Elizabeth Seaman took her job as a journalist very seriously. She was passionate about her work and was one of the main pioneers of true investigative journalism.
Elizabeth was born in 1864 in Pennsylvania. She was the third child of her father, a wealthy businessman from a second marriage, but he had had no less than ten children from the previous one.
She, on the other hand, was the first daughter of her mother, Mary Jane, who had always dreamed of having a daughter.
So Mary Jane always dressed Elizabeth in lace and rose, curled her hair every day, and Elizabeth was actually like her mother’s doll.
So she received the nickname Pink very early on.
It wasn’t until she started working as a journalist that an editor suggested that it might not be appropriate to label her stories pink that she adopted the name Nellie Bly, the name for which she would become world famous.
But the article sticks to his first name.
An entrepreneur in many fields
She was one of the first female journalists and it can be said that she is one of the very first, both among men and among teachers, to have truly immersed herself in investigative journalism.
But Elizabeth was also involved in business, campaigned for women’s rights, and was a respected friend of many of her most influential contemporaries.
Elizabeth has always been determined never to support her male colleagues.
It’s hard to say if there was a connection between this determination and the pink lace dresses of childhood.
No thanks to flower arrangements
Elizabeth took up journalism at an early age.
Early in her career at the Pittsburg Dispatch, she wrote about women’s rights, particularly in the workplace, and about the lives of factory girls, both on and off the job. But with such writings, she was immediately placed in “women’s news”, that is, writing about fashion, recipes and flower arrangements.
Elizabeth believed her journalism career was doomed, resigned from the Pittsburg Dispatch, moved to New York City, and decided to focus on foreign affairs.
She traveled to Mexico in 1886, but since it was not at all proper for a 21-year-old girl to make such a trip alone, her mother accompanied her as a guardian of modesty.
She has written a number of informative articles about Mexico, including the country’s culture, nature and geography, clothing, customs, and last but not least, corruption in the country’s politics.
Later, she wrote a book about the trip called “Six Months in Mexico”.
Around the Earth in 72 days
In 1887 Elizabeth began working for the award-winning New York newspaper, The World.
Of all of Elizabeth’s accomplishments, she is best known for two things.
One of them is his world tour.
In 1888, when Elizabeth was 24, young, impetuous, and had just read Jules Verne’s novel, “Around the Earth in 80 Days”, she decided to do better. With two days notice, she packed up the bare necessities and left.
She managed to complete the trip in 72 days and also wrote a book about the trip,
It was a world record, but Elizabeth didn’t hold it for long because a few months later a man circumnavigated the globe in 67 days.
I had an idea on the first day
The other thing Elizabeth is most famous for is her time in the mental asylum.
In the year before the circumnavigation of the globe, 1887, rumors swirled that people were being abused in lunatic asylums in New York, and no doubt elsewhere.
Elizabeth had barely set foot in her new workplace, World, when she managed to convince an editor that she was the right person to find out what the treatment of women in New York’s mental asylums was like.
Elizabeth, only 23, moved them into a cheap women’s boarding house, under the name “Nellie Brown.” The pension was primarily for those who struggled, especially mentally, and had little means.
Elizabet has already started acting strangely. She was talking to herself, pretending to have invisible friends, and throwing tantrums between the hugs of the other residents of the building.
But there were so many strange birds at the inn that Elizabeth didn’t think she was stranger than the others.
She then gave in to some strange behavior, started threatening other hostel residents, and eventually called the house manager to the police.
Finally in an asylum
She was first sent to the famous Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital for an evaluation of her mental health.
Elizabeth was so convincing that doctors at Bellevue were sure ‘Nellie’ was crazy, so crazy it spread the word and curious reporters came to the hospital hoping to catch ‘Nellie’s’ eyes and get a photo.
Elizabet was happy as hell to finally be deemed crazy enough by the court to be sent to Blackwell Asylum for Women.
She had then completed the first part of the task, which behaves strangely enough to be admitted, but then the next part of the task began.
She was going to act completely normal in the asylum for ten days and see what happened.
Elizabeth later wrote that strange things had happened.
“From the day I was admitted to Blackwell I felt more and more vulnerable as I spoke and acted more normally. I stopped playing when I got there, but all the doctors always thought I was very mentally ill. All but one I will never forget because of his professionalism and kindness.”
Elizabeth witnessed horrible things during her stay at Blackwell,
“Patients were starved, malnourished and even abused.” Treatment resources were scarce and those who were considered “difficult” did not receive the care they needed, but were turned away.
Not released
But Elizabeth encountered something at the asylum she hadn’t expected.
When she had stayed the ten days she had originally planned, she introduced herself as a journalist and was investigating the conditions of the patients.
But the doctors at the psychiatric hospital did not believe her, despite the fact that Elizabeth showed no signs of mental illness during her stay.
Instead, she was placed in solitary confinement.
Elizabeth was getting pretty desperate at this point. No one believed her, and the more she repeated her name, position, and place of work, the more people said she was broken.
where is elizabeth
It turned out that the editor of Le Monde was getting an extension for Elizabeth, who was supposed to be at work a few days before but was never seen.
So he contacted the asylum and discovered that she was still being held there, against her will.
It took quite a fight for the newspaper’s editor and lawyer to free Elizabeth, who by then had become emaciated and exhausted.
Elizabeth wrote a series of articles about her experience, “Ten Days in a Madhouse”, in which she describes the patients’ conditions.
The series of articles attracted enormous attention, and we can no doubt thank Elizabeth that soon after the articles were published, the Mental Hospitals Act was amended, patients’ rights were increased, and all treatment medical have been greatly improved.
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