10 Days in a Mad-House

10 Days in a Mad-House

​Takes Place in 1887, New York City

• ​22 Years after the Civil War.

• ​ 5 years after Edison invented electricity.

• ​Grover Cleveland was president.

• ​5 years after the first Labor Day.

• ​After the Industrial Revolution in America.

• ​Women had NO rights.

• ​Children rarely went to school mostly worked.

Narrator Nellie Bly ​

• Was the pen name for Elizabeth Seaman Cochrane.​

• ​She was a journalist for the New York World.

• ​Went undercover to reveal the mistreatment in asylums.

• ​Wrote a series of articles about what was happening.

• ​She was able to go to court to grant the state more money in asylums.

Open Ended

Would you be able to go undercover in a high stressful environment like Nellie? Why?

​Blackwell's Island Asylum

• ​More than just an asylum, also included a hospital for smallpox and a prison.

• ​The hospital held people that were known as "incurable," people who had severe conditions which could not be cured.

• ​Parts of the original building still remains standing.

Open Ended

How we treat the most vulnerable among us?

Open Ended

How can we might sure abuses in institutions are kept in check?

Open Ended

How can structures of an institution protect the acts of individuals who wield their power in bad faith?

Open Ended

How has work like Bly’s influenced today’s investigative reporting?