Sympathy, Madness, and Crime by Roggenkamp Karen;

Author:Roggenkamp, Karen;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Kent State University Press

Figure 7. Nellie Bly’s first article about her experiences in the Blackwell’s Island asylum depicted the reporter as she “practiced insanity” in preparation to going undercover (New York World, October 9, 1887; University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville)

Armed with the superficial markers of insanity, Bly goes “out to my crazy business,” assumes the false name “Nellie Brown,” moves into the boardinghouse, and proceeds to “practice” her “insanity” in front of the residents. It takes only a day to convince the other women of her madness and, along with it, secure an assumption that she is predisposed to violence, even though she does not demonstrate any sort of real derangement or signs of violence while she is at the boardinghouse. She doesn’t need to. The housemates’ reaction toward “Nellie Brown, the insane girl” implies how readily Americans associated mental illness—or, more precisely, a boilerplate appearance of mental illness—with danger. Repeating such phrases as “everything is so sad” and “all the women in the house [seem] to be crazy,” Bly signals to the boarders her supposed mental instability, which they find threatening. “I am afraid to stay with such a crazy being in the house,” one cries, while another grumbles, “She will murder us all before morning.” One woman even dreams of Bly “rushing at her with a knife in … hand, with the intention of killing her” and declares that she “would not stay with that ‘crazy woman’ for all the money of the Vanderbilts.”31

Gaining admittance to Blackwell’s Island will be easier than she supposed, Bly realizes happily. Indeed, she secretly smiles at the indignant remarks about how dangerous she might be, regarding the comments as evidence of her prowess as an actress (and thus reporter) and her progress toward fulfilling her “delicate mission.” As I detail in chapter 1, readers—including the boardinghouse women, obviously—were well versed in similar tales about homicidal lunatics. To cite just one example, the January 12, 1889, World reports on a woman who, in an epileptic fit, had been carried off to Bellevue Hospital and placed in a locked room with a “maniac.” Imprisoned, for all intents and purposes, until a World reporter—of course—obtains her release, the woman declares she would not have lived through the night with such a dangerous companion.32 For this role, at least, Bly merely needs to perpetuate, rather than dispel, unsympathetic pictures of lunacy.

Just as Bly anticipates, the women at the boardinghouse beg police to cart away their undesirable neighbor. For the undercover journalist, however, the drama and suspense have only begun. Now she must perform her “crazy business” in front of a judge, doctors, and—even more problematically—other reporters, who often loiter in the city’s courtrooms, hungrily waiting to scoop up the latest interesting news story. The thought makes Bly tremble, for “if there is anyone who can ferret out a mystery it is a reporter. I felt that I would rather face a mass of expert doctors, policemen, and detectives than two bright specimens of my craft.”33 Fortunately for Bly, on

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