The True Origin of Typhoid
Mary
From Snopes
The public memory of persons renowned for deeds of
notoriety seems to place no boundaries on the exaggeration of their infamous
acts. Just as the body counts attributed to many celebrated outlaws of the Wild
West far exceed the realities of their careers and the number of banks robbed
by Willie Sutton grows with every passing year, so does the popular image of a
woman now known to history as "Typhoid Mary" present her as a
malevolent figure who willfully infected a populace with a dread disease with
deadly results. 
Mary has come to be so strongly identified with the spread of disease that it
is now commonly believed she was responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of
deaths. We think of her as stalking the streets of turn-of-the-century New
York, infecting all those she came into contact with, cutting a path of deadly
pestilence, with bodies falling in her wake. Yet the truth is this cook was
responsible for only thirty-three cases of typhoid fever and only three deaths.
She was a villain (albeit a passive one), but not the heartless dealer of death
we now remember her as. And she might not even have been all that deliberately
villainous.
Mary Mallon, born in 1869, was one of countless Irish immigrants who came to
the United States in search of a better life. She arrived in New York around
the age of fifteen, but not much else is known about her background because she
hated giving information about herself, and records of the comings and goings
of Irish immigrants weren't kept all that scrupulously, if at all. Details of
her early years in the United States are still a mystery. She grew to be a
large, capable, feisty woman, known for keeping to herself and for a fiery
temper she displayed readily when provoked. She earned her living as a cook in
the hire of private families, and she must have been a good one, because her
employment history between 1900 and 1906 (the only period we have to judge her
by) shows no gaps. Even during the summer months, when wealthy families left
New York City for their country retreats, she stayed employed, often travelling
with the families she'd cooked for in the city to their rural vacation spots.
(It was far more the norm for such families to take only their essential staff
and hire whatever other domestics they needed upon arrival rather than bringing
everyone with them. Summer was therefore a time when even very capable cooks
would suddenly find themselves unemployed.)
The woman we now know as Typhoid Mary came to the attention of the authorities
in 1906 when members of a household on Long Island sickened of typhoid. Their
cook, Mary Mallon, had disappeared, and investigations into her whereabouts
revealed that she had often been employed in homes that afterwards subsequently
saw an outbreak of typhoid fever.
Mary was eventually located, determined to be the cause of those outbreaks, and
detained by the board of health. She was exiled to the Riverside Hospital on
North Brother Island in 1907 for an indefinite period of time and finally
released in 1910. Though she was still a typhoid carrier, the new health
commissioner deemed that keeping her incarcerated was wholly cruel and pointed
out that others in her situation were not being treated the same way. He
trusted that she now knew the importance of maintaining a constant state of personal
cleanliness, and that she understood she was to never again work as a food
preparer.
His trust proved misplaced. In 1915 Mary was discovered working as a cook at
the Sloane Hospital for Women in Manhattan. She was sent back to North Brother
Island, and there she lived out the final twenty-three years of her life. In
1938 she died from complications of a stroke she had suffered six years
earlier. She was 69.
History is unsure what to make of Mary Mallon, a middle-aged woman who
continued to cook for others and risked spreading a deadly contagion even after
she knew the danger to others her actions posed. Mary was not the most likeable
of people, and her anger at those who tried to explain the disease to her and
at those who exiled her to North Brother Island erected a barrier few people
wanted to breach, let alone could. It's easy to think of her as willfully
deadly, someone who cared so little for the lives of others that she knowingly
put them at risk time and again, but is that the right answer? Was she
motivated by a wanton disregard for human life, or was there more to it?
The answer is both complex and not entirely knowable. Mary was never stricken
with typhoid fever herself and was therefore greatly puzzled by the claim she
was carrying the contagion and passing it to others. This was key to why she
continued to place others in jeopardy long after the disease and her part in
spreading it were explained to her
Over the course of her career as a typhoid carrier, Mary infected thirty-three
people, three of whom died. Yes, she was a disease carrier, and yes, she did
continue to work as a cook long after her condition had been fully explained to
her, thus knowingly placing others in harm's way. But to see her as the Grim
Reaper who scythed her way through the population of New York state would be a
momumental error. At the time when Mary was front page news and the focus of
the public's horrified attention, typhoid was running rampant. In 1906 alone,
there were 3,000 cases of it in New York state, including 600 fatalities.
Moreover, while all the world was voicing condemnation of Mary, she was but one
of 50 asymptomatic carriers (people who contaminated others with typhoid yet
never fell ill of it themselves) known to the local health department. Mary
Mallon was high profile because of the manhunt for her, the lurid accounts of
her arrest (she went kicking and screaming the first time), and her widely
publicized fight for her freedom, but not for the horrific yet apocryphal body
count history would later lay at her feet.
Typhoid Fever is an infectious disease caused by salmonella typhi, a
strictly human pathogen (that is to say, animals are not involved in its
spread). It multiplies in the small intestine and is excreted in feces.
Contamination is carried to others through compromised fecal matter's coming
into contact with food (from an infected food preparer's unwashed hands) or
water (from infected fecal matter's leaching into ground water sources). Its
onset is marked by sudden and prolonged fever that causes patients'
temperatures to rise to 104° or 105°F. Powerful headaches follow, accompanied
by gut-wrenching nausea and the disappearance of appetite. Victims often
develop bad coughs, hoarseness, diarrhea, or constipation, often in concert
with skin rashes, inflammation, and tenderness of the abdomen.
Although typhoid fever has been plaguing mankind for
centuries, it was only isolated and identified in 1880. Naming it didn't cure
it, though, and prior to the 1940s typhoid killed one out of every ten victims.
Effective antibiotic treatment for typhoid was developed in 1948, but even with
modern drugs typhoid still takes the life of about one in every hundred people
stricken with the disease. In less developed countries where antibiotic
treatment is harder to come by, the death rate is far higher.
Mary's role as a cook made her especially likely to pass the contagion to
others. Her not washing her hands after a bathroom visit (or not washing them
nearly well enough) could result in salmonella typhi finding its way
into the food she prepared. While high temperatures do indeed kill the
bacteria, not all the foodstuffs she worked on were cooked. Salads and their
dressings, for instance, are prepared without the assistance of heat. So is ice
cream, and Mary's peach ice cream was highly regarded and often requested. Even
Mary's handling of fruit could result in typhoid's finding a new victim
It was Mary's good fortune that the typhoid she had contracted never made her
ill. But this was also her misfortune