Journalist Nellie Bly Escaping Blackwell Island Lunatic Asylum Portrayed On Lifetime Cable TV Channel Tonight - Asylum Now Site Of Roosevelt Island's Octagon Luxury Rental Building

In 1887, legendary journalist Nellie Bly went undercover to report about abuses at NYC's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island and wrote a book about her experience, 10 Days In A Madhouse. According to the Asylum Project:

... One of the most famous cases associated with the hospital was the journalism of young female reporter Nellie Bly, who in 1887 entered the hospital under the guise of insanity under assignment from Joseph Pulitzer. She wrote, "From the moment I entered the insane ward on the Island, I made no attempt to keep up the assumed role of insanity. I talked and acted just as I do in ordinary life. Yet strange to say, the more sanely I talked and acted, the crazier I was thought to be by all...." Now trapped, Bly was tormented with rotted food, cruel attendants, and cramped and diseased conditions. After talking with other patients she became convinced many were as sane as she was, writing

What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment? Here is a class of women sent to be cured. I would like the expert physicians who are condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.

She was held in the Asylum for ten days before she was finally released with the help of Pulitzer.

Her report, later published in the book Ten Days in a Mad-House, resulted in not only embarrassment for the Institution but a grand jury investigation into the conditions and the question of how so many "professionals" had been fooled. The end result was a $1,000,000 increase in the budget of the Department of Public Charities and Corrections as well as their recommendation of changes proposed by Nellie. Ultimately, this report brought about the end of the Asylum Blackwell's Island....

The Lunatic Asylum is now Roosevelt Island's Octagon luxury rental building.

This evening, January 19, the Lifetime Cable Channel is showing Escaping The Madhouse: The Nellie Bly Story:

On a mission to expose the deplorable conditions and mistreatment of patients at the notorious Women’s Lunatic Asylum, investigative reporter Nellie Bly (Christina Ricci) feigns mental illness in order to be institutionalized to report from the inside. The movie delivers an intense and fictionalized account of actual events surrounding Nellie's stay beginning after Nellie has undergone treatment, leaving her with no recollection of how she came to the asylum or her real identity....

What actually happened to Nellie Bly 🕵️‍♀️ on the real Blackwell's Island? Find out, and watch @ChristinaRicci tell her story in Escaping The Madhouse: #TheNellieBlyStory 📰 premiering Saturday, January 19th at 8/7c. pic.twitter.com/OWF8GBfmuR

— Lifetime (@lifetimetv) January 9, 2019

The Roosevelt Island Historical Society has more info on the Octagon Building and Blackwell's Island Lunatic Asylum.