On Sun, 21 Mar 2010 17:42:29 -0700, Christopher D. Green wrote: >Since we've been discussing Rosenhan, I thought that this might interest >some of you. More than eight decades before Rosenhan sent his student to >mental hospitals pretending to be mad, a reporter for the /New York >World/ who went by the pen name of Nellie Bly, feigned insanity in order >to gain admittance to a New York City insane asylum and find out what >conditions were really like. After a week-and-a-half there, the >newspaper had her sprung, and she wrote the devastating exposé _Ten Day in a Madhouse_ (1887). Her report prompted a grand jury investigation >of conditions in mental hospitals. > >A Wikipedia description is here: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly#Asylum_expos.C3.A9 [snip] >Interestingly, this was three years BEFORE Jacob Riis' _How the >Other Half Lives_ made conditions in New York tenements a major >social issue.
I admit to being hard pressed to understand why Chris made his final comment regarding Jacob Riis. If we are trying to establish "priority" for the first major exposé of bad conditions in either social services, such as lunatic/insane asylums, or in living conditions, I think that a broader review of the reporting and writing on these issues is needed. For example, Charles Dickens wrote about his visit to the U.S. in his 1842 travel book "American Notes" in which he describes his visit to the insane asylum on Blackwell/Roosvelt island, presumably the same one Bly visited or a predeccesor of it. For info on "American Notes", see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Notes For Dickens on the insane asylum on Blackwell (though he calls it "Long or Rhode Island"), see: http://nyc10044.com/timeln/dickens.html For a history of Roosevelt Island, see: http://nyc10044.com/timeln/timeline.html It should be noted that Roosevelt Island has long had a reputation as a "dumping ground" for various groups with its lunatic/insane asylum, smallpox hospital, jail (where Emma Goldman, Mae West, "Dutch Schultz" aka Arthur Simon Flugenheimer, and others were temporarily housed), almshouse which took in "foundlings" until NYC built the Foundling Hospital, Goldwater Hospital for chronic cases (which is still operating today). In 1921 Blackwell's Island was re-named "Welfare Island" but as services were re-located elsewhere (e.g., the jail was transfered to Riker's Island) and commercial development took over, the island was re-named "Roosevelt Island" to make it more appealing to the upper middle class people it was hoped would move there. Here is the Wikipedia entry on Roosevelt Island: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwell%27s_Island Getting back to Jacob Riis and Nellie Bly, I'm not sure one wants to get into a competition about who did more and earlier. I'll leave it to the interested reader to examine their backgrounds. For Riis, here is his Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_riis NOTE: Riis' "How The Other Half Lives" was originally published in "Scribiner's Magazine" in 1889, making it only two years after Bly's "Ten Days in a Madhouse". But Riis, both in his role as a police reporter and public speaker spoke out against the conditions that the poor of NYC lived in. He took to using photographs because of the power they had to represent the conditions he found. The NY Times has a slide show of some Riis' photographs which he used in his "magic latern" presentations. Some date from 1887; see: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/02/27/nyregion/20080227_RIIS_SLIDESHOW_index.html For additional background, see: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/revisiting-the-other-half-of-jacob-riis/ For Nellie Bly, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly Again, I'm not sure what Chris' point is in comparing/contrasting Bly and Riis. In any case, I'm glad to see Chris being interested in New Yorkers. ;-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu P.S. Not to go completely off the rails but Geraldo Rivera (yes, THAT Geraldo Rivera) may have outdone both Bly and Riis with his expose on the Willowbrook State School which fundamentally changed how mentally retard children were to be treated in NY state; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willowbrook_State_School --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=1453 or send a blank email to leave-1453-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
