Behind the fear-inducing nickname "Typhoid Mary" is Mary Mallon, a real woman trapped in a terrible situation that she barely understood. Here's what you don't know about her, and why her struggle was worse than you thought.
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00:00Okay, so chances are you probably know the name Typhoid Mary. It's the name you give
00:05to a walking disease vector, a patient zero putting other people's lives at risk. But
00:10did you know that there was a real person behind that name, and she may not have known
00:13how much damage she was causing? Her name was Mary Mallon, but was she a villain or
00:18a victim?
00:20The Typhoid Mary story almost reads like an action movie. An invisible threat is winding
00:25its way through New York City, striking people down and getting worse by the day. Behind
00:29that threat? One cause. How do we catch them, and what do we do when we find them? We lock
00:34them up and throw away the key, or even better, banish them to an island in the middle of
00:38the city. This is Batman villain stuff, and like all good Batman villains, this one has
00:43a tragic origin story.
00:45Mary Mallon's story starts out as the quintessential American immigrant narrative. When she was
00:50either 15 or 17 years old, sources differ, she sailed from Cookstown, Ireland, leaving
00:55behind her life of poverty and nearly everyone she knew, and arriving in New York in 1883.
01:01Her aunt and uncle had come over earlier, so she moved in with them. But life in America
01:05wouldn't be easy. As an Irish immigrant, she would have faced discrimination simply by
01:09virtue of her accent. But Mary Mallon had a stroke of luck. She managed to get a good
01:13job — as a cook. Lucky break, right? Or the worst thing that could have happened.
01:20It was eventually discovered that Mary was infecting her employers and their families
01:24with typhoid, a disease spread through contact with feces, by handling their food.
01:28Mary's signature dish was vanilla ice cream with sliced peaches.
01:32It is the best friggin' dessert that I have had!
01:37Mallon's reputation spread, and the more people she cooked for, the more typhoid germs she
01:42spread around. She wasn't doing it knowingly. Germ theory wasn't proven until the mid-1800s,
01:47and even surgeons continued to ignore the ramifications until the turn of the 20th century.
01:52The public knew even less about the role of germs in illness, let alone an uneducated
01:56immigrant like Mallon.
01:57You could hemorrhage from the inside! People die from this!
02:01Imagine being in her shoes. As far as you know, you've never had typhoid. Suddenly,
02:06a stranger shows up at your job and tells you you're spreading a disease you don't
02:10have, and you're killing people. Also, he wants a sample of your poop. You'd be well
02:14within your rights to chase that man out of the house with a knife, which is exactly what
02:19Mallon did.
02:20For the rest of her life, Mallon swore she wasn't carrying the disease and was being
02:23unfairly targeted. In 1909, she told a reporter that every time her stool was examined by
02:28the health department, she also sent a sample to an outside lab, which never found any typhoid
02:33bacilli.
02:34Key investigator Dr. George Soper found conclusive evidence connecting Mary to typhoid outbreaks
02:39in the homes where she was a cook. Despite that, she was never actually charged with
02:43a crime, let alone convicted of one. Turns out, accidentally making people sick because
02:47you don't wash your hands would be tough to prosecute. While more than a few people
02:51who crossed paths with her got sick and died, she wasn't legally responsible.
02:55We don't want to get too far in the weeds here, but the key to that is accidentally,
03:00as in there's no proof she purposely attempted to sicken people. Despite this, Mallon was
03:05held against her will for a total of 26 years. Her first confinement on North Brother Island,
03:10a New York facility used to quarantine people with infectious diseases, began in 1907. At
03:15this point, no healthy carriers had been yet discovered, so the scientists and judges
03:19involved convinced themselves she was being held so they could study her.
03:23They called her, I love this phrase, she is a human culture too, you know, this pestilential
03:29entity that must be stopped.
