Novel set in 1887 New York

10th June 2022

Madwoman by Louise Treger, novel set in 1887 New York – Blackwell’s Island, now known as Roosevelt Island.

The author seeks out unusual and interesting women to set centre stage in her novels. In The Dragon Lady she features Lady Virginia Courtauld and her extraordinary life that played out mainly in Rhodesia, and shock horror, she had a dragon tattoo winding its way up her leg, just to add a frisson of eccentricity to an already colourful life.

In this novel she has chosen to focus on Nellie Bly, a young woman from Pennsylvania who in her early years already understood that the situation of women was generally truly terrible. Her father, who trained as a lawyer, encouraged her determined ways, but he died very early and her mother remarried Jack, who proved to be  a singularly bad, choice and Nellie was left reeling by the violence that he brought into the family.

She determined to become a journalist, a profession that was closed to women. But this headstrong youngster had a will of iron and soon she was writing articles for her local paper. The call of New York, the centre of the publishing world, was strong and soon she found herself looking for work in the metropolis. Her notion was that she should incarcerate herself in the Asylum on Blackwell’s Island – now known as Roosevelt Island – to expose the torment and injustices that the 1600 women there were facing. And so she passed through the gates of no-return, to chronicle the lives of the people locked up there, in the anticipation that her newspaper – the World – would take suitable measures to get her out.

And yes, she sees and experiences first hand some terrible torture carried out by the staff, often ex-convicts, who seemed to enjoy the pain they  could inflict on the vulnerable women in their care.

This is based on the true story of Nellie Bly, who was a major voice in getting reforms underway in terrible and inhuman institutions.

A stylish retelling of one woman’s quest to expose the maltreatment of women incarcerated on Blackwell’s Island

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