Nellie Bly

Nellie Bly (1864 - 1922) was an investigative journalist.

Her nickname was "Pinky". She wrote under her actual name: Elizabeth Cochran, Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, etc. Nellie Bly originally studied to be a teacher to support her mother, but by 18 she wrote an editorial for the Pittsburgh Dispatch on women's rights. By 1885, she was hired as a journalist there, making a salary of $5 a week, and wrote under her pen name: Nellie Bly.

In 1887 she relocated to New York City and worked for the New York World newspaper. She wrote "10 Days in a Madhouse" exposing the conditions of the Blackwell Island asylum. Her undercover investigation articles led to a book of her collected stories in 1887.

She exposed other issues such as conditions of prisons, wrote articles on Susan B. Anthony and Emma Goldman, and sailed around the world in 1889 (Around the World in 72 Days).

She later married the millionaire Robert Seaman and retired from journalism. After his death she took over his company: the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co. where she offered her employees healthcare, libraries, and fitness gyms.

She returned to the New York Journal in 1920, and later died of pneumonia in 1922.