Ten Days in a Mad-House

Research

After leaving the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1887, Bly arrived in New York City penniless and secured an undercover assignment from Joseph Pulitzer's New York World to feign insanity and investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. She practiced expressions in front of a mirror, then checked into a boardinghouse where she refused to go to bed, claiming she was afraid of the boarders and that they looked crazy.

The boarders decided she was crazy and summoned the police. In court, she claimed amnesia, and the judge concluded she had been drugged. Several doctors examined her; one declared her positively demented and a hopeless case needing care, while the head of the insane pavilion at Bellevue Hospital pronounced her undoubtedly insane. The case attracted media attention, with the New York Sun asking who the insane girl was and the New York Times describing her as a mysterious waif with a wild, haunted look.

Once admitted, Bly abandoned pretense and behaved normally, but staff interpreted her ordinary actions as symptoms and even her pleas for release as signs of illness. She found some fellow patients as sane as she was. Conditions included abusive nurses, spoiled beef, dried dough bread, dirty water, patients tied with ropes, hard benches, waste near eating areas, and rats throughout the hospital.

Reception

The question of how Bly convinced professionals of her insanity was addressed in her account, which noted that the main physician performing her examination was more focused on the attractive nurse assisting than on Bly herself. Her report prompted a grand jury investigation with Bly's assistance, resulting in an $850,000 budget increase for the Department of Public Charities and Corrections and ensuring future examinations were more thorough so only the seriously ill were committed.

Adaptations

A 2015 independent film adaptation of Ten Days in a Mad-House, produced on a low budget by Pendragon Pictures, featured Caroline Barry as Nellie Bly alongside Christopher Lambert, Kelly Le Brock, and Julia Chantrey. Lifetime aired Escaping the Madhouse: The Nellie Bly Story on January 19, 2019, with Christina Ricci in the lead, Judith Light as Matron Grady, and Josh Bowman as Dr. Josiah. The book also influenced American Horror Story: Asylum, where journalist Lana Winters, played by Sarah Paulson, fakes her way into Briarcliff Asylum to uncover mistreatment of patients but is later involuntarily committed after being outed as a lesbian.

In September 2017, a television series was announced, written by Sarah Thorp and starring Kate Mara as Bly, with Mara, Thorp, and Carolyn Newman executive producing for Entertainment One, Danjaq, and The Frederick Zollo Company. An original opera, 10 Days in a Madhouse, by composer Rene Orth and librettist Hannah Moscovitch, premiered on September 21, 2023, at the Wilma Theater during the O23 Festival, co-commissioned by Opera Philadelphia and Tapestry Opera.

On August 19, 2022, Music Theatre of Madison debuted a musical version, Ten Days in a Madhouse, created by Jennifer Hedstrom and Karen Saari.