Background Of Nellie Bly

Nellie Bly was born on May 5, 1864 in Apollo Pennsylvania. Her original name is Jane Cochrane but she just goes by Nellie Bly which came from the Stephan Foster song "Nelly Bly." Nellie wasn't a very good student in school but some how she developed a passion for writing. The Bly family was pretty poor so when Nellie turned sixteen she traveled to Pittsburgh looking for a job realizing that it is hard for women to get jobs and if there was they were very low paying. In 1885 there was an article written in a newspaper by a man who thought women were only good for housework and Nellie was really mad so she wrote a letter to the editor explaining her frustrations. Well the editor gave her a job to write an article on the normal lives of women. She wrote her piece and it was really good and they were very impressed so he hired her a job for full time as a news reporter. She wrote stories about child labour in factories and ect. She went undercover for a lot of her stories. She also added in her stories ways these things could be solved. Companies got mad at her for attacking them so the editor had to put her on a different section of stories. She wasn't happy so she moved to Mexico where there she wrote stories about poverty. When the government found out about her they ordered her out of the country. in 1887 she got hired to work at another newspaper called the New York World. Nellie retired from writing and married Robert Seaman in 1895. He was a millionaire and died in 1905 so Nellie decided to take over the companies. But when the first World War broke out she moved to go report on it. But Nellie died of pneumonia in New York on January 27, 1922.