International Womens Day Tribute Four

As the more enlightened of you might know the 8^th of March is International Women’s days. In honour of this, I will be writing a small article about 7 women whom I believe should be celebrated more for their achievements, and then posting one article each day in the week proceeding the 8^th of March. Now some of you might know a lot more about the subjects then I do, which is all well and good, remember these are women I believe should be more celebrated because I haven’t heard about them a lot. As the articles will be brief I ask you to look up more on these extraordinary women yourself.

Name: Elizabeth Jane Cochran aka Nellie Bly

Born: 5 May 1864

Died: 27 January 1922

From: United States of America

Should be known more for: Pioneering Journalism and Circumnavigation

Elizabeth Jane Cochran aka Nellie Bly was born in Pennsylvania in Township of Burrell. At an early age her father passed away leaving the family in financial hardship, meaning that the young Cochran had to leave her boarding school after only one year. At the age of 16 her family moved to Pittsburgh. There upon reading a sexist column called "What Girls Are Good For" in the newspaper The Pittsburgh Dispatch. Elizabeth wrote a scathing rebuttal of this to the editor of the paper. Impressed by the writing, the editor sought out Cochran offering her a chance to write an article for the Dispatch and upon reading that a full time job. As it was custom at the time for women working in journalism to pick a pseudonym to write under, Cochran did the same and Nellie Bly was born.

Originally focusing her articles on the lives and suffering of working women, Bly grew sick and tired of being pushed by the higher ups, toward more traditional subject of Female Journalism i.e. the fashion or society pages. She decided to go to Mexico and report from there as a foreign correspondence. She was 21 at the time. She spent six months in Mexico reporting on the lives and culture of every day Mexicans. She was forced to leave Mexico after writing an article about this mistreatment of a local journalist by the dictator Porfirio Díaz. Returning to the Pittsburgh Dispatch Bly was again pushed towards more “womanly” articles and decided to seek her fortunes elsewhere.

That elsewhere was New York City; Bly made her way to the offices of the newspaper The New York World and pitched an idea for an undercover expose on the working of a women’s mental asylum. She pretended to be mentally ill, fooling several doctors and was placed inside the asylum, 10 days later the New York World helped facilitate her release and published her article. The article caused such uproar that it bought forth many changes to the treatment of the mentally ill.  For her next adventure Bly was inspired by the novel and decided to try and go Around the World in 80 day. A rival newspaper decided that it make a race by sending their own reporter Elizabeth Bisland in the opposite direction. During her trip which took her through Europe, South and South East Asia, Bly would send progress reports back to the New York World. She completed the trip in 72 days, beating Elizabeth Bisland by just less than 5 days. After leaving journalism to get married and to run her husband’s steel container factory, Bly would return to journalism later in life, and would cover world war ones eastern front and the women’s suffragette movement.