Still only 21, she was determined "to do something no girl has done before." She then traveled to Mexico to serve as a foreign correspondent, spending nearly half a year reporting on the lives and customs of the Mexican people her dispatches later were published in book form as Six Months in Mexico. However, the newspaper soon received complaints from factory owners about her writing, and she was reassigned to women's pages to cover fashion, society, and gardening, the usual role for women journalists, and she became dissatisfied. Īs a writer, Nellie Bly focused her early work for the Pittsburgh Dispatch on the lives of working women, writing a series of investigative articles on women factory workers. Madden was impressed again and offered her a full-time job. Cochrane originally intended that her pseudonym be "Nelly Bly", but her editor wrote "Nellie" by mistake, and the error stuck. The editor chose "Nellie Bly", after the African-American title character in the popular song "Nelly Bly" by Stephen Foster. It was customary for women who were newspaper writers at that time to use pen names. "Mad Marriages" was published under the byline of Nellie Bly, rather than "Lonely Orphan Girl". In it, she argued for reform of divorce laws. Her second article, "Mad Marriages", was about how divorce affected women. Her first article for the Dispatch, titled "The Girl Puzzle", argued that not all women would marry and that what was needed were better jobs for women. When Cochrane introduced herself to the editor, he offered her the opportunity to write a piece for the newspaper, again under the pseudonym "Lonely Orphan Girl". The editor, George Madden, was impressed with her passion and ran an advertisement asking the author to identify herself. This prompted Elizabeth to write a response under the pseudonym "Lonely Orphan Girl". In 1885, a column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch titled "What Girls Are Good For" stated that girls were principally for birthing children and keeping house. Portrait of a 21-year-old Bly in Mexico Pittsburgh Dispatch ![]() In 1880, Cochrane's mother moved her family to Allegheny City, which was later annexed by the City of Pittsburgh. In 1879, she enrolled at Indiana Normal School (now Indiana University of Pennsylvania) for one term but was forced to drop out due to lack of funds. As she became a teenager, she wanted to portray herself as more sophisticated, and she dropped the nickname and changed her surname to "Cochrane". ![]() ![]() Īs a young girl, Elizabeth often was called "Pink" because she so frequently wore that color. Michael Cochran died in 1870, when Elizabeth was 6. He had 10 children with his first wife, Catherine Murphy, and 5 more children, including Elizabeth Cochran his thirteenth daughter, with his second wife, Mary Jane Kennedy. He later became a merchant, postmaster, and associate justice at Cochran's Mills (which was named after him) in Pennsylvania. Her father, Michael Cochran, born about 1810, started out as a laborer and mill worker before buying the local mill and most of the land surrounding his family farmhouse. Early life Įlizabeth Jane Cochran was born May 5, 1864, in "Cochran's Mills", now part of Burrell Township, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. ![]() She was a pioneer in her field and launched a new kind of investigative journalism. After her marriage, Bly used the name "Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman."Įlizabeth Cochran Seaman (born Elizabeth Jane Cochran – January 27, 1922), better known by her pen name Nellie Bly, was an American journalist, who was widely known for her record-breaking trip around the world in 72 days in emulation of Jules Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg, and an exposé in which she worked undercover to report on a mental institution from within.
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