Ten Days in a Madhouse

Nellie Bly (elizabeth Jane Cochrane Seaman)

• Publisher: Youcanprint
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9788827824443
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Ten Days in a Madhouse is Nellie Bly's (Elizabeth Jane Cochrane Seaman) account of her ten days in a madhouse in New York in 1887. Bly, in an act of stunt journalism that wold make her famous, pretended to be mildly insane so she would be sent to an asylum to see first hand what one was like. To begin the process she goes to a rooming house and one night she stays up all night staring at the wall. The stare fest alerts her roommate and scares the homeowner and the next day she fixates on her lost trunk and insists on finding it. At the same time she continually talks about too many foreigners and never having worked, which both seem strange to the working class people she is rooming with. These three things are sufficient for her to land before a judge and eventually in the madhouse where she endures the arbitrary and vindictive rule of the nurses who are little better than street toughs. At the end of ten days a lawyer from her paper the World secures her release.

Table of contents

• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER I- A DELICATE MISSION
• CHAPTER II- PREPARING FOR THE ORDEAL
• CHAPTER III- IN THE TEMPORARY HOME
• CHAPTER IV- JUDGE DUFFY AND THE POLICE
• CHAPTER V- PRONOUNCED INSANE
• CHAPTER VI- IN BELLEVUE HOSPITAL
• CHAPTER VII- THE GOAL IN SIGHT
• CHAPTER VIII- INSIDE THE MADHOUSE
• CHAPTER IX- AN EXPERT(?) AT WORK
• CHAPTER X- MY FIRST SUPPER
• CHAPTER XI- IN THE BATH
• CHAPTER XII- PROMENADING WITH LUNATICS
• CHAPTER XIII- CHOKING AND BEATING PATIENTS
• CHAPTER XIV- SOME UNFORTUNATE STORIES
• CHAPTER XV- INCIDENTS OF ASYLUM LIFE
• CHAPTER XVI- THE LAST GOOD-BYE
• CHAPTER XVII-THE GRAND JURYINVESTIGATION