The Alchemy of Murder

by Carol McCleary

  To make life better, I received five dollars—five dollars mind you, more than a week’s wages earned at the factory. I could only conclude my article was well received because Mr. Maddox not only asked me to write another piece, he suggested I choose my own subject.

  “Young lady, your grammar is still rocky, but you do manage to get your facts straight, so why don’t you select a subject that interests you.”

  I’m impassioned to write exposés of the terrible wrongs people suffer—especially women. That being said, I chose the subject of divorce.

  Not only are divorces rare and difficult to obtain, most people have no idea how awful it is for a woman to be trapped in an unhappy or even brutal marriage. After witnessing what my mother had endured with my stepfather, I became in favor of divorce, especially when there is abuse—physical or mental—in the household.

  At fourteen years of age I offered this testimony for my mother concerning her divorce:

  My stepfather has been generally drunk since he married my mother. When drunk, he is very cross and cross when sober. He often uses profane language towards her and calls her a whore and bitch. My mother is afraid of him. He attempted to choke her. This was sometime after they were married. The next time was in the Oddfellows Hall New Year’s Night 1878.

  I decided to take my own experiences, along with my father’s old law books and case notes, and report on why I felt divorce was proper when the circumstances demanded it. The following week when the article appeared I became infuriated, to say the least, when no one believed a woman had written the article. Everyone thought it was a man using a woman’s name! Imbeciles.

  Mr. Maddox, however, decided I should have my own byline, but because reporting was considered unladylike, I had to write under a pseudonym. When he threw out to the men in the news room the question of what my byline should be, someone started humming and the whole gang sang a popular Stephen Foster song:

  Nelly Bly, Nelly Bly, bring de broom along.

  We’ll sweep de kitchen clean, my dear, and hab a little song …

  “Nelly Bly!” was shouted in the news room and Elizabeth Cochran from Cochran Falls, Pennsylvania, was laid to rest, R.I.P. But I spelled it Nellie, not Nelly. As Mr. Maddox was so fond of saying, my spelling and grammar were “rocky.”

  I bid farewell to my factory friends, but I would never forget them. I was determined to help them gain better working conditions and wages. To that end, I did a hard-hitting story on sweatshop conditions in the city.

  The day my story appeared, I was indoctrinated into how the system really works, and I didn’t like the taste of it.

  A delegation of businessmen paid a visit to Mr. Maddox and advised him that working conditions were too rude a subject for a woman. Just like that I was assigned to the society page to report: “On June 1st the Mr. and Mrs. Snot-Grass gave their daughter, Amanda, to Brian, the son of the Mr. and Mrs. Blue-Nose. The bride wore…”

  Poppycock!

  Anarchists were planting bombs, factory workers were battling for rights, courageous women were demanding the right to vote, empires were clashing around the world, but all the newspaper women in America—and there were only a few in such a lofty position—were pigeonholed into reporting news about weddings and gossip.

  Unbelievable, yet depressingly true.

  To become a detective reporter, and investigate crime and corruption, or a foreign correspondent sending dispatches from wars and revolutions at the far ends of the world, one must be a man.

  Rubbish. I was not going to spend my life writing about liver pâté, especially after my article was so well received. I had to do something to change management’s rules.

  The question was “what?”

  I considered traveling to the West and wiring stories of desperadoes and boom towns. Stagecoaches rumbled where the tracks didn’t reach and encountered fearsome Apaches where the cavalry didn’t dare go. But the Wild West had been covered by male reporters. To be noticed, I had to do something different. Mexico fit the bill—it was wild and dangerous and virgin territory.

  With my mother in tow and my meager savings in hand, I bought train tickets for the land of the Aztecs.

