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Related. Others?

Nellie Bly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38816979 - Dec 2023 (1 comment)

Nellie Bly, America's first investigative journalist got her start in an asylum - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26375490 - March 2021 (2 comments)

Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22400878 - Feb 2020 (2 comments)

Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Madhouse (1887) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10926253 - Jan 2016 (1 comment)

Nellie Bly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10470383 - Oct 2015 (7 comments)

Nellie Bly: Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7730311 - May 2014 (2 comments)

> Her father, Michael Cochran, born about 1810, started as a laborer and mill worker before buying the local mill and most of the land surrounding his family farmhouse. He later became a merchant, postmaster, and associate justice at Cochran's Mills (named after him) in Pennsylvania

I can’t find more information but I really want to study and understand this kind of upwards movement better. I know there’s a lot of easy commentary on then vs. now but I want to understand the details better. Any decent documentary about walking into a jungle and coming out rich?

You might want to look at a biography of Andrew Carnegie?

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (and more, his father) might also be worth a look.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cl%C3%A4renore_Stinnes and her father also make for great reading.

Which book would you recommend to learn more about Brunel?
I remember reading a biography of him, but I don't remember which one it was (nor whether it was particularly good). Sorry.

You could do worse than starting at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel

Their article is quite extensive, and many parts have their own stand-alone articles. You can follow the 'Further Reading' section at the bottom of the article to find some suggestions for books.

An amazing women with some... strange?... romantic preferences:

"In 1895, Bly married millionaire manufacturer Robert Seaman. Bly was 31 and Seaman was 73 when they married. Due to her husband's failing health, she left journalism and succeeded her husband as head of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co., which made steel containers such as milk cans and boilers. Seaman died in 1904."

You can see more about her asylum expose here: https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2022/11/nellie-bly-...

EDIT: Even better, the full book: https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bly/madhouse/madhous...

Pragmatically they both got what they wanted. I'd say this was a very modern marriage.
Not that on-topic, yet the direct access page for the book [1] looks really rough style wise yet has fantastically annotated HTML. An inspect-element on the title and author block shows a ton of itemprop attributes and itemtype schema definitions for stuff as specific as alternative title information and author details including birth date and split first and last names. Downright aspirational levels of tagging, I wish that quality of care about metadata were everywhere on the web.

1: https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bly/madhouse/madhous... (just linking here too to be specific)

Strange? That’s a classic gold digger-trophy wife relationship.
I don't think a 31 year-old woman, let alone a (gasp!) career-orientated woman could be perceived as a trophy wife in the late 19th century.
When the man is a dying 73 year old it does.
She's on Pittsburgh's Mount Rushmore so to speak

The airport has 3 statues greeting incoming travelers - - George Washington - Franco Harris - Nellie Bly

My wife was listening to the FireAid concert in the car at the time I came across this Hackernews entry. No Doubt had reunited for FireAid and were performing "Just A Girl". I thought to myself, if one of the streaming services decided to make a miniseries about Nellie Bly -- doubtless with Millie Bobby Brown in the title role -- that would make an excellent theme song.
Vaguely related thought: An Amelia Earhart series that focused on her life rather than her death would tick many boxes for me.