I've always loved journalist Nellie Bly, who broke down barriers for women in the field during her time at the New York World newspaper in the late 19th century. This is the actual account of her time in the Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum. She got herself committed in order to find out the true conditions. They were atrocious and her article led to one million more dollars being allocated to improve the asylum. She gives a straightforward account of her time, but reading between the lines, it's easy to see how terrifying her time in the asylum must have been. ( )

In 1887, Nellie Bly (a.k.a. Elizabeth Cochran Seaman), age 23, and a journalist for the New York World newspaper, was given an assignment to find out the true conditions behind the doors of the Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum in New York. According to physicians at the time, there were about 1600 insane women on the island when she entered.

She first had to convince a bunch of women in a boarding house that she was insane. It’s funny how a single phrase repeated over and over can constitute insaneness. She kept repeating, “I lost my trunks. I have to find my trunks.”…and “These women look strange. I’m scared.” That’s grounds for bringing in the police. They tell her they are going to help her find her luggage, just come along. She’s brought to Bellevue Asylum for testing. She still can’t find her luggage, so, yes, she’s insane, and into Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum she goes.

Sixteen doctors out there at the asylum and they didn’t really give a crap. She was able to communicate with a lot of women inside and found that they were not insane at all, but no one was listening. And the deeper you were put into the system with stronger restrictions, inside the violent ward, the more insane and hateful the nurses and doctors were who were over you. She had decided to just be herself since the doctor’s didn’t know what the word insanity even meant. When one asked her if she heard noises or people talking, she said, “Yes, [although she was really talking about the insensitive nurses] the footsteps down the hall every night are keeping me up and they are always talking, and sometimes they talk about me.” INSANE!

It really is disturbing and scary to see just how evil some humans can really be. How dreadful to be trapped in a place where your life is left in their hands and where 45 or so women at a time are stripped, and made to bathe in the same cold water as all the other women, even with the ones with sores all over their bodies, and only two towels to dry off. To be under clothed and constantly freezing half to death, literally turning blue. To eat rotten smelly meat. Thank God these places no longer exist under those conditions. Her efforts caused New York to give the asylum $1,000,000 for improvements into the system, but this asylum ended up closing down just seven years later.

There are actually three stories in 10 Days in a Mad-House, but, of course, her experience inside the madhouse was the most prominent. The other two stories were hardly stories, but I love the fact that she went undercover and was a warrior for women's rights and to find “truth” in the rumors of the overworked and cruelty of working as a house servant, and the low pay and cruel treatment of women working in the factories in late 1800’s, an era where women had absolutely no clout in life what-so-ever. Journalist today could learn a lot from what constitutes a real journalist.

Nellie died, age 57, in 1922 of pneumonia, in New York.
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MOVIE: 10 Days in a Madhouse (2015), starring Caroline Barry as Nellie Bly...1 out of 5 star rating. Acting was really horrible. It was like they were in a play or something. This was not a quality movie. ( )

Imagine giving one of the most revolutionary exposes in history less than five stars... couldn't be me. ( )

Short but engaging and interesting. And sad. Glad I finally got around to reading it. ( )

First of all, I tried to imagine what kind of courage it took for Nellie Bly to allow herself to be committed to this kind of horrible institution from which there were no avenues of escape. I would have been too frightened of the possibility of being left there indefinitely to accept this assignment!

The writing is very straight forward and the experiences are detailed in a way that makes it ring with truth. It seems that the most cruel of people were employed in insane asylums at this time and that anyone who was sane going in would be quite insane coming out.

My father's best friend was committed against his will to a state insane asylum in the early 1960s. He went in a jovial, quite man with a drinking problem, he came out a broken man, sad and depressed. He told my father that no one would ever know what he had endured at the hands of his "keepers". He killed himself several months after his release, leaving a note that said he could not sleep for fear of being recommitted and would rather be dead. My father was inconsolable and never forgave his friend's wife for having put him there in the first place.

Those kinds of institutions are closed now and I'm sure people who go into care facilities get serious attempts at help. My concern now is that there is very little help available for people with chronic mental health issues and no money to get the help they need. At least no one can commit you without a hearing and the legal system has been vastly improved since the time when Nellie Bly could be so easily committed to an Island without any limit on the time she could be held or the treatments she could receive. ( )