Ten Days in a Mad-house

In 1887, police were called to a run-down boarding house in New York City due to complaints surrounding the bizarre behaviour of a young female boarder.  The police were told that this frail young woman was being disruptive, refusing to go to bed, and telling the other boarders that she was afraid of them.  Police took her into custody but were stymied by her insistence that she could not recall her own name.  Several prominent doctors of the area, including the director of the local Bellevue Hospital declared her to be insane and in need of special care  Newspaper ran stories asking anyone who knew the "insane girl" to come forward to no avail and she was sent to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island for her own safety.

Which, as it happened, was exactly what Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, better know as Nellie Bly had in mind.  She was a reporter, newly hired by Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, who had been assigned to investigate reports of patient abuse in the Women's Asylum.  After carefully practicing bizarre facial expressions to get her part just right, Bly put her plan into action.  Over the course of the next ten days, she made careful note of the appalling conditions that female patients were forced to endure including abusive staff and substandard food and accomodations.  She also encountered patients that she was convinced were as sane as she was.  After being released at the request of the New York World, Bly reported on her experiences (which were later published in a book titled Ten Days in a Mad-House).  In addition to cementing her own fame as one of the world's first female investigative journalists, Bly's reporting led to a grand jury investigation into the conditions of the asylum (in which she was asked to participate).  The subsequent reforms led to major changes in how the mentally ill would be treated in New York State. 

While posing as a mental patient is not an approach that could be easily repeated these days, Nellie Bly's expose still has relevance given that the allegations of abuse of mental patients continue to be heard even today.