Ten Days in a Mad-House recounts Bly's undercover investigation of conditions at the New York City insane asylum on Blackwell's Island (now Roosevelt Island) in 1887.
Bly, then 23 years old, had already left a newspaper job in Pittsburgh and in an effort to get hired by Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, proposed a daring story idea: she would pretend to be insane and get herself committed to the asylum so she could see for herself how its patients were being treated.
Under the name Nellie Brown, she checked into a boarding house, began acting "crazy" and claimed to have amnesia. Within days she had been hauled away by the police, declared insane by a judge and doctors and packed off to Blackwell's Island. For 10 days she witnessed, and experienced, the filth, neglect and abuse to which women patients were subjected by callous and largely untrained staff.
Her stories shocked readers, prompted improvements in the treatment of the mentally ill and remains a landmark in the history of investigative journalism.
Ten Days is priced at $5.99 and is available on the "History, Mystery and Miscellany" page at the Monroe St. Press website.
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