On the 14th of November 1889, Nellie Bly, an Irish-American journalist began her 72-day journey around the world. The idea was to imitate the trip of Jules Verne’s fictional character Phileas Fogg who had made the trip in 80 days.
When she suggested the idea to her editor at The New York World, he doubted she would be able to complete the journey. She was undeterred. She also packed light, defying stereotypes of female travellers by bringing just one handbag.
At 9:40 am on Thursday the 14th of November 1889, Nellie boarded the Augusta Victoria in New Jersey. She travelled through England to France and stopped in Amiens, where she met with author Jules Vernes, whose “bright eyes”, she later wrote in her book. Around The World in Seventy-Two Days, “beamed on me with interest and kindliness”.
From France she travelled to Brindisi, Italy and onwards to Egypt and the Suez Canal. After crossing the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean she reached Asia.
She visited various exotic places including Aden, Columbo, Pengang, Singapore, Hong Kong and Yokohama. While in Singapore Nellie bought a long tail of monkey naming him McGinty and bringing him along for the rest of her journey. During her time in Hong Kong she spent a day with a leper colony. She loved Japan for its natural beauty, cleanliness, and the manners of its people.
“If I loved and married, I would say to my mate: ‘Come, I know where Eden is,’ and… desert the land of my birth for Japan, the land of love–beauty–poetry–cleanliness,” she wrote in ‘One Hundred and Twenty Hours in Japan’, a chapter in her book detailing her travels. Seventy-Two Days’.
After about 33 days in Asia, Nellie boarded a ship in Yokohama on the 7th of January 1890, reaching the harbour at San Francisco on January 21st. From there she got a private, record-breaking express train to New Jersey on January 25th – back in 72 days.
Nellie Bly’s parents were Michael Cochran, a successful mill owner and Mary Jane Kennedy. Her grandfather Robert Cochran, emigrated from Derry in the 1790s.
Nellie first worked in 1855 at the ‘Pittsburgh Dispatch’, after the editor received an angry letter from her. He was very impressed with her passion and intelligence. One of her most famous writings was titled ‘Ten Days in a Mad-House’, published on the 9th of October 1887 in the New York World. Nellie faked being insane in order to be admitted to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Black Wells Island, New York.
She went to the asylum on September 28, 1887 and stayed for 10 days. During her time there she experienced the dreadful living conditions in the facility. She was physically and emotionally abused by the staff, served spoiled food, and put in isolation. After spending 10 days under cover, a lawyer from the newspaper got her released. When her report on the mental asylum was published, an official investigation began on the asylum. Her published report resulted in the asylum’s budget being increased by $1,000,000 to provide better care for the patients.
Nellie married industrialist Robert Seaman on the 5th of April 1895. He was a millionaire who owned a clad manufacturing company. After marrying, she left journalism to help her husband and developed business-related inventions herself. Later, in widowhood, she became very passionate about child welfare, and she worked in children’s homes. She died of pneumonia at the age of 57 on the 27th of January 1922, at Saint Mark’s hospital New York City.
Deirdre Nic Mheanmain