Nellie Bly races around the world
The journalist aims to beat the fictional 80-day record set by Phileas Fogg
At the age of 24, Nellie Bly was one of the best known Lournalists in the 7nited 5tates. *er eZposÅ of conditions inside a New York asylum, Ten Days in a Mad-House, had made her a celebrity, and she needed a good follow-up. In the summer of 1888, she picked up Jules Verne’s book Around the World in Eighty Days. $y the time she had finished it, she knew what she was going to do.
#t first, people scoffed at her claim that she could beat 2hileas (oggos fictional day record. p+n the first place you are a woman and would need a protector,” she was told, “and even if it were possible for you to travel alone, you would need to carry so much baggage that it would detain you in making rapid changes.” But Bly stuck to her guns, and The New York World eventually agreed to sponsor her.
A year later, at 9.40am on the morning of 14 November 1889, Nellie stepped onto the Augusta Victoria, a steamer belonging to the Hamburg America Line, for the ocean crossing to Southampton. She brought only the clothes she was wearing – a sensible dress and thick overcoat – as well as a small bag. But she carried most of her money around her neck, the newspaper having issued her with £200 in English pounds, the equivalent of at least £100,000 today.
As Bly travelled east, the newspaper breathlessly reported her progress. Across the Atlantic, then across the Channel; down through France, where she met Jules Verne; through Italy, across the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal. Readers were invited to guess the exact time she would return; hundreds of thousands of entries poured in. She visited a leper colony in China and bought a monkey in Singapore. And at 3.51 on the afternoon of 25 January 1890, her train pulled into Jersey City. Nellie had done it – and it had taken her Lust days.