Typhoid Mary: From cook to national health threat

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In modern times, a person is referred to as a “Typhoid Mary” when he or she becomes a transmitter of anything undesirable, harmful, or catastrophic. The term has evolved to become a general term for a harbinger of misfortune, although when delving into its etymology, one finds out that it was coined following a public health brouhaha which involved two things: a disease called “typhoid” and a woman named “Mary.”

When Mary Mallon emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1884, she immediately tried looking for work. In 1900, she got accepted as a cook in Mamaroneck, New York City, but that was also when strange things began to happen.

Within two weeks in her first employment, members of the household she worked for suddenly developed typhoid fever. That wasn’t strange at all, until every other household she worked for fell ill with typhoid. The outbreak followed Mary wherever she went, and before long, New York City was awash with typhoid patients.

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It was in 1906 when George Soper, a sanitary engineer and renowned typhoid researcher, was hired to investigate the situation and found Mary to be the common dominator among all documented cases. When Mary was confronted about this, she adamantly refused to cooperate to health authorities, citing her seemingly perfect health as basis for her disbelief in Soper’s findings. It was only when the New York City Health Department decided to bring her to quarantine and obtain cultures that they discovered her secret: Her gallbladder was teeming with Salmonella typhi. These got transmitted to the food she prepared because she rarely washed her hands, claiming that she felt there was no need.

When she was released from quarantine in 1910, she immediately went back to the workforce, first taking up a low-paying job as a laundress, and eventually returning to cooking after she changed her name to Mary Brown. But as fate would have it, the typhoid outbreaks returned, leading to an extensive cat-and-mouse chase which eventually led to Mallon’s arrest in 1915. From then on, she was quarantined in North Brother Island where she remained until her death on November 11, 1938 at the age of 69, leaving behind a number of infected people.

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Although food safety is a relatively new discipline, it already has its fair share of interesting and odd stories in its short, albeit colorful history. More updates on the industry can be found on this Facebook page for Deibel Laboratories.