The Woman Who Practiced Madness in a Mirror

Nellie Bly was one of the most famous journalists in America. She went undercover in sweatshops and eventually raced around the entire planet in seventy-two days just to prove a fictional character had been too slow.

But her masterpiece was getting committed to an insane asylum.

In 1887, Bly checked into a New York boarding house under a false name. She stayed up all night practicing deranged expressions in a mirror, perfecting the precise look of someone who had lost her grip on reality. The next morning, she wandered the halls telling the other residents they looked crazy. She refused to sleep. She stared at walls. Within hours, the matron called the police. The police called a judge. The judge called in doctors — multiple doctors — who examined her carefully and declared her, unanimously, undoubtedly insane.

The whole performance had taken less than twenty-four hours.

She spent ten days inside the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island, documenting rotten food, ice baths, and patients tied together with ropes. Her exposé, Ten Days in a Mad-House, triggered a grand jury investigation and forced the city to overhaul its entire asylum system.

The doctors who had examined her never quite explained how a twenty-three-year-old reporter with one night of mirror practice had fooled every single one of them.

Bly didn't explain either. She was already packing for the next story.