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Thursday – 18 Apr 1895 – Page 2, Column 3 and 4
NELLIE BLY A BRIDE
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Career of the Woman Whom “The
World” Made Famous
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Her Trip Around the Globe Surpassed
Jules Verne’s Hero’s
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Exposures in “The World’s Col-
umns Caused Needed Reforms
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Miss Elizabeth Cochrane, who is better known to the public, especially to the readers of “The World,” as Nellie Bly, is a bride. She was recently married in Chicago to Robert Seaman, of this city, a director of the Exchange National Bank, and a man of much wealth, who has long been known here in business and finance. He is seventy years old, and has long resided with his brother, Edward, at 15 West Thirty-seventh street. Although the marriage has just been announced there were rumors of the engagement in Chicago some time ago.
Miss Bly has a world-wide reputation as an author, journalist and traveller, and she is everywhere acknowledged to be one of the brightest, cleverest, and most entertaining among the women newspaper writers of the age. It was “The World” which made her reputation, and which first furnished her with the field in which she displayed her remarkable talents that have since made her so famous.
She was born in Cochrans Mills, Pa., a town named after her father, who was a lawyer and who for several terms filled the office of Associate Judge of Armstrong County, Pa. Her father died when she was quite young, and she obtained her education at home until 1880, when she went to a boarding-school in Indiana, Pa.
She achieved success from the very beginning of her career in New York. The first idea which she suggested was that she should feign insanity and, if possible, get committed to the insane asylum at Blackwell’s Island.
This undertaking was carried out with the most brilliant success, and after a week of more spent in the City Insane Asylum Nellie Bly came out with a graphic pen picture of her experiences in the mad house that produced a public sensation. Her exposure of the abuses in that institution resulted in a city appropriation of $3,000,000 for the benefit of the poor insane, besides bringing about many beneficial changes in their care and management.
From this time on the name and fame of Nellie Bly grew apace. She investigated and exposed to public view through the columns of “The World” shams and abuses of every description, and scarcely a week passed that she did not furnish some novel feature to the readers of the paper.
Her fame grew and her tasks enlarged until they culminated in her wonderful tour around the globe for “The World.” which she undertook without any escort, and which she completed in seventy-two days, six hours, eleven minutes and fourteen seconds.
To tell what Nellie Bly has done and has described in the columns of “The World” since that time, would fill volumes. The hundreds of thousands of readers of “The Evening World” all know what “Nellie Bly Says” and watched for her daily contributions with lively interest.
