Girls Who Sleuth: The Nellie Bly Story

In January 1890, 15,000 people crowded a train station in Jersey City to welcome home a 25-year-old woman carrying one small satchel and a monkey. Nelly Bly had just completed a journey no one had attempted for real—traveling around the world in 72 days, beating the fictional record from Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days by nearly a week. But the trip was only one chapter in a life that redefined what journalism and independence could look like for women, decades before they could even vote.

From “Lonely Orphan Girl” to Stunt Journalism

Born Elizabeth Jane Cochrane in 1864 in a small Pennsylvania town, Bly grew up in relative comfort until her father died without a will when she was six. The family’s sudden financial collapse left a lasting impression: she learned early that she would have to rely on herself. After a single term at a normal school, she dropped out because her mother could no longer afford tuition.

In 1885, living in Pittsburgh, Bly read a column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch titled “What Girls Are Good For,” which argued that women were principally meant for childbearing and housekeeping. Outraged, she wrote an anonymous response under the pseudonym “Lonely Orphan Girl.” The editor, George Madden, was impressed enough to run an advertisement asking the author to identify herself. When Bly came forward, he offered her a full-time job.