  What a marvelous country it turned out to be—ancient and beautiful and exotic, but also a place of political unrest and tyranny. Not long after I started sending dispatches focusing not only on the color and charm of the sunny land but on the poverty and injustices I saw, I was informed that the Mexican government no longer desired my presence in the country.*

  When I returned home I discovered that my feat didn’t convince the paper’s management that being a foreign correspondent was a fit job for a woman. To the contrary, they considered it pure luck I had not been raped and murdered by bandits and ordered me back to covering card parties attended by horse-faced society women.

  Unacceptable! Pittsburgh was too confining for a woman overflowing with ideas. On March 23, 1887, I left a note on the desk of Erasmus Wilson, the Quiet Observations columnist and my dear friend:

  Dear Q.O.—I am off to New York. Look out for me.

  Bly

  I left for New York with my poor mother once more in tow, but a bit wide-eyed at my exciting dream of being a real news reporter so I could change the world for the better.

  Accuracy is

  to a newspaper

  what virtue is

  to a woman.

  —JOSEPH PULITZER

  4

  Upon arriving in Manhattan I went straight to the New York World, my newspaper of choice for a job. Its domed citadel was on Park Row where the city’s papers gathered to make it easier to spy on one another.

  The guard protecting the World’s newsroom off the main lobby refused to let me in after I told him I’d come to see Mr. Pulitzer about a reporting job. “You should be home cooking and cleaning for your husband,” he told me.

  I left fuming. Pushing my way in would have been futile because the guard also told me Mr. Pulitzer was out of the country.

  I soon found out it made not a bit of difference to the newspaper gods of Gotham that I had worked for the Dispatch, had quite a few good stories to my credit, and had been a foreign correspondent in Mexico. All the determination of a mule did me no good.

  After nearly four months of no job, I was almost penniless and losing weight.

  I’m ashamed to admit, but this city really put to test my stamina. I was on the verge of giving up after my purse was stolen in Central Park and I found myself stranded and about to face eviction and starvation when a picture of Mr. Pulitzer entering the World appeared on the front page of the paper. He was back. It’s a day I will never forget— September 22, 1885.

  This time nothing was going to stop me from seeing him. He was going to hire me and that was that. Besides, my parents constantly told me, “It’s not how many times you get knocked down, its how many times you get back up.”

  I borrowed streetcar fare from the landlady who was running the brownstone boarding house on Lexington Avenue where we were staying and mustered up the last of my courage for another assault on the World.

  * * *

  BEFORE I APPROACHED Mr. Pulitzer for a job I decided to take my mother’s advice—society would not be ready for a woman warrior like me; I would have to work twice as hard as a man and knowledge would be my strongest power. So, I stopped at a library to learn all I could about Mr. Pulitzer.

  Other newspapers claimed that the World was lurid and offensive in its reporting, but they just didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to expose political corruption and do hard-hitting stories the way Mr. Pulitzer did. He was a reformer and had a flair for news that no other newspapermen had.

  He believed the paper was a watchdog against privilege, a friend of the people. As long as society was kept ignorant of what was really happening, change would never happen. And he had a strong belief in crusades against wrongs. When he began to receive threats on his life, it didn’t stop him; he just started carrying a pistol. To him, the t
hreats only proved he was hitting home.

  When I discovered how he had obtained his first job as a newspaperman, I knew I was destined to work for this man.

  Mr. Pulitzer, at the age of seventeen, was rejected from the Austrian, French, and British armies because of his poor eyesight and fragile physique. At six feet two and one and a half inches tall he looked like an emaciated scarecrow. But these obstacles didn’t stop him. He went to Hamburg and signed up with bounties looking for people to enlist in the U.S. Army during the Civil War.

  Once the war was over he headed to St. Louis to obtain a job, only to run into another obstacle. In order to get to St. Louis he had to cross the broad Mississippi River. Even though he was penniless and hungry, he approached the operator of the Wiggins Ferry, who also spoke German, and worked out a deal where he paid his fare by firing the boiler.

