Tonya Mitchell's Blog, page 2

Ten Little-Known Facts about Nellie Bly

The young, intrepid reporter who graced the pages of the New York World at the end of the 19th century led a busy life. Nellie Bly was never one to sit idle while the world rushed by. After her ten-days-in-a-madhouse stunt and her circumnavigation of the globe—feats that would make her a household name—she went on to do many other things. Heading up a large, multimillion-dollar ironworks business her husband had left her, and finding good homes for scores of infants were just a few.

Her much-p...

The Not-So-Subtle Art of the Conversation Fan

On the heels of my post about the language of flowers—where blooms were assigned meanings that “did the talking” during the Victorian age, comes a post about another love language all its own: fanology or, the art of using the hand fan as a means of conversation.

Those beautifully decorated fans we see women clutching in 18th and 19th century portraits, the ones we see ladies fluttering in movies of the same era? They weren’t just fashion accessories or a way to stay cool.

They were used to co...

Decoding Love: The Language of Flowers

Those poor besotted Victorians. Trapped within the confines of proper etiquette, the young and marriageable upper class couldnt flirt, couldnt question, couldnt even communicate with a member of the opposite sex. At least, not without a chaperone present.

Dating, as we know it today, was most certainly off limits. If a young lady wanted to prevent herself from being the subject of talk and avoid the subsequent social banishment (and potential scandal) that followed, she had to adhere to the...

Who was Nellie Bly? (Part 3 of 3)

If you missed Part 1, click here.

For Part 2, click here.

 

When we last left Nellie Bly, she was a new widow whod thrown herself into managing the business her husband, Robert Seaman, had left her. As president and primary stockholder in the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company, shed brought it out of debt, expanded its products, and raised its sales substantially. 

For a time, she was one of the leading female industrialists in the US. 

However, her blind trust in the companys financial...

Who was Nellie Bly? (Part 2 of 3)

If you missed Part 1, click here. When we last left Nellie Bly, shed risen to fame as an intrepid female journalist. Then, after eight successful (though exhausting) years as a reporter and columnist, she suddenly eloped with Robert Seaman, a multimillionaire forty years her senior. After Seamans death in 1904 when Bly was almost 40, she was confronted with two new problems. One, her husbands relatives were crying foul over his will and wanted to contest it; and secondly, there were problems...

Who was Nellie Bly? (Part 1 of 3)

In her lifetime Nellie Bly would wear many hatsinvestigative journalist, wife and widow, patent inventor, progressive industrialist, war correspondent, crusading activist. But how was it a woman of little education, few connections, no position or wealth found her way so indelibly into the history books? And how did she accomplish such extraordinary things only considered fitting for men to do at a time when women didnt even have the power to vote? You only have to look at her formative years...

The Twisted Tale of Harriet Mordaunt

It seemed fitting in this, my first blog, to write about a few women who were committed to mental institutions back in the 19th century. I confess I have a certain curiosity for these things, which is why I wrote a book about a woman who spent time in a mad-house in 1887. But upon landing on one particularly salacious case, I decided to focus on just one. Its a doozy (of the seriously screwed up kind). First, let me just say that Im drawn to these oftentimes horrific stories not just to see...