Playing Mad Woman
Item
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Title
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Playing Mad Woman
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Description
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This newspaper article from The Sun recounts Nellie Bly's undercover expose of sordid conditions on Blackwell's Island. Bly's story is unusual because she feigned insanity and secured a quick release from the asylum, but her story is also remarkable for its results: bringing the conditions of Blackwell’s Island to the public’s attention and making those conditions a widespread public health concern, both of which led New York City to implement changes on Blackwell's Island.
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Date Created
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October 14, 1887
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Language
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English
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Source
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https://tidingsofyore.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/nellie-bly-playing-mad-woman/
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Subject
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Investigative journalism, undercover journalism, 19th-century investigative journalism, 19th-century undercover journalism, women, 19th-century women, women journalists, 19th-century women journalists, gender, mental illness, gender and mental illness in the 19th century
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Rights Holder
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Public domain
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transcription
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Playing Mad Woman
Nellie Bly Too Sharp for the Island Doctors
Nine Days' Life in Calico
The Sun Finishes Up its Story of the "Pretty Crazy Girl"
Questioned, Prescribed For, Locked in a Bare Cell every Night, Uniformed in Furniture Goods, Bathed by Alien Hands, Washed Regularly Without Her Own Help After Every Meal of Coarse Food--Silly and Uncouth Companions, in Where Childish Pleasures She Did Not Join--Her Deception Successful--Incidents of Her Adventure and Official Accounts of It
On Saturday, Sept. 24, a modest, good-looking, and well-dressed girl, who gave her name as Nellie Brown, was committed by Justice Duffy in the Essex Market Police Court for an examination as to her sanity. She was the prisoner of Policeman T.P Bockert, who had arrested her in the Temporary Home for Females at 84 Second [A]venue. Mrs. Irene Stenard, the Matron of the Home, explained all that was known about the girl to the Justice. She said that Nellie had come to the Home at noon on Friday and spent the night there in a manner calculated to give her the impression that she was mad. On her arrival at noon and during the afternoon she did not attract any attention to...
Playing Mad Woman