Madwoman: Nellie Bly

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Louisa subsequently turned to literature, gaining a First Class degree and a PhD in English at University College London, where she focused on early twentieth century women’s writing.

Will Nellie be able to retain all of the information she learns as she talks to these mistreated women, or will she just become another statistic? And I saw this book while I was at my office, so I decided to give it a go because her story did seem both interesting and admirable. Nellie Bly was a remarkable woman, smart, brave and resourceful, her exposé of Blackwell’s Island Asylum led to important reforms, though the institution was closed seven years later. Once we got into the journalism and the plot to enter the madhouse, I was back on board because of the vivid prose that was reminiscent of actual Victorian novels. Based on a true story, a spellbinding historical novel about the world's first female investigative journalist, Nellie Bly.Her articles quickly become controversial, stirring the pot to a point where she makes a decision to leave Pittsburgh and move to New York – the nation’s publishing capital. A place where those charged with looking after the patients either give inadequate care or delight in doling out the most cruel and inhumane treatments they can think of. I was completely fascinated by Nellie her sheer determination to change the way women were treated in both the institutions and work places it shone through and she was one hell of a feisty woman.

Determined to become a journalist in a male-dominated world Nellie tries to make a name for herself exposing deplorable conditions of working women in Pittsburgh, but in doing so angers the (male) business owners who threaten to pull their advertising from the newspaper if her articles continue. Incredibly she manages to convince sufficient people that sheis suffering from mental illness to getcommitted to the asylum. Madwoman‘ is based on Nellie’s life but, as tends to be the case, there are gaps the author has had to fill in herself. Louisa Treger’s impressive Madwoman describes the extraordinary bravery of 19th-century journalist Nellie Bly, who wrote a blistering exposé of the insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island, “a human rat trap” in which she intentionally got herself incarcerated.Mental health reform and destigmatization is a huge passion for me, so I really should’ve already read up on this a while ago. I fairly leapt at the chance to read Louise Treger’s fictionalised narrative of Elizabeth Cochran who wrote under the pseudonym of Nellie Bly, having always been fascinated by her remarkable story.