An appetite for adventure

Meet Nellie Bly the journalist who became famous for travelling around the world in 72 days and beat the fictional record set by Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne’s classic novel Around the World in 80 Days.

Solo travel is all the rage these days, hailed as a surefire way to boost independence, confidence, and self-reliance. You can’t flip through a travel magazine without stumbling upon a slew of tips and tricks tailored for solo adventurers, especially women. They’ve got everything from safety advice to lists of the safest places to go solo, making it easier than ever to hit the road alone.

But back in the day, solo female travel was practically unheard of. However, that didn’t stop the American journalist Nellie Bly from taking on the world solo. At a time when the mere idea of a woman travelling without a chaperone was scandalous, Nellie set out to beat the record set by the fictional Phileas Fogg from Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days (1873), all while documenting her incredible journey.

Nellie Bly, born Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, was a pioneering investigative journalist in 19th-Century America. Growing up, she was fondly called Pink by friends and family due to her love for the colour. With a vibrant personality and a family that included 13 siblings, her bright dresses helped her stand out from the crowd. However, tragedy struck early in her life when her father passed away when she was just six years old. To escape destitution, her mother quickly remarried, but that person turned out to be a violent and abusive man. At the tender age of 14, Elizabeth found herself testifying in her mother’s divorce trial, an experience that shaped her understanding of marriage and independence. Witnessing her mother’s divorce shattered the illusion that marriage offered women guaranteed security and happiness, as society often portrayed. This harsh reality ignited a fire within Elizabeth. From that moment on, she vowed to carve her own path and succeed on her own terms.

Initially, Elizabeth set her sights on becoming a teacher, but financial limitations forced her to abandon that path. Her entry into journalism was unexpected, even for her. It all started with a fiery response she wrote under the pen name “Lonely Orphan Girl” to the Editor of The Pittsburgh Dispatch. The impetus for this response was a column titled “What girls are good for” that had left her aghast. The column apparently deemed working women a monstrosity and advocated for women to stay home and focus on childbearing.

Impressed by her courage and audacity, the Editor placed an advertisement  seeking the identity of “Lonely Orphan Girl.” When she contacted the newspaper, they offered her a job and her own column. It was at this point that she adopted the pen name Nellie Bly, the name the world would come to know. 

With a newfound platform, Nellie Bly blossomed as an undercover reporter, determined to expose social injustices. A forerunner in investigative journalism, Bly penned numerous exposés. Her most celebrated work involved a daring ten-day stint undercover at the Blackwell’s Island women’s lunatic asylum.  There, she witnessed firsthand the appalling conditions the patients endured – inedible food, bone-chilling baths, and brutal beatings. 

Bly’s exposé, published in the New York World run by Joseph Pulitzer (of the Pulitzer Prize fame), shocked the nation.  Her harrowing first-person account ignited public outrage, prompting legal action and long-overdue reforms to safeguard the mentally ill.