Mary Mallon (The Sad & Complicated Story of "Typhoid Mary")

Mary Mallon, known to history as Typhoid Mary, immigrated from Northern Ireland to New York City at age 15, around 1883. She found work as a cook, a well paying job for an immigrant woman and worked for number of different families in the early 20th Century.

In March 1907, civil engineer George Soper burst into the kitchen of the home where she was cooking and told her that she was spreading typhoid via her cooking. He demanded samples of her feces, urine, and blood to test. Mallon, who believed she was in perfect health, chased him away with a carving fork.

Mallon spent most of the rest of her life in quarantine, on North Brother Island, forced to give regular stool and urine samples. She was briefly released, but knowing no other skills, cooked again and was forced back into quarantine.

Although Mallon was the first person in the US identified as a healthy carrier of typhoid, by the time of her second quarantine in 1915, many healthy carriers had been identified, more than 400 in New York alone. None of the other healthy carriers was forcibly confined, even the other cooks or those who caused more cases and more deaths than Mallon did.

In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the history of Mary Mallon’s quarantines, and interviews Kari Nixon, an assistant professor of English at Whitworth University, who teaches medical humanities and Victorian literature. Dr. Nixon is author of the 2021 book Quarantine Life from Cholera to Covid-19: What Pandemics Teach Us about Parenting, Work, Life, and Communities from the 1700s to Today.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image from The New York American (June 20, 1909 issue).

Sources:

• Quarantine Life from Cholera to Covid-19: What Pandemics Teach Us about Parenting, Work, Life, and Communities from the 1700s to Today, by Kari Nixon, 2021.
• Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health, by Judith Walzer Leavitt, 1997.
• Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative, by Priscilla Wald, 2008.
• "The Work of a Chronic Typhoid Germ Distributor," by George Soper, JAMA. 1907; XLVIII(24):2019–2022.
• "The sad and tragic life of Typhoid Mary," by J. Brooks, CMAJ. 1996;154(6):915-916.
• "The Most Dangerous Woman in America," NOVA.

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