Yes, there really was a Typhoid Mary. She was Mary Mallon (1869-1938) an Irish immigrant who cooked for wealthy New York families. She is history’s most famous super-spreader of disease.
Mary Mallon was first caught in 1906 when a sanitary engineer was hired to investigate a typhoid outbreak at Oyster Bay, Long Island. Six members of banker Charles Henry Warren’s household had fallen dangerously ill. Warren hired George Soper to discover the source of the contamination before the highly-contagious and deadly disease spread across the privileged enclave of Oyster Bay. (1) Oyster Bay was the site of Sagamore Hill, known as “the Summer White House” of President Theodore Roosevelt from 1902-1908.
George Soper took his assignment very seriously. He first checked the household plumbing. He put dye in the toilet to see if it contaminated the drinking water. It didn’t. He checked the local shellfish to see if the bay was polluted with sewage. It wasn’t. He examined the milk supply in case it was contaminated. It, too, was free of bacteria. (2)
Next, he interviewed the staff. He found that the family had changed cooks on August 4th, when Warren had hired Mary Mallon. Shortly after Mary began as cook, Soper was informed, she had served the household a favorite dessert for Sunday dinner: ice cream topped with freshly-cut peaches.
On August 27, Warren’s daughter, Margaret, fell ill with typhoid fever. Next, Mrs. Warren and two maids became ill, followed by the gardener and another of the Warrens’ daughters.
Knowing that typhoid typically goes from exposure to outbreak in three weeks’ time, Soper had Clue #1: The epidemic had begun with the arrival of the new cook. If his suspicion was correct, Mary Mallon was a carrier who had passed on the disease when preparing the peaches with unscrubbed hands.
Unfortunately, when Soper made this astonishing discovery, Mary no longer worked at the Warrens’. Undeterred, Soper set out to find her. Checking with her employment agency, Soper discovered a second and even more astounding truth: Typhoid had struck seven of the last eight families Mary had worked for. Mary Mallon was spreading typhoid in her path – and she had to be stopped.
But, first, Soper had to prove scientifically that Mallon was a carrier.
Mary was difficult to find, but Soper tirelessly tracked her down. Rather overzealously, he
“confronted her in her next employer’s kitchen and asked for blood, urine, and stool samples; she swore she had never been sick and advanced on him with a carving fork. He called in the New York City health department; she threatened its doctor.
Finally, it took five police officers and a chase over backyard fences to subdue her and get her a hospital. High levels of Salmonella typhosa bacilli were found in a stool sample. She was quarantined in a cottage on the Riverside Hospital grounds on an island in the East River.” (1)
Mary Mallon was a medical prisoner. She had been jailed without a trial. Although she was a carrier of typhoid, she was perfectly healthy. She had been shut up in a sanitarium with tubercular patients. She had been treated like a leper.
She sued. People felt sorry for her. Not everyone felt her imprisonment was deserved. In time, she went from Public Menace #1 to a cause célèbre.
“Eventually, a new health commissioner decided that Mallon could be freed from quarantine if she agreed to no longer work as a cook and to take reasonable steps to prevent transmitting typhoid to others.
Eager to regain her freedom, Mallon accepted these terms. On February 19, 1910, Mallon agreed that she “[was] prepared to change her occupation (that of cook), and w[ould] give assurance by affidavit that she w[ould] upon her release take such hygienic precautions as w[ould] protect those with whom she c[ame] in contact, from infection.”
She therefore was released from quarantine and returned to the mainland.” (3)
But, alas and alack, that’s not the end of the story. For a while after her release, Mary kept her word and worked as a laundress, which paid lower wages than a cook. It was not long afterward, though, that she adopted an assumed name – Mary Brown – and went back to work as a cook.
In 1915, while working as a cook at New York’s Sloane Hospital for Women, she infected 25 people, one of whom died. The typhoid bacteria was traced to a pudding Mary had prepared. She was subsequently arrested and returned to quarantine on the island, where she was confined until her death in 1938.
(1) “The Deadly Trails of Typhoid Mary,” by Donald G. McNeil, Jr. The New York Times, April 14, 2003.
(2) “The Most Dangerous Woman in America,” NOVA, aired Oct. 12, 2004.
This was a great post. It’s fascinating that, even after discovering she was the cause of sickness, she returned to cooking. Either she didn’t take it seriously enough, didn’t believe germ theory, or let her financial need outweigh her concern for the health of others! I’m curious about the line about her lab coat being notoriously filthy – I wonder what the relation is, if any, between her carrying typhoid and her hygiene habits.
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Hi, Rob, the reference to the lab coat was to keep the reader guessing Mary’s degree of blame. Some have speculated that Mary may have maliciously sickened people – like the nurses we read about today who kill their patients. Mary always maintained that she was not sick. Bacteriologists think she did have typhoid in her life, probably a mild form. The book by Anthony Bourdain (himself, a cook) has some quotes from people who knew Mary at the sanitarium. They didn’t have nice things to say about her. She suffered from a paralytic stroke in 1932 or 33 and collapsed in her cottage. When people rushed out there to help her, they saw into her cottage for the first time. The degree of filth was indescribable. I’d love to read that book!
Thanks for the compliment, Rob!
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i just discovered this site while surfing 🙂 and stayed because i’m not that into history but into people – so this is exactly what i want!
i once read the swiss/german book ‘die ballade der typhoid mary’ [lay of typhoid mary] by jürg federspiel, which combines facts and fiction in a pleasant way.
greets from germany :).
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Rebhuhn, keep coming back. Your comments are fabulous.
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I wonder if her bad hygeine was one reason for her switching jobs so regularly… If she came to work looking filthy and then cooking food for me, I would let her go. Then of course they said that the transfer of germs would come from feces on her hands and transfered to the food. If her hygeine habits were bad, this is a no brainer… not to mention wiping hands on a dirty apron probably after bathroom breaks and during cooking. I am sure her hygeine had a lot to do with how many people she infected. I have not done much reading on her, but now I am intrigued. I love the personal aspects of history. Not really events, but the people involved in the events. Thanks for this.
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So glad you enjoyed it.
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From the reading I’ve done on this over the years I understand that her personal and domestic hygiene was fine when she was younger but declined as she got older living on her own in that hut and unable to leave the island. Several other carriers were identified after Mary but none of them were isolated for the rest of their lives – even one who was a restaurant owner who returned to cooking after being identified and giving assurances he would not do so. The difference in treatment may be explained by attitudes of the time towards the Irish, women, immigrants and the working class – the others were male and in the case at least of the restaurant owner, middle class
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Hi Lisa. Thanks for posting this column. It’s very interesting. Another site, The Kingston Lounge, states that after her death, her cottage was bulldozed. This being that her residence was a mess and no one wanted to be exposed to the disease. Even though she denied having it and being a carrier, it was interesting to find that during her autopsy, they found live bacteria still residing in her to prove that she was. Thanks again for the article Lisa. Hope to read more of your writing.
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Hmmmm you know? I am not trying to gross anyone out here, but after I had got to thinking they didn’t have toilet paper back then I wonder if it is possible that she just used food matterials, or if she actually was that filthy didn’t use anything? Anyways I love this post and I would love to go to the North Brother Islands! Keep posting this great info! Thanks!
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