"Nelly Bly Undercover"

Question

by Dr. Howard Markel

Getting committed proved rather easy, even if neither Bly nor her editors had a clear plan of getting her released once the story was filed. She took a room at a cheap boarding house, “Temporary Home for Females, No. 84 Second Avenue,” under the name Bly Brown and began questioning and imitating the women who seemed most insane to her. Soon enough, it was Bly who was deemed crazy. The matron of the house enlisted a few cops to escort Bly to the Essex Market Police Courtroom, where an impatient judge named Duffy pronounced her insane and ordered her to the famed insane ward at Bellevue Hospital, the city’s largest charitable hospital. A few days later, she boarded a ferry boat filled stem to stern with unwashed and uncomprehending women for Blackwell’s Island, “an insane place,” one ambulance driver told her, “where you’ll never get out of.”

Taking careful notes of both her own experiences and those of her fellow inmates, Bly painted a dire picture in which 16 doctors were assigned to the care of some 1,600 inmates. “Excepting two,” she recorded, “I have never seen them pay any attention to the patients.” She also questioned the judge’s ability to pronounce a woman insane “by merely bidding her good morning and refusing to hear her pleas of release? Even the sick ones know it is useless to say anything for the answer will be that it is their imagination.” She also reported on the cultural insensitivity and language barriers experienced by immigrant women who spoke little or no English and a host of hostile and abusive treatments, from mandatory cold baths to confinement in small, damp, vermin-infested, locked rooms.

Question
Use the passage to answer the question.

The article “How Nellie Bly went undercover to expose abuse of the mentally ill” describes how Nellie Bly uncovered problems with the treatment of the mentally ill at an asylum in New York. What problems did Bly uncover with the process for admitting people into the asylum and releasing them? Support your ideas with evidence from the text.

Answer 1

Bly uncovered significant issues with the process of admitting individuals into the asylum and the subsequent difficulty in securing their release. One major problem was the lack of a fair evaluation process; Bly criticized how quickly and inadequately individuals could be deemed insane. She questioned the judge’s ability to pronounce a woman insane after only a brief interaction, stating, “I have never seen them pay any attention to the patients,” which illustrates the superficiality and hastiness of the assessments. This indicates that the evaluation process was not thorough and lacked a genuine understanding of individual circumstances.

Additionally, Bly highlighted the challenge of release once committed, pointing out that “Even the sick ones know it is useless to say anything for the answer will be that it is their imagination.” This suggests a systemic issue where patients felt powerless and ignored, unable to advocate for their release despite potentially valid claims of their sanity. This further emphasizes the flaws in the admission and release processes at the asylum, as individuals faced significant barriers in proving their mental fitness to be discharged. Overall, the passage illustrates a troubling system that failed to protect the rights and well-being of those admitted.