Burdened with theater and arts
reporting, Bly talked her way into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper
the New York World and took an undercover assignment for which she agreed to
feign insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Women's
Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island, now named Roosevelt Island.
It was not an easy task for Bly to be admitted
to the Asylum: she first decided to check herself into a boarding house called
Temporary Homes for Females. She stayed up all night to give herself the
wide-eyed look of a disturbed woman and began making accusations that the other
boarders were insane. Bly told the assistant matron: "There are so many
crazy people about, and one can never tell what they will do."
She refused to go to bed and
eventually scared so many of the other boarders that the police were called to
take her to the nearby courthouse. Once examined by a police officer, a judge,
and a doctor, Bly was taken to Blackwell's Island.
Committed to the asylum, Bly
experienced the deplorable conditions firsthand. After ten days, the asylum
released Bly at The World's behest. Her report, later published in book form as
Ten Days in a Mad-House, caused a sensation, prompted the asylum to implement
reforms, and brought her lasting fame. She had a significant impact on American
culture and shed light on the experiences of marginalized women beyond the
bounds of the asylum as she ushered in the era of stunt girl journalism.
In 1893, Bly used the celebrity
status she had gained from her asylum reporting skills to schedule an exclusive
interview with the allegedly insane serial killer Lizzie Halliday.
Biographer Brooke Kroeger stated
that: Her two-part series in October
1887 was a sensation, effectively launching the decade of “stunt” or
“detective” reporting, a clear precursor to investigative journalism and one of
Joseph Pulitzer’s innovations that helped give “New Journalism” of the 1880s
and 1890s its moniker. The employment of “stunt girls” has often been dismissed
as a circulation-boosting gimmick of the sensationalist press. However, the
genre also provided women with their first collective opportunity to
demonstrate that, as a class, they had the skills necessary for the highest
level of general reporting. The stunt girls, with Bly as their prototype, were
the first women to enter the journalistic mainstream in the twentieth century.
