A Mad World and Its Inhabitants

"The book is deeply interesting and has occasioned much comment in influential circles. It must certainly have required a strong nerve to undertake this escapade." -British Mail, 1876 Fifteen years before Nellie Bly's famous investigation, Ten Days in a Mad-House (also available from Cosimo Classics), muckraking journalist Julius Chambers led the way in exposing abuse in the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum in A Mad World and Its Inhabitants (1876). Thanks to his reports on the ten days he lived among the inmates, a dozen sane patients were freed, an asylum reorganization was forced, and there was a change in the laws that governed the management. This book is considered a landmark in the field of investigative journalism.

JULIUS CHAMBERS (1850-1920) was a muckraking journalist, assigned by the Tribune to impersonate a madman in an insane asylum. Chambers also wrote for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and taught at Cornell and NYU.