What Everyone Should Know is a bi-weekly column on women’s history.This article has been cross-posted.
Elizabeth Jane Cochran, a.k.a Nellie Bly (1864-1922)
My interest in women’s history was sparked at a young age by the story of one woman: Nellie Bly. I was eleven years old when I found her story in the children’s literature section of my local library. I had been browsing through the collection of choose-your-own-ending books (to which I was addicted) when I stumbled across a slim volume that had been mis-shelved. A smart-looking woman graced the cover wearing a Victorian shirtwaist and a tidy bun. I flipped it over and scanned the back. The woman on the front had apparently been a reporter, and according to the blurb had single-handedly changed the institution of reporting through her radical methodology. She would do anything to find the real story. My curiosity was piqued and the book went into the stack I checked out that day; the rest, as they say, is history.
Elizabeth Jane Cochran was born in 1864, and was christened that year in a pink gown, which gained her notoriety at an early age, and the eternal nickname, “Pink.” She was born into a comfortable existence provided by her father, a judge, and her mother. Her father died when she was six years old, leaving her family without a will and thus destitute; her mother remarried quickly, per the custom of the time. Cochran’s step-father turned out to be abusive. These developments in her childhood led her to be outspoken and strident in her beliefs, skills that served her well in her career choice, but which would cause her heartache in life because of her gender and the expectations of women at the time.
At the tender age of 18, young Elizabeth Cochran wrote a letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Dispatch in response to an article she had read that she considered offensive and denigrating toward women. She was already a women’s rights activist, and signed the letter “Lonely Orphan Girl.” The editor, George Madden, was so impressed with the quality of the letter that he published it and asked the girl to step forward. The next day she did, and in so doing secured her first job as a reporter. The year was 1882, and women were not a common feature of newsrooms at all. In fact, it was so uncommon that Mr. Madden and Ms. Cochran decided upon a pen name for her—Nellie Bly, from a 35 year old Stephen Collins Foster song. Read the rest of this entry »
