Ten days In A Madhouse: Nellie Bly is Committed to Blackwell Island

Ten days In A Madhouse: Nellie Bly is Committed to Blackwell Island

Welcome To The Oddity Shop, Where The Bizarre is Always on Sale.  This week, your Curator Kara Has Gone Mad with Nellie Bly

We open the doors to Blackwell’s Island, once home to New York’s almshouse, workhouse, penitentiary, and the infamous asylum, and follow the razor‑sharp path of Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, better known as Nellie Bly, whose undercover reporting forced the public to look straight at what it wanted to ignore. From the ice-cold intake baths to rancid meals and nights spent shivering under thin blankets, we revisit the details she recorded and the people she met: grieving widows, immigrant women who couldn’t be understood, and a teenager who didn’t know why she was there.

We walk through how Bly engineered her commitment, the moment she dropped the act and was believed even less, and the terrifying reality of the “credibility trap” once you’re labeled insane. 

This story isn’t just Victorian scandal; it’s a mirror. Understaffed psychiatric wards, overwhelmed hospitals, and carceral “solutions” still echo the same logic: out of sight, out of mind. 

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