypt bringing progress to Asia. That plan, however, had been rejected by Egypt’s ruler Khedive Isma’il Pasha as too expensive, and so Bartholdi went back to the drawing board, where he converted progress into liberty.

The state of Illinois contained twenty-seven different time zones, Wisconsin thirty-eight. In Pittsburgh the train station had six clocks, and each one showed a different time. When a clock struck noon in Washington, D.C., the time was 12:08 in Philadelphia, 12:12 in New York, and 12:24 in Boston.

it would require more presence of mind than women of their class possess

Nellie Bly: “What do you think the new woman will be?” Susan B. Anthony: “She’ll be free.” —1896

ON THE 22ND OF SEPTEMBER I was asked by the World if I could have myself committed to one of the asylums for the insane in New York, with a view to writing a plain and unvarnished narrative of the treatment of the patients therein and the methods of management, etc.

the more sanely I talked and acted the crazier I was thought to be by all except one physician, whose kindness and gentle ways I shall not soon forget.

My instructions were simply to go on with my work as soon as I felt that I was ready. I was to chronicle faithfully the experiences I underwent, and when once within the walls of the asylum to find out and describe its inside workings, which are always, so effectually hidden by white-capped nurses, as well as by bolts and bars, from the knowledge of the public.

I never loved anyone so much that I thought it would last. In fact, I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man's housekeeper. (Susan B. Anthony being interviewed by Nellie Bly)

Thomas Scott, the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Jay Gould, one of America’s great robber barons, owned the paper for a time. But by 1883, when Gould sold it, the World was losing $40,000 a year.

like. Electricity was relatively new, and magnetism was all the rage. Bicycles were new, replacing roller-skates as the latest fad. Bustles were on the way out. The American Civil War was only a generation past. Photographic cameras were on the cusp of being made commercially affordable to the general public, but were still too expensive to print in newspapers. Horses, trains, and streetcars were the three standard forms of transportation.

New York World, Nov. 28, 1888 “When a charming young lady comes into your office and smilingly announces that she wants to ask you a few questions regarding the possibility of improving New York’s moral tone, don’t stop to parley. Just say: ‘Excuse me, Nellie Bly,’ and shin down the fire-escape.

Bly’s reporting divides neatly into four periods: her time at the Pittsburg Dispatch (1885-1887), her first explosive stint at Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World (1887-1890), her return to the World (1893-1896), and her last hurrah in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Evening Journal (1914-1922).

that Nellie Bly is a little scamp,

in 1864, Elizabeth Jane Cochrane—better known today by her nom-de-plume—had an astonishing career as a reporter, spanning thirty-seven years. In that time she entirely redefined the role of women in newspapers, helped to invent undercover

also had a natural instinct for what makes a good story. Most of all, she had a unique point of view. She told stories about the inconvenient people in Victorian New York society: the poor, the sick, the downtrodden. She was interested in orphans and women—especially women. Bly was forever telling stories of prominent or remarkable women. She was also relentless in ferreting out schemes meant to swindle poor women of their hard-earned pay. Having been cheated of her inheritance after her father’s death, having had to earn a living before accidentally discovering her calling as a reporter,

instrumental in starting (and later rejecting) “stunt” journalism. She showed that a woman reporter need not be confined to the “women’s pages” of a newspaper, but rather deserved headlines all her own. She was the inspiration for countless women to enter the field. She was also the basis for the comic book character Lois Lane. The real Lois Lane, however, never needed a Superman. Today she is best remembered for the stunts, beginning with her ten days undercover as a “bogus lunatic” to expose the inhumane conditions

Heck, even Nellie Bly had to start somewhere, and Goldfield, Nevada, is as fine a place as any...Well, maybe it's not exactly fine. Not yet. It's still full of dogs and dirt and a despicable person or two. But, as Mother once said, it has potential. And, who knows, maybe I do too.

You are so jolly clever, now; can you tell me why Eve did not take the measles?" he asked after a time. "'Cause she'd 'ad 'em" (Adam), I said in a Bowery tone. "I sai, now, you are jolly clever, but can you tell me why Cain did not take them? Hasten, now, I cannot dwell." "Because he wasn't Abel.

had seen them in the new Western Penitentiary at Pittsburg, Pa., but I did not dare say so. I merely answered:

The wretchedness of the condition was perhaps best conveyed by the old saying that those suffering from seasickness believe they will die on the first day, are sure they will on the second, and hope they will on the third.

In the mid-1800s, American activist Dorothea Dix deployed her sizable inheritance to devote herself to these issues with a fierceness of purpose that hasn’t been matched since. She traveled more than thirty thousand miles across America in three years to reveal the brutalities wrought upon the mentally ill, describing “the saddest picture of human suffering and degradation,” a woman tearing off her own skin, a man forced to live in an animal stall, a woman confined to a belowground cage with no access to light, and people chained in place for years. Clearly, the American system hadn’t improved much on Europe’s old “familial” treatments. Dix, a tireless advocate, called upon the Massachusetts legislature to take on the “sacred cause” of caring for the mentally unwell during a time when women were unwelcome in politics. Her efforts helped found thirty-two new therapeutic asylums on the philosophy of moral treatment. Dorothea Dix died in 1887, the same year that our brave Nellie Bly went undercover on Blackwell Island, in essence continuing Dix’s legacy by exposing how little had truly changed.

Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him.

is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little sympathy and kindness there are in the world.

We know all we want to on that score,” said the doctor, and he left the poor girl condemned to an insane asylum, probably for life, without giving her one feeble chance to prove her sanity.

I felt sure now that no doctor could tell whether people were insane or not, so long as the case was not violent.

I always had a desire to know asylum life more thoroughly—a desire to be convinced that the most helpless of God’s creatures, the insane, were cared for kindly and properly.

I shuddered to think how completely the insane were in the power of their keepers, and how one could weep and plead for release, and all of no avail, if the keepers were so minded.

As I passed a low pavilion, where a crowd of helpless lunatics were confined, 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 leaveth hope behind.

After dinner, I went up-stairs and resumed my former place in the back parlor. I was quite cold and uncomfortable, and had fully made up my mind that I could not endure that sort of business long, so the sooner I assumed my insane points the sooner I would be released from enforced idleness. Ah! that was indeed the longest day I had ever lived. I listlessly watched the women in the front parlor, where all sat except myself.

Well, I don’t care about that”, she said. “You are in a public institution now, and you can’t expect to get anything. This is charity, and you should be thankful for what you get”. “But the city pays to keep these places up”, I urged, “and pays people to be kind to the unfortunates brought here”.

What can I do?” he replied. “I offer suggestions until my brain is tired, but what good does it do? What would you do?” he asked, turning to me, the proclaimed insane girl. “Well, I should insist on them having locks put in, as I have seen in some places, that by turning a crank at the end of the hall you can lock or unlock every door on the one side. Then there would be some chance of escape. Now, every door being locked separately, there is absolutely none”.

I asked for unbuttered bread and was given it. I cannot tell you of anything which is the same dirty, black color. It was hard, and in places nothing more than dried dough. I found a spider in my slice, so I did not eat it. I tried the oatmeal and molasses, but it was wretched, and so I endeavored, but without much show of success, to choke down the tea.