03:31But Mallon refused to be a lab rat for something she didn't understand. She objected to having
03:35samples of her blood and stool taken and reacted aggressively to any attempts to do so. The
03:40solution was to lock her up without telling her how long she'd be there, which is sort
03:45of unacceptable in what we call a free society. Mallon was given a small bungalow to live
03:50in and assisted the doctors and nurses on the island, but she had little else to do
03:54but sit and think about the fact that she was there against her will.
03:57While her name has gone down in history in connection with spreading disease, Mary wasn't
04:01a particularly unique medical case.
04:03Though God's mercy, I've never caught it myself. Luck of the Irish, as they say.
04:07What made her notable was Soper's discovery that she was the first person confirmed to
04:11be a healthy carrier of typhoid. The medical community had believed it was possible for
04:15years, but it wasn't proven until 1907, when Soper presented Mallon's case to the Biological
04:20Society of Washington, D.C.
04:22At the time, an estimated 6,000 to 9,000 new people became asymptomatic carriers in the
04:27U.S. each year, and the medical community knew it. Yet for some reason, Mallon was the
04:32only one ever incarcerated. Others might be required to register with the local health
04:36department and get periodic checkups, and obviously, they were encouraged to avoid
04:40handling other people's food. But they were allowed their freedom, probably because they
04:45didn't have an evil-sounding nickname like Typhoid Mary.
04:49In 1910, the hospital on North Brother Island got a new administrator who agreed to help
04:53Mallon get out. There was just one catch. Since she could still make people sick by
04:57handling their food, she had to promise never to work as a cook again.
05:01I came from Ireland to escape the poorhouse, and that's where you'd be sending me?
05:04Mallon was a proud woman and objected to taking the blame for something she didn't
05:08believe she'd done, telling the Topeka State Journal,
05:10I have been told that all I had to do was promise to leave the state and live under
05:14another name, and I could have my freedom. But this I will not do. I will either be cleared
05:19or die where I am now.
05:21Clearly, it was too big an ask. For an Irish immigrant like her, cooking was the best job
05:26possible, dignified with decent pay. If she didn't work with food, she'd have to take
05:30a harder, lower-paying job, assuming she could find one without being outed as the infamous
05:34Typhoid Mary. Who would hire her, knowing that?
05:38Mallon did work as a laundress for a short time, but two years after she gained her freedom,
05:42she disappeared. Then in 1915, it happened again, this time at a hospital.
05:47We know how to not get typhoid, yet we all got it. What's happening? He says, wait a
05:52minute. Who's the cook here, baby? Who's the cook?
05:56Mallon was, once again, the epicenter. While still not charged with a crime, the fact that
06:00she broke her non-legally binding promise got her sent back to involuntary quarantine
06:04until she died 23 years later.
06:07Mallon was enraged by her treatment at the hands of the health department and legal system.
06:11She'd been a law-abiding, gainfully employed member of the community, and then some scientists
06:15locked her up. Sure, she was technically killing people, but she wasn't the only one doing
06:20it.
06:21She wrote threatening letters to doctors, who sent her to North Brother Island and filed
06:24suit against the health department for $50,000 in damages. The case went to the New York
06:29Supreme Court, but she lost.
06:31In her handwritten affidavit, there's visual proof of her emotional state. As she fills
06:35more pages, the handwriting morphs from perfect penmanship to a sloppy scrawl, and the tone
06:40of her writing becomes much angrier.
06:43Those who lived and worked with Mallon on the island knew better than to call her Typhoid
06:46Mary, and most were smart enough to avoid talking about the disease around her at all.
06:51Allegedly, she would get aggressive if anyone forgot and brought up the subject.
06:54Ultimately, Mallon did agree not to take a job as a cook in order to secure her release,
06:58but she added a few words to the document in her own hand, making it clear that she
07:02didn't accept responsibility for spreading typhoid.
07:05In 1915, Mallon was again confined to the hospital in North Brother Island. By this
07:10time, any danger she posed to the public had been considerably lessened, since even if
07:14she was released, she was no longer healthy enough to hold down a job as a cook.
07:18Some historians think Mallon may have had a minor stroke at some point that went unnoticed.
07:22There's at least one image of her with a slightly droopy mouth. What's certain is that she had
07:27a much larger stroke on Christmas Day 1932. She was found on the floor by a porter. The
07:33stroke had paralyzed her, and she would never walk again. Despite her paralysis, which meant
07:37she couldn't work in a kitchen even if she wanted to, Mallon still wasn't released from
07:41confinement. She was simply moved from her private bungalow to the hospital building
07:45to be looked after. As the end of her life neared, she was never transferred to a hospital
07:50off the island or asked where she would like to be moved.
07:53Mary Mallon died in the hospital on North Brother Island on November 11, 1938, without
07:58ever regaining her freedom. By that point, she was resigned to the fact that she was
08:02going to die in forced isolation. She was said to have become more religious over the
08:06years as a way of coping with her situation. Throughout her life, she remained an intensely
08:10private person and shared very few personal details with others. To the end, Mallon insisted
08:15that she couldn't be making others sick because she was healthy.
08:19I wasn't sick. The people around me were dying like flies.
08:24Those who had controlled her life were not done disrespecting her yet. There are conflicting
08:28reports on whether or not an autopsy was performed, and it may be that the original reports saying
08:33one was done were only to reassure the public. Officially, she died from pneumonia, and some
08:38sources say she was cremated.
08:40Mallon's remains were hurriedly buried on the same day she died. A funeral service at
08:44St. Luke's Catholic Church in the Bronx drew nine anonymous mourners, although none of
08:49the health care workers who took care of her over the years bothered to attend. No
08:52mourners escorted her coffin to St. Raymond's Cemetery, where she was buried.
08:57Mary Mallon wasn't the only famous historical figure who was quarantined when it was discovered
09:01they were spreading disease, but she was treated particularly unjustly. Much of the blame for
09:06this lies at the feet of Dr. Soper, the man who would become her nemesis. Soper spent
09:10his career trying to keep her imprisoned. Meanwhile, he used her story to make himself
09:14famous.
09:15Over the years, Soper's tale became more and more dramatic and more unfair to Mallon. He
09:20refused to acknowledge her anger, insisting that if she'd just done what he'd asked, everything
09:24would have turned out okay. He described her as loud, opinionated, and obstinate, calling
09:28her overweight and manly, and even said that she was dirty.
09:32The fact that Mallon was unmarried was a huge strike against her at the time, and at one
09:36point, Soper embellished his story by adding a male friend for Mary, implying sexual uncleanliness
09:41as well.
09:43Unfortunately, no one ever asked Mallon for her side of things. All we have are legal
09:47documents outlining why she believes she should be free, and a few interviews that reporters,
09:52somewhat dubiously, claim to have conducted with her.
09:55The nickname Typhoid Mary first appeared in a 1908 edition of the Journal of the American
09:59Medical Association. By the following year, Typhoid Mary was writ large in newspaper headlines
10:04and remained so until she died, when the headlines announcing her passing again labeled her Typhoid
10:09Mary. Mallon was fully aware of her nickname and hated it with a passion.
10:13Eventually, the phrase became shorthand for anyone who spread disease. When a carrier
10:17was discovered, regardless of what illness was actually present, they were referred to
10:21as another Typhoid Mary.
10:23You know, I think he really likes Typhoid Mary.
10:26There are plenty of facts about Typhoid Mary the average person doesn't know. But decades
10:30after her death, even professional historians have misrepresented Mallon's story.
10:34Despite her obvious and understandable misunderstanding about what being a healthy carrier meant,
10:39some historians have implied that Mallon knew she was making people sick and didn't care.
10:43But that's one thing we actually do know. Until the day she died, Mary Mallon was adamant
10:48that she was healthy, and as such, she couldn't possibly be spreading disease.
10:53And technically, she was. Asymptomatic means just that.
10:57Should she have stopped cooking? Well, yeah. But given the time and understanding of disease,
11:02her reaction is understandable.