She killed without knowing it. When she found out that she was a threat, she fled. She was a carrier of a dangerous bacterium, but did not want to be quarantined. Against her will, she was confined to a hospital, and isolation lasted nearly a quarter of a century. Until her death, she did not believe that she could be contagious – after all, she had been healthy all her life. Mary Mallon, an Irish housekeeper working in American kitchens over a century ago. Today it is closer to us than ever.
- Mary Mallon was an Irish immigrant in America where she worked as a cook
- During the typhus epidemic in New York at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, it was classified as the so-called patient zero
- The cook was an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever, infecting both the inhabitants of the houses where she served and the co-servants
- She was placed under compulsory quarantine; She was in solitary confinement for a total of over 25 years
- You can find more such stories on the TvoiLokony home page
Typhoid Mary
It starts typically. Here is a 15-year-old girl from a poor Irish family goes overseas in search of a better tomorrow. Her American dream is modest – she wants to have a stable, decently paid job, enjoy life, start a family, start her own home. In short: find a safe haven in great America.
It is 1884. Straight from the ship, she goes to a small apartment of her aunt and uncle, who help her in looking for her first job. She succeeds – Mary Mallon becomes a maid. The job was poorly paid and quite onerous, so the girl was stubbornly looking further. She succeeds again – this time a young Irish woman works as a cook. She quickly discovers that she has an innate talent for cooking.
Little is known about the first jobs, but the hard work is paying off. Mary gains new skills, experience and, above all, the trust of her employers. For a maid, it is a springboard to a small career. After 16 years of service, the Irish woman can choose between offers. It’s easy to find a good employer in New York – there are quite a few prominent families here.
The first countries are satisfied with the new domestic help. The kitchen works as it should, family members praise the dishes, children enjoy the maid’s signature dish – peach ice cream. The peace of mind is stormed by the illness of a friend of the house, who is staying at a seaside estate where the family goes on a summer vacation. A man ends up in the hospital with a diagnosis: typhus.
The second family was also wealthy. Mary has nothing to complain about, she has been diligently performing her duties for almost a year. In the meantime, the symptoms of typhoid were diagnosed in a laundress employed by the same employer.
Another vacation, another job. The Irish woman is doing great during the country’s summer holiday, despite the fact that she has as many as nine people to feed. The idyll does not last long, because after a few weeks as many as seven of them become ill. It’s typhus again. It is not known whether Mary has a red light in her head.
There is also no time for reflection, because another job appears on the horizon. But here too, Mallon does not stay warm. This time the household is healthy, but typhoid fever attacks most of the domestic servants. It’s hard not to notice the dependence, but Mary is healthy, she has no symptoms and has never had typhus in her life. It must be a wildly strange coincidence.
Another holiday, again a prominent family. However, the banker from New York is unlucky – the unfortunate Irish woman goes under his roof to help in the kitchen. Statistics: six patients.
Before anyone else can bring the facts together, Mallon is already cooking for the new family. She doesn’t know yet that New York’s Upper East Side is her last stop as a relatively anonymous maid. The damage is serious here. The employer’s nine-year-old daughter falls ill with typhus. The girl is dying.
Meanwhile, the owner of the property where the banker is staying hires a sanitary inspector to find the source of the infection in the summer house. He has no epidemiological tendencies, he is simply afraid that he will not rent a “villa with germs” soon. George A. Soper has earned a reputation as a specialist in his profession for a reason. She quickly finds the cook and – after checking the history of her employment and the damage done – hypothesizes that it is Mary Mallon who spreads the gram-negative Salmonella typhi.
The plan is simple: talk to the cook and put her in quarantine. Soper is surprised – and terrified – to find that it is not that simple. The Irish woman does not intend to cooperate.
In an essay written after many years, entitled «The curious case of Typhus Mary» the inspector recalls the first meeting with the cook. Mary, somewhat dismayed by the appearance of a strange man in her kingdom, listened to what he had to say (Stoper says that “as diplomatically as possible” he explained to the cook that she was probably sick with typhus and infecting others, and he needs a sample of her blood, urine and feces for testing), then turned on her heel, grabbed a … fork and swung at the visitor. The inspector immediately fled the scene. Probably just as surprised, Mallon had no idea yet that the unpleasant visit would not be the last, and that she would face years of isolation, witch-hunt, and a judicial fight for justice.
A way to deal with the plague
Typhoid fever, once known as typhoid or typhoid fever, was a plague in Mary Mallon’s time – and long before that – decimating populations worldwide. The disease, caused by infection with bacteria from the salmonella group, is manifested by high fever, abdominal pain, weakness and a characteristic pink rash appearing around the lower abdomen or chest.
Typhus belongs to the so-called diseases of dirty hands, because the easiest way to get infected with it is in conditions of low sanitary level, through contact with dirty water, unwashed fruit or vegetables or food that the carrier touched. For this reason, the outbreaks of infections occur most often in densely populated places, with a low standard of living, where there are no conditions for maintaining proper hygiene. During the war periods, typhoid fever wreaked havoc in camps, prisons, and on ships and ships. It is not without reason that it is said that typhus fever killed as many soldiers as enemy forces during the wars.