  After working jobs as a mule hostler, deckhand on a packet to Memphis, construction laborer, and a waiter, Mr. Pulitzer, along with several dozen other men, paid five dollars each to a fast-talking promoter who promised them well-paying jobs on a Louisiana sugar plantation. To get there, they had to board a small steamboat. Some thirty miles south of the city they were let off through a ruse. When the boat churned away without them, they knew they had been swindled and had no other choice but to walk back to St. Louis.

  Infuriated by the fact that this person could so easily rob a group of honest, hard-working men and get away with it, Mr. Pulitzer wrote an account of the fraud and submitted it to the Westliche Post. Not only did they print it, they gave him his first job on a newspaper.

  Mr. Pulitzer stood up for men; I stood up for women.

  Soon he was running newspapers. When he gained control of the St. Louis Dispatch and the Post and merged them as the Post-Dispatch they soon dominated the city’s evening newspaper. After purchasing the New York World, a morning paper that was failing, within three months the circulation doubled.

  He wasn’t afraid to be innovative—like covering sports and women’s fashion with illustrations. He believed a paper shouldn’t just be informative, but entertaining. Not everyone agreed. A reporter for the New York Times said, “How can anyone take the World seriously when it prints such silly things like comics?”

  Obviously, the public did.

  I also found it interesting he considered ten his lucky number. He made it a point to purchase the World on May 10, 1883. Maybe I could use this to my advantage. I didn’t know how, but it was good information to have.

  The World was the leading journalistic voice in America and I was going to be a part of it, come hell or high water.

  * * *

  KNOWING MOST MEN would hesitate to physically remove a lady, I decided my plan of attack was to be polite, but firmly inform the guard I wouldn’t leave until I met with Mr. Pulitzer.

  After three hours of ignoring the copy boys who tried to shoo me home as I badgered everyone who entered the building with desperate pleas to get me in to see Mr. Pulitzer, I was surprised no one called the police and had me arrested as an anarchist or Free Love advocate.

  An older reporter who watched me from his desk with an amused grin on his face raised my ire. I was a hair’s breath away from giving him a tongue lashing when he suddenly helped me slip inside before the gatekeeper could stop me.

  I swept across the editorial room with the grace of a lady of quality, careful to lift my skirt off the floor to keep the bottom from being fouled by the tobacco juice that didn’t reach spittoons. Newspapermen pride themselves on being a special kind of intellect who hang around smoky bars for five-cent beer and the free lunch, and believe they are entitled to foul editorial offices with chewing tobacco juice and cigar fumes.

  I felt the animosity of the men as a woman invaded their territory, and that put my chin up an extra inch.

  I quickly knocked, then threw open Mr. Pulitzer’s office door without waiting for an answer. Facing me was Mr. Pulitzer and John Cockerill, his managing editor. Both frowned for a moment before Mr. Pulitzer removed a pipe from his mouth and said, “Since you insist, do come in, young lady, and close the door.”

  I put my clippings from the Dispatch on his desk and collapsed in a chair. I blurted out I’d been robbed of my last penny and needed a job. I don’t know if they were impressed or just speechless because a young woman had the nerve to barge in and demand a job. Either way, they seemed much amused by my wanting to be a newspaperman.

  Mr. Cockerill handed me twenty-five dollars but declined to give me a response as to whether I was being hired. I realized the money was charity because I was broke and it was their way of brushing off an annoying child.

  I wanted a job, not a handout.

  “I have a great story,” I stated boldly. “The type of newsworthy reporting the World is famous for.”

  “What is this newsworthy story?” Mr. Pulitzer asked with a hint of humor in his voice that irritated me.

  “An exposé on the scandalous conditions at the madhouse for women on Blackwell’s Island.”

  “Young woman, every newspaper in town has already done a story on that notorious insane asylum.” He scoffed. “It has a worse reputation than Bedlam.”

  He was about to have me evicted from his office. I had to do something quick or I was finished, not only in New York but in the newspaper business. To accept a position on a lesser paper was not in my blood.

  “No one has done the story the way I will do it.”

