Formerly known as Blackwell's Island, Roosevelt Island was the site of the New York City Lunatic Asylum that was the basis for Nellie Bly's expose in Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887). Charles Dickens also spoke of it in his American Notes (1842). The island was also the site of a penitentiary mentioned in Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick (1867), Stephen Crane's novelette "Maggie, A Girl of the Streets" (1893), O. Henry's short story "The Cop and the Anthem" (1904), and Eugene O'Neil's The Hairy Ape (1922).