Although the disease was known to the ancients, it was not until the second half of the XNUMXth century that its cause was found. Not only were the bacteria responsible for the disease identified at that time, but it was also established that infection occurs, among others, through contact with contaminated water or food. This is why the ailments suffered by the “victims” of Mary Mallon were quickly classified as typhus, and the sanitary inspector’s suspicion fell on the person who was the link between the household members and the meals they consumed. Before the typhoid vaccine was spread, and the general hygiene of the public improved, it was decided that people diagnosed with typhus would be quarantined.
This procedure was used in the case of Mary Mallon, among others. Soper, who had no intention of risking his life again, resorted to a trick: he described the cook’s case in the press and whispered a word to a fellow commissioner from the New York Department of Health… There was no need to wait for a reaction. A specialist, Dr. Josephine Baker, was dispatched for domestic help. Mary, however, politely explained to the visitor that she had no intention of discussing any subject with anyone representing the health service, and when Dr. Baker returned with an ambulance ready to take the carrier to solitary confinement, she escaped. Police arrested her a few hours later and then placed her in an isolated room at Riverside Hospital.
Although the biography, profession and period in history, of which Mallon became a part, makes us think of the cook as a defenseless, humble and silent victim of the absurdities of the health service and imperfect justice at that time, the young servant was closer to a bold, open to the world and people, well-read emancipated woman . The blue-eyed blonde, though tall and violent, was said to have a beautiful handwriting. Uneducated, but eager to learn, she regularly consulted the press and reportedly studied Dickens. She was aware of current political and social issues, she knew when, to whom and with what to turn to, she knew her rights. She did not believe that in civilized America, a Christian woman could be affected by such lawlessness. Such a person could not leave his case to fate.
Quarantine (for) health
The Irish cook’s fight for freedom lasted for years. In her first retreat, she stayed for three years. During this time, she repeatedly tried to convince doctors that she was not a threat. At the beginning – after goodness, presenting a logical argument in her opinion that she had no symptoms and she had never suffered from typhus. Later – resolutely, challenging the Department’s decision to court. Theoretically, she was right – she did not break any law, because there was not yet a clause on “asymptomatic contagion” (the decision to isolate Mary was based on its own regulations).
In the course of the trial, the cook presented the test results of samples that she sent to a private laboratory. Most of them are negative, as opposed to those in the hospital, which are 70 percent negative. confirmed the presence of typhoid fever in the patient’s body. She lost the trial twice, because she was not only accused of spreading bacteria, but also sentenced to further isolation.
The light in the tunnel appeared unexpectedly due to the new health commissioner, who decided to free Mary, on one condition. Mallon solemnly promised that, of course, she would abandon her profession and never serve people again.
She did not keep her promise, but five years had passed before she was located as a renewed source of the typhus epidemic. During this time, she worked in hotels, restaurants and sanatoriums (private homes were out of her reach – their owners hired maids through employment agencies where the Irish maid was “burned”) both in and around New York City. She used her new surname (Mary Brown) and found employment as – not otherwise – a cook.
Eventually, she was caught in the women’s hospital where she worked. This time, no one was sticking around with the unruly domestic help – the maid was sent to life quarantine. To the relief of the medics, but also of the society, which the first time felt sorry for the girl and protested in front of her prison, but now it had no mercy. Mallon, a ruthless cook from distant Europe, deserved to be closed – she was putting human lives at risk by consciously spreading the plague.
Typhus Mary no longer saw the world outside the walls of Riverside. She never accepted the verdict of the court and society, but she learned to live in isolation. Rumors have it that she won the sympathy of the employees of the facility and even helped in the local laboratory. Of course, in her spare time, when she was not accepting journalists to whom she regularly gave interviews. She died in 1938, 22 years after the beginning of the second quarantine.
Mary Mallon was neither the first nor the last asymptomatic carrier of a pathogenic microorganism in her time, but she is the one who stuck with the so-called patient zero – the person around whom the disease has developed. She went down in history as America’s most dangerous woman, although she eventually infected “only” 53 people (not counting unidentified cases), three of whom died. Barely, because even in her time, there were carriers who had over a hundred victims on their “account”. History does not even remember them.
Today – in the era of the coronavirus pandemic and discussions about the validity of reporting a positive test result, the need for quarantine and isolation of patients – the case of the Irish cook is no longer as absurd as it has been perceived in recent decades. Although more than a hundred years have passed since the Typhoid Mary case, marked by tremendous advances in medicine and awareness of personal hygiene, being an asymptomatic carrier for many is still an issue as unlikely as it is underestimated, and forced quarantine – though lasting only a dozen days – almost imprisonment.
If she were alive today, would Mary Mallon have agreed to retreat without resistance? Would she show a greater understanding of the dangers of her carefree approach to life? Would she also enter the path of war against the judiciary, and if she did, would she emerge victorious from this conflict? Only… history can answer this question.