Ten Days in a Mad-House is a book written by newspaper reporter Nellie Bly and published by Norman L. Munro in New York, NY in 1887. The book comprised Bly’s reportage for the New York World while on an undercover assignment in which she feigned insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island.
The book’s graphic depiction of conditions at the asylum caused a sensation, brought Bly lasting fame and prompted a grand jury to launch its own investigation, with Bly assisting. The jury’s report resulted in an $850,000 increase in the budget of the Department of Public Charities and Corrections.
Mad respect to Nelly Bly.
She was the first to dive into investigative reporting with her methods, and her writing is fantastic. I avoided reading it for so long out of worry that it might be… dry. Rather than dry, Nelly is illustrative in her descriptions and yet blunt. She communicates so clearly it’s as if you’re sitting there, looking at the spider in her bread or dreading the cold baths.
While it was a short read, it was really in depth about the treatment of the mentally ill in 1887. As an outsider both to modern treatment facilities and archaic asylums, it inspires the sympathy she sought out for her fellow inmates. The wretchedness that everyone was treated with and the frankly terrible vetting process was jaw dropping. Nelly raised a huge point as she watched those she knew who had their wits about them lose them to the torturous conditions that they were subjected to. There was rampant abuse and a dash to fix plenty of terrible qualities before she arrived with jurors in tow to show the evidence of the neglect.
Despite the cover up, she won national attention on the asylum and plentiful money dedicated to the care of the mentally ill.
I still wonder after those women who were hidden away after her stay.
