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COULD I PASS A WEEK IN THE INSANE WARD AT BLACKWELL'S ISLAND? I SAID I COULD AND I WOULD. AND I DID.
Nellie Bly
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It is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little sympathy and kindness there are in the world.
Nellie Bly
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What a mysterious thing madness is. I have watched patients whose lips are forever sealed in a perpetual silence. They live, breathe, eat; the human form is there, but that something, which the body can live without, but which cannot exist without the body, was missing.
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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
Nellie Bly
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I had looked forward so eagerly to leaving the horrible place, yet when my release came and I knew that God's sunlight was to be free for me again, there was a certain pain in leaving
Nellie Bly
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All the asylum clothing is made by the patients, but sewing does not employ one's mind. After several months' confinement the thoughts of the busy world grow faint, and all the poor prisoners can do is to sit and ponder over their hopeless fate
Nellie Bly
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I took upon myself to enact the part of a poor, unfortunate crazy girl, and felt it my duty not to shirk any of the disagreeable results that should follow.
Nellie Bly
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People in the world can never imagine the length of days to those in asylums. They seemed never ending, and we welcomed any event that might give us something to think about as well as talk of.
Nellie Bly
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I always had a desire to know asylum life more thoroughly - a desire to be convinced that the most helpless of God's creatures, the insane, were cared for kindly and properly.
Nellie Bly
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I shuddered to think how completely the insane were in the power of their keepers, and how one could weep and plead for release, and all of no avail, if the keepers were so minded.
Nellie Bly
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They were being driven to a prison, through no fault of their own, in all probability for life. In comparison, how much easier it would be to walk to the gallows than to this tomb of living horrors!
Nellie Bly
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I hardly expected the grand jury to sustain me, after they saw everything different from what it had been while I was there. Yet they did, and their report to the court advises all the changes made that I had proposed.
Nellie Bly
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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.
Nellie Bly
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'IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO DO IT,' WAS THE TERRIBLE VERDICT. 'IN THE FIRST PLACE YOU ARE A WOMAN AND WOULD NEED A PROTECTOR, AND EVEN IF IT WERE POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO TRAVEL ALONE YOU WOULD NEED TO CARRY SO MUCH BAGGAGE THAT IT WOULD DETAIN YOU IN MAKING RAPID CHANGES. BESIDES YOU SPEAK NOTHING BUT ENGLISH, SO THERE IS NO USE TALKING ABOUT IT; NO ONE BUT A MAN CAN DO THIS.'
Nellie Bly
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Susan Anthony is all that is best and noblest in woman. She is ideal... and if we will have in women who vote what we have in her, let us all hope to promote the cause of woman suffrage.
Nellie Bly
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I was too impatient to work at the usual duties assigned women on newspapers.
Nellie Bly
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On the wagon sped, and I, as well as my comrades, gave a despairing farewell glance at freedom as we came in sight of the long stone buildings.
Nellie Bly
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I had never been near insane persons before in my life, and had not the faintest idea of what their actions were like
Nellie Bly
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I have never written a word that did not come from my heart. I never shall.
Nellie Bly
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I try to realize all it means. The suffering of millions of the world's best men... and when I say millions of men I must multiply those men by ten to count the wives, children, parents and sweethearts and relatives who are suffering untold mental agony.
Nellie Bly
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Never having failed, I could not picture what failure meant.
Nellie Bly
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I had, toward the last, been shut off from all visitors, and so when the lawyer, Peter A. Hendricks, came and told me that friends of mine were willing to take charge of me if I would rather be with them than in the asylum, I was only too glad to give my consent
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Even that was all consumed after two days, and the patients had to try to choke down fresh fish, just boiled in water, without salt, pepper or butter; mutton, beef, and potatoes without the faintest seasoning
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'VERY WELL,' I SAID ANGRILY, 'START THE MAN, AND I'LL START THE SAME DAY FOR SOME OTHER NEWSPAPER AND BEAT HIM.'
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But here let me say one thing: From the moment I entered the insane ward on the Island, I made no attempt to keep up the assumed role of insanity.
Nellie Bly
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Quote of the day
The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.
Mary Shelley
Nellie Bly
Creative Commons
Born:
May 5, 1864
Died:
January 27, 1922
(aged 57)
Bio:
Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, known by her pen name Nellie Bly, was an American journalist.
Known for:
Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887)
Around the World in Seventy-Two Days (1890)
Six Months in Mexico (1888)
Miscellanous Sketches: Nelly Bly Undercover
Most used words:
insane
asylum
woman
island
patients
men
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