Around The World With Nellie Bly

Nellie Bly, one of America’s most famous journalists and pioneer of investigative journalism. Photo: Bettman

May 5, 1867 — Writer Jules Verne is probably best known for his adventure novel Around The World in Eighty Days, published in 1872. It tells how English gentleman Phileas Fogg and his valet take on a bet that they could circumnavigate the globe in no more than 80 days.

The story fascinated American journalist and feminist pioneer Elizabeth Cochrane who was born on this day and became famous under her pen name of Nellie Bly.

Verne’s work gave her an exciting idea that she took to Joseph Pulitzer, editor of the New York World, one of the leading newspapers in the country, where she was working. She later wrote what happened at the meeting:

I approached my editor rather timidly on the subject. I was afraid that he would think the idea too wild and visionary.

"Have you any ideas?" he asked, as I sat down by his desk.

"I want to go around the world in eighty days or less. I think I can beat Phileas Fogg's record. May I try it?"

To my dismay he told me that in the office they had thought of this same idea before and the intention was to send a man . . . We went to talk with the business manager about it.

"It is impossible for you to do it," was the terrible verdict. "In the first place you are a woman and would need a protector, and even if it were possible for you to travel alone you would need to carry so much baggage that it would detain you in making rapid changes. Besides you speak nothing but English, so there is no use talking about it; no one but a man can do this."

"Very well," I said angrily, "Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him."

Pulitzer conceded and Bly did, in fact, beat Fogg’s fictional achievement, lopping a week off his time by completing her real-life journey in just 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes. She wrote about her adventure – and the interview with her editor – in her book Around The World in Seventy-Two Days, published in 1890.

Despite the newspaper’s belief that a woman would need many suitcases for such a journey Bly took only a small Gladstone bag. In it she packed two caps, three veils, slippers, toiletries, an ink stand, pens, pencils, paper, pins, needles and thread, a dressing gown, a tennis blazer, a small flask, a drinking cup, fresh underwear, handkerchiefs, spare fabric and a jar of cold cream.

“If one is traveling simply for the sake of traveling, and not for the purpose of impressing fellow passengers, the problem of baggage becomes a very simple one,” she wrote.

Her journey began on November 14, 1889, when she boarded the Augusta Victoria steamer at Hoboken, New Jersey. In France, she met Jules Verne. She sailed through the Suez Canal. In China, she stopped to see a leper colony. She acquired a pet monkey in Singapore. On January 21, 1890, she was back in America, docking in San Francisco. Pulitzer chartered a private train to return her to New York and there, on January 25, she was greeted not only by official timekeepers but by an admiring 15,000-strong crowd.

In all she had covered 24,889 miles in 72 days, setting a world record for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe. She had travelled by ship, train, horse, rickshaw, sampan, burro and other vehicles.

After her achievement the New York World described her as “the most famous woman on Earth” who had completed “the most remarkable of all feats of circumnavigation ever performed by a human being.”

Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in what is now Burrell Township in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. Her father, a local judge, postmaster and merchant, had 15 children in two marriages, Elizabeth being his youngest child.

He died when Elizabeth was just six years old causing a financial crisis for the family which forced them to move, eventually settling in Pittsburgh.

There, after a few years, Elizabeth read an article in the local newspaper, What Girls Are Good For. The answer, according to the article, was taking care of the home and children.

Incensed, Elizabeth wrote to the editor who not only published her letter but gave her a job as a columnist, for which she used the pen-name of Nellie Bly. The excitement began to fade, however, when it became apparent that she was expected to write only about matters of particular interest to women.

Seeking broader horizons she moved to New York City where in 1887, she went to see Joseph Pulitzer at the New York World. She told him she wanted to write about the experiences of immigrants to the United States.

Pulitzer declined the offer but instead challenged Bly to investigate one of New York’s most notorious mental hospitals where there had been reports of abuse.

She not only accepted the challenge, but feigned mental illness to gain admission so that she could expose how patients were treated. With the help of the newspaper’s lawyers, she was released from the asylum after ten days, as planned.

The New York World ran Bly’s harrowing articles in a six-part series which were later published in a book, Ten Days in a Mad-House.

They exposed a range of hostile and abusive atrocities, from mandatory ice-cold baths to confinement in small, damp, vermin-infested, locked rooms. The revelations resulted in an extra $1million a year being appropriated by New York’s aldermen to correct many of the abuses.

Bly’s courageous venture quickly turned her into one of the most famous journalists in the United States and established her as the pioneer of investigative journalism.

At the age of 31 she married millionaire Robert Seaman in 1895. He was 42 years older than her at the time and owned the Ironclad Manufacturing Company, which made cans for shipping milk on trains, riveted boilers, tanks, and “the Most Durable Enameled Kitchen Ware Made.”

When Seaman died in 1904 Bly retired from journalism to run the business and began to use the name Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman.

She patented several inventions that helped the business but returned to journalism in her later years with a series of dispatches from the Eastern Front during the First World War, as well as articles on the women’s suffrage movement.

She was still working as a writer when she died from pneumonia on January 27, 1922, aged 57.

Published: March 12, 2022
Updated: March 15, 2022