I had decided to have the DeVine sisters, the twin mediums in my 1887 subplot, be the object of an investigative reporter's interest and I thought I'd read up on Nellie Bly for ideas.
What I found was that Nellie herself was available. In May of 1887 she was probably between jobs. She had left the Pittsburgh Dispatch, disgusted with having been returned to the theater and art beat after her exciting six months in Mexico, during which she reported on the life and customs of the people and ran afoul of the current dictatorship after daring to be critical of it.
Her next recorded stop would be New York, where she would gain fame as an undercover reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Her 10 Days in a Mad-House did a great deal to expose the brutal conditions of the asylums of the time and she would go on to challenge Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days by making the trip in in 72.
But what if, between leaving Pittsburgh and going to New York, Nellie decided to take a kind of working holiday by visiting the Mountain Park Hotel and participating on a seance held by the famous spiritualist sisters, Theodora and Dorothea DeVine?
I think it it sounds like just her sort of gig.
Her next recorded stop would be New York, where she would gain fame as an undercover reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Her 10 Days in a Mad-House did a great deal to expose the brutal conditions of the asylums of the time and she would go on to challenge Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days by making the trip in in 72.
But what if, between leaving Pittsburgh and going to New York, Nellie decided to take a kind of working holiday by visiting the Mountain Park Hotel and participating on a seance held by the famous spiritualist sisters, Theodora and Dorothea DeVine?
I think it it sounds like just her sort of gig.
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