In 1887, a young journalist named Nellie Bly proposed an idea to her editor.
He turned her down.
But instead of shelving her ambition, he issued a challenge: go undercover and expose the treatment of women inside New York’s most notorious asylum—Blackwell’s Island.
Intrigued, Bly agreed.
To be committed, she needed to appear convincingly unwell. She stopped bathing. She stopped brushing her hair. She spent hours in front of a mirror studying her expression, practicing the performance of mental instability. She then checked herself into a temporary boarding house for women under the name “Nellie Moreno” and immersed herself deeper into her role. For twenty-four hours, she yelled and screamed at the other tenants, she snarled, she pulled at her hair.
Within days, police intervened. Bly was declared hopelessly insane and sent through the system—first Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward, and then Blackwell’s Island.
What she found there would haunt her forever.
Doctors seemed oblivious to their patients’ illnesses. Orderlies and nurses abused their charges. They served their patients spoiled food. There was no access to warm clothing or clean linens. In short, the place was a rat-infested hell-hole. Bly herself had to endure one of the “treatments” which consisted of buckets of freezing water poured over her head. She and the others had to sit for twelve to fourteen hours straight-backed benches, unable to talk or move.
And the most chilling reality…
