Who was Typhoid Mary?
Mary’s life story is impossibly sad and teaches us about the social stigma attached to hapless victims of disease. Mary Mallon was born in 1870 in County Tyrone, Ireland, and emigrated to the United States at the age of fourteen. She was a notorious typhoid carrier who worked in the New York area as a cook for far too many years. At the time of her death in 1938, she had infected at least fifty-one people with typhoid and caused at least three deaths. Typhoid Fever is a bacterial infection that’s spread through contaminated food and water. It causes extreme diarrhea, dehydration, and fever, and can be fatal if not properly treated. Typhoid carriers, such as Mary Mallon, remain immune to the disease but can transmit the Salmonella typhi bacteria easily. The reason for Mary Mallon’s infamy was that she kept cooking. She was poor, and probably mentally unstable. She showed up in a vacation home in Long Island, a private residence on Park Avenue, a sanatorium in New Jersey, a maternity hos
Mary Mallon, known as Typhoid Mary, was the first healthy person in the United States to be identified as a carrier of typhoid fever. Mary worked as a cook and unknowingly infected 53 different people: three of whom died from typhoid. She became famous, partly because she was the first healthy carrier of typhoid, but mostly because she adamantly refused to admit her role in spreading the disease and would not take the necessary precautions to prevent its spread. It is now known that typhoid fever can be spread by food or water that has been handled by a carrier. Carriers are generally healthy people who have survived typhoid and have no further symptoms, but continue to have the typhoid bacteria surviving in their body. In Typhoid Mary’s case, she may have actually been born with typhoid, as her mother was infected. Carriers can pass the bacteria along by poor hygiene when handling food and drink. Mary Mallon made a living as a cook in the New York City area in the early 1900’s. Betwee
Typhoid fever isn’t a pretty disease. Painful diarrhea, high fever, nasty red rashes and sleeplessness typically characterize the illness. Left untreated, typhoid can result in death. Salmonella typhi, the parasite that causes typhoid fever, spreads through water and food, making the disease highly contagious. Those who don’t know the whole story are quick to blame one individual, known to history as Typhoid Mary, for intentionally spreading the deadly illness. As we’ll see, the truth is a little more complicated. In turn-of-the-century New York City, typhoid was a growing problem. The Department of Health had a lot on its plate; in addition to typhoid, it was trying to quell outbreaks of smallpox, tuberculosis, diphtheria and whooping cough that were sw
Dear Straight Dope: When I was in 7th grade, I remember reading an article in my science class about a woman who I believe was dubbed “Bloody Mary.” The story was that for some reason, she was able to prepare food for herself and not get sick, but when she prepared food for others they were poisoned (a problem, because I believe she worked as a cook or a housekeeper). She went through several families, killing them all, then disappearing and popping up someplace else. I believe they eventually caught her. At any rate, it was found that she had some rare kind of medical condition that caused this phenomenon (not that she simply was poisoning the food). I have never found any mention of this anyplace else, and no one believes me when I tell them about it. I know it wasn’t a figment of my imagination. Maybe it was an urban legend, but then why would they teach it in 7th grade science? — Elizabeth Thompson, Minneapolis, Minnesota It wasn’t “Bloody Mary,” who was someone else entirely, but
Mary Mallon (1870?–1938) was known as Typhoid Mary because she was supposedly responsible for the most famous outbreaks of typhoid fever (a disease caused by the bacteria Salmonella typhi). During an epidemic (widespread out-breaks) of typhoid fever in Oyster Bay, New York, in 1904, doctors recognized Mary, who worked as a cook, as the carrier of the disease. (A carrier has the germ within his or her body but does not exhibit any symptoms of the disease.) However, by the time they realized that she was the carrier, she had moved elsewhere. She worked as a cook at various places in New York until 1907, when she was hospitalized at Riverside Hospital in New York City to prevent further outbreaks. Authorities released her in 1910, with her promise that she would not work as a cook, but four years later, after an outbreak of typhoid fever, authorities found Mary Mallon working as a cook in a sanatorium…
