MONDAY 5 AUGUST 2019‘They dragged me gasping and
quaking from the tub. For once
I did look insane’
Diane Bernard revisits Nellie Bly’s exposé on a New York asylum,
which was a landmark in investigative reporting
Bly experienced the cruelty shown to mental health patients (Corbis-Bettmann)
When she went undercover in a New York City insane asylum in 1887, Nellie Bly was surrounded by a
world of grim horror.
“Nearly all night long I listened to a woman cry about the cold and beg for God to let her die. Another one
yelled, ‘Murder!’ at frequent intervals and ‘Police!’ at others until my flesh felt creepy,” Bly wrote about her