Typhoid Mary

In the summer of 1906, Henry Warren, a banker from New York went on a vacation to their family residence on Long Island, with his family. Their Irish cook Mary Mallon suddenly left her job and disappeared. After she left, in a few weeks, out of the 11 members in Henry’s house, 6 of them were diagnosed with Typhoid. Warren was shocked and roped in George Soper, a New York Sanitary Engineer. But what made Soper think was that Typhoid spreads only in slum or dirty areas whereas Warren belonged to a rich household. So it was highly unlikely for the disease to spread except by healthy carriers. Soper suspected Mary Mallon to be the reason and tracked her down in New York.

Mary Mallon was an excellent cook but wherever she worked, that residence used to get infected by Typhoid. After catching her, tests were carried out and the report proved that she was in fact a healthy living carrier of Typhoid.

She spent her next 3 years in an isolation hospital on North Brother Island in New York’s East River. In 1910, she was released from isolation and the health authorities lost track of her. Suddenly, in 1915, in Sloane Maternity Hospital in Manhattan, people experienced an outbreak of Typhoid. In that hospital a woman named Mrs. Brown worked as a cook. After investigation it was revealed that the cook Mrs. Brown was in fact ‘Typhoid Mary’ (Mary Mallon). Again she was put into isolation on North Brother Island until her death in 1938.