NYC #18: Nellie Bly, Woodlawn Cemetery (2), Bronx

'DEDICATED JUNE 22, 1978
TO
NELLIE BLY
ELIZABETH COCHRANE SEAMAN
BY THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB
IN HONOR OF
A FAMOUS NEWS REPORTER
MAY 5, 1864 – JANUARY 27, 1922'

Nellie Bly, as might be guessed here, was the nom de plume of Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, a kind of investigative journalist. She went around the world in seventy-two days, outdoing Jules Verne's fictional Phileas Fogg. She blagged her way into the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island while working for Pulitzer's New York World. Her subsequent Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887) brought changes in conditions in psychiatric hospitals as well as fame for herself. In 1895 , at the age of 31, she married the wealthy Robert Seaman, who was 73 and died nine years later.