Nellie Bly
| Elizabeth Jane Cochran | |
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Elizabeth Cochran, "Nellie Bly"
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| Born |
Elizabeth Jane Cochran May 5, 1864 Cochran's Mills, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Died | January 27, 1922 (aged 57) New York City, New York, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Journalist, novelist, inventor |
| Spouse(s) | Robert Seaman (m. 1895–1904) |
| Awards | National Women's Hall of Fame (1998) |
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After her marriage, Bly used the name "Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman" as seen in the signatures on patents she filed.
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Elizabeth Cochran Seaman (May 5, 1864 – January 27, 1922), known by her pen name Nellie Bly, was an American journalist. She was also a writer, industrialist, inventor, and a charity worker 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 faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. She was a pioneer in her field, and launched a new kind of investigative journalism.
At birth she was named Elizabeth Jane Cochran. She was born in "Cochran's Mills", today part of the Pittsburgh suburb of Burrell Township, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. Her father, Michael Cochran, was a laborer and mill worker who married Mary Jane. His father had immigrated from County Londonderry, Ireland in the 1790s. Cochran taught his young children a cogent lesson about the virtues of hard work and determination, buying the local mill and most of the land surrounding his family farmhouse. As a young girl Elizabeth often was called "Pinky" because she so frequently wore the color. As she became a teenager she wanted to portray herself as more sophisticated, and so dropped the nickname and changed her surname to "Cochrane". She attended boarding school for one term, but was forced to drop out due to lack of funds.
In 1880 Cochrane and her family moved to Pittsburgh. An aggressively misogynistic column entitled "What Girls Are Good For" in the Pittsburgh Dispatch prompted her to write a fiery rebuttal to the editor 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. 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". After her first article for the Dispatch, entitled "The Girl Puzzle", Madden was impressed again and offered her a full-time job. Women who were newspaper writers at that time customarily used pen names. The editor chose "Nellie Bly", adopted from the title character in the popular song "Nelly Bly" by Stephen Foster. Cochrane originally intended that her pseudonym be "Nelly Bly", but her editor wrote "Nellie" by mistake and the error stuck.
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