Typhoid Mary, born Mary Mallon in 1869, was once called "the most dangerous woman in America" and personally caused at least a dozen outbreaks of typhoid fever. Typhoid fever is caused by Salmonella typhi, a bacillus found in human urine and feces. There are about a thousand strains of salmonella, including the ones responsible for most mild food poisoning. All are transmitted by contact with human or animal waste. Symptoms of typhoid include fever, severe intestinal rumblings, diarrhea, and listlessness. Typhoid has been a major killer for centuries. Mary was was a carrier of typhoid. Although it was widely believed that she herself never became sick with the disease it's far more likely that she did become sick and recovered. Regardless, she was a cook in a house in Mamaroneck, New York, for less than two weeks in 1900 when the residents came down with typhoid. She moved to Manhattan the next year and members of that family she worked for developed fevers and diarrhea and the laundress died. She went to work for a lawyer, until seven of the eight household members developed typhoid. Mary spent months helping to care for the people she made sick, but of course the contact made many of them worse.
In 1904, she took another position on Long Island. Within two weeks, four of ten family members were hospitalized with typhoid. She changed employment. Three more households infected. In 1906, the strange outbreaks of cases in New York attracted the suspicion of Dr. George Soper. Typhoid usually strikes in poor, unsanitary conditions; cases among the rich and sanitary were unusual. He discovered that the common element was an unmarried, heavyset Irish cook, about forty years old. No one knew her whereabouts. After each case she left and gave no forwarding address. Dr Soper traced her to an active outbreak in a Park Avenue penthouse--two servants were hospitalized and the daughter of the family died. Soper interviewed Mary and suggested there might be a connection between the dishes she served and the outbreaks of typhoid. She cursed at him. He requested a stool sample and she threatened him with a meat cleaver. Finally, police and the New York health commissioner arrested her. She went kicking and screaming. Under questioning, she said she rarely washed her hands when cooking and felt there was no need - she didn't consider herself a threat. Cultures of Mary's urine and stools (taken forcibly with the help of prison matrons) revealed that her gallbladder was teeming with typhoid salmonella. She refused to have her gallbladder extracted or to give up her occupation as cook, maintaining stubbornly that she did not carry any disease.
Authorities labeled her public health enemy number one and confined her to a cottage in the Bronx where she lived and ate alone. She was effectively imprisoned without trial. She worked at Riverside Hospital as a laundress, swearing that she was the victim of a government conspiracy. In 1910, promising to remain a laundress and never return to cooking, Mary was released. She changed her name to Mary Brown and got a job as a cook. For the next five years, she went through a series of kitchens, spreading illness and death, keeping one step ahead of the frustrated Dr. Soper.
In 1915, a serious epidemic of typhoid erupted among the staff of New York's Sloan Hospital for Women, with twenty five cases and two deaths. City health authorities investigated, learning that a portly Irish-American woman had suddenly disappeared from the kitchen help. The police tracked her to an estate on Long Island. This time she went meekly. Exactly how many people she infected or killed will never be known. She refused to cooperate with health authorities, withheld information about her past, and used different pseudonyms when she changed cities. Three deaths have been definitely attributed to her, with estimates running as high as 50. Mary was quarantined for life on North Brother Island. She became something of a celebrity and was interviewed by journalists (who were forbidden to accept as much as a glass of water from her.) She died in 1938 of pneumonia. The autopsy revealed that her gallbladder was still actively shedding typhoid bacilli. She was buried by the Department of Health at Saint Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx. But her reputation lives on.
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