Fuck Betsy Ross

This NY Times article, about a trip around the world in 90 days, brought to mind Nellie Bly, a reporter who took a trip around the world in 72 days in the year of 1889. Nellie Bly is the kind of female historical figure we should have learned about but didn't, because history books were too busy going on about Betsy Ross (how many times can you go over the fact that she sewed the flag (unless it was Frances somebody or another- BIG controversy!)? who cares?). Anyway, Nellie Bly is a different story... I learned on wikipedia (not in those Betsy-Ross-loving history textbooks) that she got her journalism career started at 18 (in the 1880s, when there were few women in that type of work, and when she had to use a pen name, as a woman's name in the newspaper wasn't socially acceptable) when she wrote a response to a sexist editorial which proclaimed girls were only good for getting married and raising children. Her response, which she signed "Lonely Orphan Girl" was published in the newspaper. She met with the newspaper editor as a result, and told him she wanted to write articles about ordinary people, and got the job.

As a result of those pieces, advertising was pulled from the newspaper and they then tried to reassign her to fluffier things- she refused, and went to Mexico and wrote about politics and the like there for 6 months, until she was thrown out of that country. She eventually ended up in New York, and wrote a piece on going undercover in a lunatic asylum that caused a grand jury investigation and provoked an additional million dollars funding. The piece was called "Ten Days in a Mad House," published in 1888. You can read it here (complete with an advertisement for Madame Mora's corsets), it's really intriguing and also horrifying. Here's an excerpt:

I always made a point of telling the doctors I was sane, and asking to be released, but the more I endeavored to assure them of my sanity, the more they doubted it. 'What are you doctors here for?' I asked one, whose name I cannot recall. 'To take care of the patients and test their sanity,' he replied. 'Very well,' I said. 'There are sixteen doctors on this island, and, excepting two, I have never seen them pay any attention to the patients. How can a doctor judge a woman's sanity by merely bidding her good morning and refusing to hear her pleas for release? Even the sick ones know it is useless to say anything, for the answer will be that it is their imagination.' 'Try every test on me,' I have urged others, 'and tell me am I sane or insane? Try my pulse, my heart, my eyes; ask me to stretch out my arm, to work my fingers, as Dr. Field did at Bellevue, and then tell me if I am sane.' They would not heed me, for they thought I raved. The insane asylum on Blackwell's Island is a human rat-trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out.