Episode Details

In 1887, reporter Nellie Bly faked mental illness to be committed to New York City’s Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. For ten days, she witnessed cold baths, rotten food, beatings, neglect, and women held there despite showing no sign of mental illness.

Her exposé, Ten Days in a Mad-House, shocked the public and helped secure increased funding and reforms for the institution. More broadly, it changed journalism: Bly proved that going undercover could expose abuses that officials preferred to keep hidden.

Two years later, she became a global celebrity by travelling around the world alone in 72 days, 6 hours, and 11 minutes, beating Jules Verne’s fictional 80-day journey. But it was her time inside the asylum that made Nellie Bly a pioneer of investigative reporting.