HOMEPAGE
CONTRIBUTE to Humor, Words and expressions about menstruation and Would you stop menstruating if you could?
Some MUM site links:
HOMEPAGE |

MUM address & What does MUM mean? |
Email the museum |
Privacy on this site |
Who runs this museum?? |
Amazing women! |
Art of menstruation |
Artists (non-menstrual) |
Asbestos |
Belts |
Bidets |
Bly, Nellie |
MUM board |
Books: menstruation and menopause (and reviews) |
Cats |
Company booklets for girls (mostly) directory |
Contraception and religion |
Costumes |
Menstrual cups |
Cup usage |
Dispensers |
Douches, pain, sprays |
Essay directory |
Extraction |
Facts-of-life booklets for girls |
Famous women in menstrual hygiene ads |
FAQ |
Founder/director biography |
Gynecological topics by Dr. Soucasaux |
Humor |
Huts |
Links |
Masturbation |
Media coverage of MUM |
Menarche booklets for girls and parents |
Miscellaneous |
Museum future |
Norwegian menstruation exhibit |
Odor |
Olor |
Pad directory |
Patent medicine |
Poetry directory |
Products, some current |
Puberty booklets for girls and parents|
Religion |
Religión y menstruación |
Your remedies for menstrual discomfort |
Menstrual products safety |
Seguridad de productos para la menstruación |
Science |
Shame |
Slapping, menstrual |
Sponges |
Synchrony |
Tampon directory |
Early tampons |
Teen ads directory |
Tour of the former museum (video) |
Underpants & panties directory |
Videos, films directory |
Words and expressions about menstruation |
Would you stop menstruating if you could? |
What did women do about menstruation in the past? |
Washable pads |
Read 10 years (1996-2006) of articles and Letters to Your MUM on this site.
Leer la versión en español de los siguientes temas: Anticoncepción y religión, Breve reseña - Olor - Religión y menstruación - Seguridad de productos para la menstruación.

 

Celebrating Nellie Bly on 19th-century trade cards

This astounding journalist, born Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman in 1865, rocked the late Victorian and early modern era in America with her newspaper articles on conditions in prisons, asylums for the insane, prostitutes, and chorus girls.

She posed as a lunatic and prostitute, snatched purses and went on stage to get her stories, finally beating the fictional Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days by doing it in 72, and returned home in 1890 to screaming crowds in New York City. (Continued below the pictures.)

   

The words read

NELLIE BLY BIDS FOGG GOOD-BYE.

 "O Fogg, good-bye," said Nellie Bly.
"It takes a maiden to be spry,
To span the space 'twixt thought and act,
And turn a fiction to a fact."
These trade cards, part of a series, probably appeared during the media frenzy around her world trip in 1890, a competition with the fictional Phineas Fogg from the novel Around the World in Eighty Days. Look, she's waving an American flag!

The words read

NELLIE BLY, BYE AND BYE.

"O bye and bye," dreams Nellie Bly, 
"Along a strand of light I'll hie;
And stars and gleams will follow too,
But they must hustle if they do."
("Hie" means "hurry.")
See the other side of this card, where the ad at the bottom of the card is expanded.

She started writing to and for newspapers when she was 20, raced around the world at 29, and married a rich geezer a year later, one week after meeting him.

By the way, trade cards were cards - these are 3" x 5" (about 7 x 12 cm) - printed with often colorful, sometimes funny advertisements that customers could pick up in stores, mainly in the 19th century (here's another, for another famous American woman). People sometimes pasted them into albums (see the paste damage to the Bly card on the back corners).

Does anyone know who wrote the poetry?

SEE Dr. Schenck's medicines on the other side - Some other amazing women: Marie Stopes, Nellie Bly - See Cardui
patent medicine, Lydia Pinkham's Compound, Dr. Pierce's medicine and Orange Blossom medicine.

© 1997 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or distribute work on this Web site in any manner or medium without
written permission of the author. Please report suspected violations to
hfinley@mum.org