10 Days in a Madhouse

When Editor Erik Bearman assigned the Blog Staff the subject “Scary Stories,” Elizabeth went looking for a real-life horror story.

By Elizabeth Shay

The “haunted asylum” trope has been widely used in horror movies for many years. Such films are often more frightening because of their basis in reality. No one in their right mind would willingly commit themselves into a psychiatric hospital,…right? Well, long before the days of recent horror movies, a female journalist did just that. 

In 1887, Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman–better known by her pen name, Nellie Bly–launched an undercover investigation of the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island in New York. The word “lunatic” comes from luna, meaning moon, and the popular misconception at the time was that the changing moon could cause people to have fevers or to act irrationally. The word “lunatic” was used broadly to describe any person with a mental illness or behavioral disorder. Many conditions were not well known, and people with a wide variety of symptoms were labelled insane and sent to asylums. Suspicious, Bly purposely had herself committed to the asylum on Blackwell’s Island for 10 days in order to expose the real conditions. Working under an assumed name, she took a room in a boarding house and began wandering around, refusing to sleep, and ranting incoherently. The owners of the house soon called the police, and Bly, claiming to be a Cuban immigrant with amnesia, was sent to Bellevue Hospital by a judge. There, she experienced a first look at the poor treatment of the mentally ill, as she and other hospital inmates were forced to eat spoiled food and live in squalid conditions. After being diagnosed with dementia and other psychological illnesses, Bly was sent to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum. 

Conditions in the asylum were worse than Bly had expected. More than 1,600 patients were being held in the hospital intended to house 1,000. Due to extensive budget cuts, patient care had sharply declined in recent years. Only 16 doctors remained on staff, and those that remained had very little training or compassion. Patients were forced to take freezing baths and remain in their wet clothes for hours. They were forced to sit on benches silently and unmoving for 12 hours, and some were tied with ropes and made to pull carts like mules. Food and sanitary conditions were terrible, as the inmates were given rotten meat, moldy, stale bread and contaminated water. Those who resisted or complained received beatings and were threatened by staffers. Many of the patients were not insane at all. A large number of the women were recent immigrants, caught in a law-enforcement system in which they were unable to communicate. Others were committed simply because they were poor and had no family to support them. If they were not suffering from mental illnesses before they arrived at the asylum, the asylum’s treatments inflicted grave psychological damage.

Upon her release, Bly wrote a book detailing her experiences at Blackwell’s Island: 10 Days in a Madhouse. The exposé had immediate results. New York state officials increased the budget by one million just for the Women’s Lunatics Asylum. And, the book helped spark hospital and asylum reforms across the country.

Sources Referenced:

Scary Stories Editor: Erik Bearman