A courageous female journalist’s classic exposé of the horrific treatment of the mentally ill in nineteenth-century America In 1887, Nellie Bly accepted an assignment from publisher Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and went undercover at the lunatic asylum on Blackwell Island, America’s first municipal mental hospital. Calling herself “Nellie Brown,” she was able to convince policemen, a judge, and a series of doctors of her madness with a few well-practiced facial expressions of derangement. At the institution, Bly discovered the stuff of nightmares. Mentally ill patients were fed rotten, inedible food; violently abused by a brutal, uncaring staff; and misdiagnosed, mistreated, or generally ignored by the doctors and so-called mental health experts entrusted with their care. To her horror, Bly encountered sane patients who had been committed on the barest of pretenses and came to the shocking realization that, while the Blackwell Island asylum was remarkably easy to get into, it was nearly impossible to leave. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

In 1887, Nellie Bly had herself committed to the notorious Blackwell’s Island insane asylum in New York City with the goal of discovering what life was like for its patients. While there, Bly experienced firsthand the shocking abuse and neglect of its inmates, from inedible food to horrifyingly unsanitary conditions. Ten Days in a Mad-House is Bly’s expose of the asylum. Written for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, Bly’s account chronicles her 10 days at Blackwell’s Island and, upon its publication, drew public attention to the abuse of the institutionalized and led to a grand jury investigation of the facility. This series of articles established Bly as a pioneering female journalist and remains a classic of investigative reporting.