January 28, 1922
OBITUARY
Nellie Bly, Journalist, Dies of Pneumonia
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Mrs. Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, known to thousands of people throughout the world as Nellie Bly, her nom de plume, died yesterday morning of pneumonia at the age of 57 in St. Mark's Hospital, to which she was removed a few days ago from her rooms in the Hotel McAlpin. Services will be held at 2 o'clock tomorrow afternoon at the Church of the Ascension, Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street. Friends may view the body today at the funeral parlors of Herbert H. Baxter, 597 Lexington Avenue.
Born at Cochrane's Mills, Pa., a town founded by her father, Judge Cochrane, Elizabeth Cochrane found herself penniless when still in her teens and began her journalistic career writing for a Pittsburgh paper at $5 a week. Later she reached a high water mark of $25,000 earned with her pen in one year.
She went down into the sea in a diving bell and up in the air in a balloon and lived in an insane asylum as a patient, but the feat that made her famous was her trip around the world in 1889. She was sent by The World to beat the mark of Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne's hero of "Around the World in Eighty Days," and she succeeded, making the tour in 72 days 6 hours 11 minutes. Everyone who read newspapers followed her progress and she landed in New York a national character.
In 1895, she married Robert L. Seaman, forty years her senior, President of the American Steel Barrel Company and the Ironclad Manufacturing Company. They lived happily together at 15 West Thirty-Seventh Street, and on Mr. Seaman's death in 1910, she took entire charge of the properties. Luck turned against her, however, and a series of forgeries by her employees, disputes of various sorts, bankruptcy, and a mass of vexations and costly litigations swallowed up Nellie Bly's fortune. Her courage and liveliness remained, however, and she returned to journalism with all her old spirit. At the time of her death, she was a member of the staff of The New York Evening Journal.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Elizabeth Jane “Nellie Bly” Cochran Seaman
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Elizabeth Jane “Nellie Bly” Cochran Seaman
Birth
5 May 1864
Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, USA
Death
27 Jan 1922 (aged 57)
New York, USA
Burial
Woodlawn Cemetery
Bronx, Bronx County, New York, USA
Memorial ID
258242539 · View Source
Memorial
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Born on May 5, 1864, in Pennsylvania, Nellie Bly was a great investigative journalist, widely known for having traveled around the world in just 72 days. However, her story does not end there. In 1887,a journalist was sent to the insane asylum on Blackwell's Island after a judge ruled that she should be committed. At the time, they believed that she was "crazy", but in fact, everything was nothing more than a much more complex plan.
Nellie Bly's performance was so convincing that a judge determined that she should be admitted to the institution.
After ten days of infiltrating the asylum, the newspaper's lawyers managed to remove her from the brutal place. Nellie Bly, in turn, produced a series of reports denouncing the asylum, which began to be published on October 9, 1887.
The repercussion was so great that it resulted in internal reforms in Blackwell's Island. In addition, the journalist won her own column in the newspaper, and later, she published the book 'Ten Days in a Madhouse', in which she told in detail everything she experienced. and witnessed it while she was infiltrated in the asylum.
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