  My mind was flying. I hadn’t really thought out how I would do the story, but I had to say something that would impress him. I researched stories about conditions at the asylum and felt they ranged from too maudlin, to little more than what a man thought conditions for the unfortunate women must be like. I wanted to write a more personal and realistic story. And I knew how he was drawn to sensationalism.

  Desperate for a job, I realized there was only one way to really impress him.

  “I’ll get myself committed to Blackwell’s Island as a mad woman.” And then, thank God, I remembered his quirk about ten being his lucky number, “And I will stay there exactly ten days!”

  Mr. Pulitzer took the pipe out of his mouth and stared at me.

  5

  It’s not easy to act crazy.

  I’ve never been around a person insane enough to be institutionalized, unless you include my stepfather whom I suspect was bitten by one of Dr. Pasteur’s rabid dogs. But, I knew from my research that one could not get committed to the asylum without an examination by doctors and an order from a judge.

  In the streetcar on my way home, I drew my plans.

  I would check into a boarding house for working women. If I could convince a houseful of women I was crazy, they’d stop at nothing to get me out of their reach and into the hands of the authorities.

  Once home, I explained to my dear mother what I was about to do. She said I wouldn’t have any trouble convincing them I was mad, because I was crazy to even try such a scheme.

  In need for a boarding house to enter, I selected from a directory the Temporary Home for Females, No. 84, Second Avenue. As I made my way to the address, I practiced “dreamy” and “faraway” expressions.

  Mrs. Stanard, the assistant matron who greeted me at the door, reminded me of an aunt I had—disgusted with life and not wanting anyone else to be happy. She curtly told me the only room available was one shared with another woman and the rate was thirty cents a day. This worked to my benefit. I only had seventy cents. The sooner I was broke, the sooner I would be put out.

  That night, I had a less than enticing supper—boiled beef and potatoes, definitely lacking in salt or any spices, accompanied with coffee so thick it smelled like tar and bread with no butter.

  The dining room floor was bare; two long rough wooden tables lacked varnish, polish, and table covers, it’s unnecessary to talk about the cheapness of the linen. Long wooden benches were on each side of the tables, with no cushions. Mrs. Stanard obviously wanted no dallying, which was understandable—you’d
realize how horrible the food tasted.

  This place was a mockery of a home for deserving women who earned their own bread. And to add insult to injury, she charged thirty cents for what she called a dinner. One good thing about her ridiculous price, I was now almost broke.

  After dinner everyone adjourned to the parlor. Just entering this room made me depressed. The only light fell from a solitary gas jet in the middle of the ceiling that enveloped everyone in a dusky hue. It was no wonder everyone’s spirits were down. The chairs were worn and dull in color, no flower prints or spring colors—just dark blue and grey. Above the mantelpiece was a picture of a sea captain. He sat straight as a board in a black leather chair with one hand holding a pipe. His dense black eyebrows shadowed his steel, grey eyes. He had the scowl of a sea captain not pleased with his crew. There were no logs in the fireplace, just ashes from long ago.

  I sat in a corner in a very stiff wicker chair that was made with no thought of comfort and watched the women. They made lace and knitted incessantly. No effort came from anyone to share in conversation. No laughter. No smiles. Everyone just sat in their chairs, heads hanging down, as their fingers incessantly knitted. The only sound was the tapping of the needles.

  I hated this establishment.

  With little cost, the management could easily supply this room with a game of checkers or a deck of cards—simple things that would bring enjoyment to these women who spent their days working like slaves. Even a cheap vase of daisies on the mantel and a log burning would bring some cheer. And remove that sea captain and replace it with a picture of a beautiful meadow—something colorful and bright. And have a cat or two who’d earn their room and board catching mice, which I’m sure lurked about.

  I couldn’t have picked a more ideal place to become crazy. One thing for certain, once I was done with my story on Blackwell’s Island, my next article was going to expose the fraud of these “Homes for Females.” But right now I needed to concentrate on being a mad woman.