Typhoid Mary

The Healthy Carrier In 1884 German bacteriologist Friedrich Loeffler, suggested the possibility of the concept of the “healthy carrier” for the disease diptheria. In 1893 Robert Koch argued that there could in fact be healthy carriers of cholera By 1900 studies suggested that typhoid could be spread through healthy carriers... And in 1902 Robert Koch published the first paper on the subject.

Healthy Carrier A “healthy carrier” or “asymptomatic carrier” is is a person or other organism that has contracted an infectious disease, but who displays no symptoms. Although unaffected by the disease themselves, carriers can transmit it to others.

Mary Mallon Mary Mallon (1869-1938) has the distinction of being the first typhoid carrier to be identified and charted in North America. Born in 1869 in Cookstown, in County Tyrone in present- day Northern Ireland. She is believed to have emigrated from Ireland to the United States around 1884.

Mary Mallon Once in New York Mallon found work as a private cook to wealthy families in Manhattan. In the summer of 1906 she found employment in the rented summer home of New York banker, Charles Henry Warren in Oyster Bay, Long Island.

Mary Mallon Typhoid fever struck six of the eleven people in Warren household. The owner of the rental home, George Thompson was afraid that the house was contaminated and that he would be unable to rent the house unless the mysterious source of the illness was solved. He hired George Soper, a civil engineer known for his epidemiology skills to investigate.

Investigation Soper’s first inquiry was to investigate the water and milk in the household and then test the clams in Oyster Bay. When this provided no viable explanations he pressed the family to remember any other details They remembered they had hired a cook for a few weeks.

Typhoid Mary Soper believed the cook to be the source of the infection since she had quite three weeks after the outbreak. Soper had read about healthy carriers and began trying to track down this cook, “Typhoid Mary”.

Typhoid Mary Soper traced Mary Mallon’s job history and found that of the eight families that had previously employed her seven of those households had had typhoid outbreaks. Soper claimed that if Mary Mallon could be tracked down he would be able to analyze her feces and determine if she was the cause.

Typhoid Mary In March of 1907 Mary Mallon was found working as a cook in a Park Avenue home in New York. George Soper arrived on the doorstep and told her she was unknowingly spreading typhoid and death through her cooking She promptly threw him out.

Typhoid Mary Soper convinced the New York City Health Department that Mallon was the source of the typhoid. New York City Public Health Officer S. Joseph Baker accompanied by the police confronted Mallon and forcibly took her to the Willard Parker Hospital for testing. She was found to have concentrations of typhoid bacilli in her feces and was placed in Public Health Department custody in a cottage on on the hospital grounds of the Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island.

“Typhoid Mary” Mary Mallon attracted so much media attention that in a 1908 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association she was called "Typhoid Mary" She was reputed to have said that she did not see the necessity of washing her hands.

Typhoid Mary Mary Mallon spent two years in quarantine on North Brother Island. In 1909 she sued for her freedom and in 1910 the new health commissioner felt that the health department had kept her long enough and she was no longer a danger. She was released under the condition that she would never work as a cook again.

Typhoid Mary After being released from North Brother Island she found work as a laundress. Since laundry work paid less than cooking she changed her name identity and began going by Mary Brown She found work as a cook again.

Typhoid Mary From 1910 to 1915 Mallon worked in a series of kitchens and wherever she worked typhoid outbreaks followed. Soper tried to track her but was unable to catch her for five years.

In 1915, an epidemic of typhoid broke out among the staff of New York's Sloane Hospital for Women, with twenty-five cases and two fatalities. City health authorities investigated and discovered that an Irish-American woman matching Mallon's description had suddenly disappeared from the kitchen. The police tracked her to an estate on Long Island

Typhoid Mary Public health authorities arrested Typhoid Mary, returning her to quarantine on North Brother Island on March 27, 1915. She was confined there for the remainder of her life. Mallon became a minor celebrity, and was interviewed by journalists, who were forbidden to accept even a glass of water from her.

Death Mary Mallon died On November 11, 1938, of she pneumonia at age 69. An autopsy found evidence of live typhoid bacteria in her gallbladder. Mallon's body was cremated, and her ashes were buried at Saint Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx.

Historical Legacy It is not known exactly how many people were infected or died as a result of Mary Mallon. She refused to cooperate with health authorities, withheld information about her past, and used different pseudonyms when she changed cities. Three deaths have been definitively attributed to her, with estimates running as high as 50.