Welcome to a special edition of Fashion Philosophy inspired by one of my personal heroes, journalist Nellie Bly. We’ll be taking a look at this extraordinary woman’s life and then exploring one of the things for which she is remembered: packing light while traveling.

[Photo Credits: 1, 2]

Table of Contents

History 101: Nellie Bly

• Nellie Bly was born on May 5, 1864 in Cochran Mill, Pennsylvania. Her real name was Elizabeth Jane Cochrane; Nellie Bly was her pen name and the name under which she is most well-known.
• Nellie’s father was a successful businessman and a good parent to Nellie and her four siblings. However, after his death, the family fell into poverty.
• Nellie decided to go to college in an attempt to help provide for the family, but had to drop out when she couldn’t afford to continue.
• When Nellie was eighteen, The Pittsburg Dispatch published an extremely misogynistic article. Nellie, offended, wrote a provocative response to the article under a pseudonym. The editor of the newspaper was so impressed with the response that he asked whoever wrote it to come forward. Naturally, he was surprised when Nellie showed up in his office, but she managed to win him over and began to work for the paper as a journalist.
• At the time, women typically used pen names while writing for newspapers. And thus Elizabeth became Nellie Bly, named after the subject of a popular song at the time.
• Nellie worked for The Pittsburg Dispatch for a while until they moved her to the women’s page. Wanting more hard-hitting work, Nellie quit and moved to New York City to work for the New York World.
• One of Nellie’s first assignments in New York – and one of her most famous – was her exposé on the atrocious conditions inside Bellevue Hospital, an insane asylum. She faked insanity, was committed, and lived in the asylum for ten days until the newspaper came to get her out. Her report on the lives of the patients was shocking and investigations of the asylum were soon underway.
• In 1889, Nellie was inspired by the 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days, and decided to circumnavigate the globe. She not only wanted to see if traveling around the world in eighty days was possible – she was to do it faster.
• Her travels were a huge sensation. Traveling via everything from ship to rickshaw, Nellie sent status reports back to New York from all over the globe. The New York World started taking bets on when she would arrive back in New York. She managed it in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds. It was a new world record.
• In 1885, Nellie married a millionaire. She was thirty, and he was seventy. Make of that what you will.
• She became a leading female industrialist in the United States and even an inventor for many years. However, after her husband died and she was rendered bankrupt by embezzling employees, Nellie went back to journalism in 1920. She now worked for the New York Journal.
• Nellie Bly died of pneumonia on January 27, 1922 at the age of 57.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: while Nellie was awesome and ahead of her time, since she lived mostly in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. She also wasn’t a fashion icon. And that’s all true. However, after doing a bit of research about Nellie I learned something very interesting about her 72-day world travels.