1869: Mary Mallon is born. She might have passed out of this life as just another obscure Irish immigrant in New York, if not for unwittingly contracting typhoid fever and passing it on, as a "healthy carrier," to dozens of people.
So history remembers her infamously, if perhaps a little unfairly, as the dreaded Typhoid Mary.
Mallon was in her teens when she came to the United States, where she found work as a domestic servant. By all accounts a talented cook, Mallon was employed in a succession of upper-class kitchens around New York state. In the summer of 1906, she was working for a Manhattan banker, Charles Henry Warren, who had taken a vacation rental with his family on Long Island. In late August, one of the Warren daughters fell ill with typhoid fever. She was joined, in quick succession, by her mother, two maids, a gardener and a second Warren daughter.
The owner of the summer home feared the loss of a cash cow if word got around that the place was a breeding ground for typhoid fever. So he hired George Soper, a public health official with knowledge of the disease, to snoop around.
Although Mallon had already left the family's employ, Soper soon latched onto her as the probable source. As he investigated her employment history, Soper discovered that similar typhoid outbreaks had accompanied Mallon wherever she went as far back as 1900.
When Soper tracked her down and tried to get her to provide urine and stool samples, Mallon denied that she was sick and told him in no uncertain terms to bugger off.
Her attitude is understandable in the context of the times: Mallon was not well-educated but even if she had been, the notion of a healthy carrier was not fully understood — even in the medical community. All she knew was that she felt fine and exhibited no symptoms, and she objected to being fingered as the perpetrator.
When Soper approached her again, this time with a doctor in tow, Mallon once more declined to be tested. But she had been tested, apparently of her own volition, by a reputable chemist who pronounced her disease-free. This only made things murkier. (It's been suggested that she was in remission when the testing took place.)
Mallon felt persecuted, and she may have had good reason considering the class prejudice that existed then, which fueled the prevailing attitude that "dirty immigrants" were responsible for most epidemics. Soper certainly patronized her, once even resorting to bribery, telling Mallon he would write a book about her and give her all the publishing royalties. Mallon responded by locking herself in the bathroom and waiting until he left.
Soper turned to the New York City Health Department, which dispatched a female doctor to reason with Mallon. When that didn't work, they came back with the cops.
She was examined and found to be a carrier of typhoid fever. Before the city's health inspector could order Mallon into quarantine, she escaped and made a spirited, if short-lived, bid for freedom. Recaptured, she was sent to the quarantine hospital on North Brother Island (between Queens and The Bronx), where she remained for three years. She was isolated for much of the time, growing embittered and maybe a little crazy, too.
Mallon was released from quarantine in 1910, after agreeing not to work in food preparation, and to take reasonable hygienic precautions to minimize risks to other people. Unfortunately, she was never told exactly what hygienic precautions she should take. She was also in full denial by this time, convinced that the authorities simply had it in for her.
Mallon worked for a time as a laundress, but found it both tedious and less lucrative than the position of cook. So she changed her surname to "Brown" and returned to her old profession. In 1915 she was working at New York's Sloane Hospital for Women when 25 people became infected with typhoid fever. One died. The law moved in, and the jig was up.
Meanwhile, health officials let Mallon's story slip to the press, which was pretty yellow in those days and ever-eager to take a good yarn and run with it. It was the newspapers that hung the moniker "Typhoid Mary" on her, as they provided lurid "details" of her deliberately infecting her victims.
History has also judged Mallon harshly, for deliberately returning to a job where she knew she posed a danger to others. Nevertheless, some historians point to mitigating circumstances that make this more than a simple black-and-white story.
In custody once more, Mallon was returned to North Brother Island, where she remained in quarantine for the rest of her life.
She died in 1938, not from typhoid fever but pneumonia.
Source: Various
*Photo: Mary Mallon, **foreground, lies *in a hospital bed in 1907./Wikipedia
See Also:
