Career
As an immigrant woman with no special vocational training, there were not many career options open for her. But since she was tall, well-built, and a hard worker, she managed to find work as a domestic help.
She was blessed with great cookery skills and was soon able to find work as a cook at many homes. Employment as a cook also meant better wages for her.
In 1900, she cooked for a family in Mamaroneck, New York. Within two weeks of her employment, some of the residents became ill with typhoid fever.
The next year she moved to Manhattan where she easily found employment due to her good cookery skills. However, here too some of the people became sick with fever and diarrhoea and one person even died.
Later on a lawyer employed her at his house. In a strange twist of coincidence, seven of the eight people she cooked for developed fever.
In 1906, she found work as a cook at the house of a wealthy New York banker in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Here six of the 11 people in the house took ill shortly after she started cooking for them. Their illness started with a headache and progressed to upset bowels and high fever. She changed jobs again after this incident.
However in late 1906 one family hired New York City Department of Health sanitary engineer George Soper, whose specialty was studying typhoid fever epidemics, to investigate the outbreaks.
Soper researched on the issue and published his results in the ‘Journal of the American Medical Association’ in June 1907. He linked the cases of Typhoid fever to Mary who had been described by her previous employers as a tall, well-built woman in excellent health.
He sought out Mary but she refused to talk to him when he broached the possibility of her having caused the illnesses. She refused to believe him as she herself was in excellent health and could not believe that a healthy person could spread disease.
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After being convinced that Mary was indeed the cause of the outbreaks, The New York City Health Department took her into custody. By this time her case had garnered so much media attention that she became known as “Typhoid Mary”.
Eventually the New York State Commissioner of Health agreed to release her on the condition that she should stop working as a cook and take reasonable steps to prevent transmitting typhoid to others.
She started working as a laundress upon her release. But this occupation paid less than cooking so she changed her name to “Mary Brown” and returned to her old profession.
She worked as a cook over the next five years, changing jobs frequently in order to escape getting caught. Again she caused outbreaks of illness wherever she worked.
In early 1915 a major outbreak of typhoid was reported at Sloane Hospital for Women in New York City wherein 25 people were infected and two had died. Investigators found out that Mary had been employed as a cook here and began their search for her.
She was arrested and taken to quarantine on North Brother Island in March 1915. Later on, she was allowed to work as a technician in the island's laboratory, washing bottles.
Facts About Typhoid Mary
Typhoid Mary, whose real name was Mary Mallon, was a cook in the early 1900s, who unknowingly spread typhoid fever to numerous people in New York City.
Mary was the first identified healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the United States, and her case played a significant role in the understanding of how infectious diseases can be transmitted.
Despite being a carrier of the disease, Mary herself never showed any symptoms of typhoid fever, which made her case particularly perplexing to health officials at the time.
Mary was eventually apprehended and forced into quarantine for the remainder of her life, highlighting the importance of public health measures in controlling the spread of infectious diseases.
Although she is often vilified in popular culture, Mary Mallon's case has served as a cautionary tale about the importance of hygiene and disease prevention, leaving a lasting impact on public health practices.
