The journalist pretended to be insane to get into a madhouse.

“For almost the whole night I listened to one of the women complaining of the cold and begging God to let her die.”

In 1887, 23-year-old Elizabeth Jane Cochran became famous across America. For an article in Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper New York World, she checked herself into the women’s psychiatric clinic on Blackwell’s Island and spent 10 days there.
For Cochran, who worked under the pseudonym Nellie Bly, this was not her first journalistic investigation. She had already published an article in another publication about the poor conditions in which female workers were housed at factories in Pittsburgh. The piece sold well, and the affected company complained to the editorial office. Elizabeth was transferred to the fashion section. But she quickly grew bored with that kind of work.

In 1887, Cochran moved to New York and got a job at New York World. There she was given an assignment that would have deterred many — to get into a psychiatric clinic disguised as a patient and write a truthful report. Elizabeth was thrilled by the idea. She had only one question — how would she get out of the hospital afterward? The journalist was answered in the spirit of “get in first, and then we’ll figure it out.” Cochran rented a room in a women’s boarding house in New York and began acting insane. She irritated and frightened her neighbors so they would call the police. The plan worked, and Cochran was sent by court order to the madhouse on Blackwell’s Island.

The conditions in which the patients were kept in the hospital turned out to be awful. They were not given warm clothing, were forced to sit on straight-backed benches for hours, and were fed rotten beef or bread and butter with insects in it. The orderlies made the patients clean the premises for them, and in response to complaints simply beat them. Cochran saw many outwardly normal women around her. Some told her they had been put in the clinic for no reason: for example, for being sympathetic to other men or even for a simple quarrel.

After 10 days, a lawyer from New York World came to collect Cochran and informed her that friends were ready to take care of the girl. Starting on October 9, 1887, Elizabeth’s articles about life in the hospital began appearing in the newspaper, in which readers learned horrifying details about the treatment of patients. In the end, inspectors came to the clinic. But the staff had time to prepare and temporarily improved the conditions. Nevertheless, the hospital remained under scrutiny. Seven years later it closed. Cochran later established herself as a star of journalism. She died of pneumonia in 1922 at the age of 57..