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BY JOE TYRRELL
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
January 25 marks a notable anniversary for three "isms" – journalism, feminism and tourism – as well as for New Jersey.On that date in 1890, intrepid female reporter "Nellie Bly" completed her round-the-world journey in 72 days. In so doing, she easily beat the fictional mark of Phineas Fogg, hero of Jules Verne's beloved novel "Around the World in Eighty Days.
Unlike Fogg, who won a bet by returning to his exclusive London men's club within that time, Bly had more local, and accessible, launching and return points.
"I started from Hoboken, on my trip around the world, November 14, 1889," she wrote, and when she returned on Jan. 25, it was to the Jersey City train station.
That bit of Jersey lore often goes unreported or even misreported. Bly undertook her trip for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and her trip is often described as beginning in New York. But at a time when Germany had taken the lead in steamship technology, Nellie embarked for Europe aboard the Hamburg-American Line's "Augusta Victoria," which sailed from the company's Hoboken pier complex.Her trip passed smoothly with few of the hazards that beset Fogg. In France, Bly even found time to call upon Verne at Amiens. "'If you do it in seventy-nine days, I shall applaud with both hands,' Jules Verne said, and then I knew he doubted the possibility of my doing it in seventy-five, as I had promised," she reported.
Despite the lack of high adventure, the very idea of the journey, at a time when many women scarcely left home unescorted, captured readers' imaginations and circulation soared for Bly's reports.
She was especially impressed by Hong Kong, where "the bay, in a breastwork of mountains, lies calm and serene, dotted with hundreds of ships that seem like tiny toys," she wrote. "The palatial white houses come half way up the mountain side, beginning at the edge of the glassy bay. They say that after night the view from the peak is unsurpassed. One seems to be suspended between two heavens."
Nellie's trip prompted immediate mimicry. A few days after her departure, Cosmopolitan dispatched its literary editor, Elizabeth Bisland, on the same circumnavigation, heading west. Bisland also filed widely read reports, but her later start and four-day-longer travel time turned her into a footnote.
For Bly, the trip was just one chapter in a colorful lifetime. A native of western Pennsylvania, where her father was an associate justice, she began life as Elizabeth Jane Cochran in a town named after her family. But her father died when she was 6, without a will. Under state law at the time, his widow was not entitled to his estate.
For financial security, her mother remarried – to an abusive man. At 14, young Elizabeth testified against her stepfather in divorce proceedings. A few years later, adding an "e" to her last name, she wrote an angry letter to the Pittsburgh Dispatch in response to a sexist opinion by its columnist Erasmus Wilson.
Wilson called the idea of a working woman "a monstrosity." While widespread at the time, it was a curious opinion in a country where working women had necessarily played a vital role from the start. (The historian Patricia Cleary used tax data to show that in 1756, at least 42 percent of Philadelphia shops were owned by women.
Elizabeth's riposte to Wilson captivated his editor, George Madden, who offered the young woman a job under the alias Nellie Bly, a name taken from a song. Madden got more than her expected. Bly's investigative reporting on sweatshops got her moved from that beat. Her subsequent reports on corruption in Mexico got her barred from that country.
Heading back, she veered off to New York. There, she attracted widespread attention by pretending to be mad, then reporting on conditions inside the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. That coup led to her momentous voyage, which helped change social attitudes.
When she passed through Pittsburgh in the home stretch of her trip, Nellie's old friends at the Dispatch drew two lessons from her travels.
"It is not necessary, for a woman who has a little courage and self-reliance and who desires to visit foreign lands, to provide herself with a male escort," was one. The other was "neither is it essential to her health or comfort that she should carry with her a wagon load of trunks. NELLIE BLY found a single suit of navy blue cloth, and a grip-sack supplied with a limited number of essential articles all that was requisite."
As her final train connection sped across New Jersey, "I was told to jump to the platform the moment the train stopped at Jersey City, for that made my time around the world," Nellie wrote. "The station was packed with thousands of people, and from the moment I landed on the platform, one yell went up from them."
Like publishers throughout history, Pulitzer thought his star reporter should be satisfied with acclaim rather than more money. Dissatisfied, Bly quit the World for a time, but the newspaper brought her back to do more exposés.
A few years later, Nellie, just short of her 31st birthday, wed industrialist Robert Seaman, 72. Understandably, other members of his family viewed this as a speculative venture. But Bly contributed to the continued success of his iron and steel products company, inventing and patenting the design that served as the basis for 55-gallon steel drums still widely used in industry.
Seaman died at 80 in New York, a few weeks after being knocked down by a horse. Nellie's crusading spirit led her to reform conditions for her workers, adding an employee library, building a recreation center and eliminating piecework.
Unfortunately, Bly apparently was advised by the forerunners of the accountants who told AIG about the safety of credit default swaps. Swamped by financial problems including embezzlement, the company went bankrupt. Arriving in Europe in time for the outbreak of World War I, Nellie returned to reporting. She died in New York on Jan. 27, 1922.
Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Railroad named its fastest train The Nellie Bly, running it between New York City and Atlantic City until 1961.
The pier where Nellie started her momentous trip held up less well. On the afternoon of June 30, 1900, a massive fire rapidly spread through the facilities of Hoboken's two great German shipping lines, Hamburg American and its neighbor North German LLoyd, which had several large ships at dockside.
Tearing through warehouses packed with cotton and oils, the conflagration rapidly spread to the largely wood piers and offices, as well as the vessels themselves. More than two dozen vessels caught fire and two of the largest, drifting in the Hudson River, foundered in the Weehawken Flats and keeled over, half sunk and half burnt. About 300 people were reported dead or missing; reports differ on the final total.
Many of the facilities were rebuilt. But today, like much of the Hudson Gold Coast, the site of the blaze is occupied by expensive condos.
Joe Tyrrell may be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
