Typhoid Mary:

Mary Mallon detained

 Mary Mallon

City life in the 1900's was becoming more than it had ever been. New York's population increased from around one million to three million, and Chicago from around 100,000 to one million. With such a mass population in a smaller area than what could be considered rural, natural increase did not always come with positive effects. Lack of adequate public services led to not being able to control the growing death rate due to disease. Immigrants who traveled to the United States were detained for 3-4 hours to be checked for disease, if they were free of disease, they could safely come to the USA. If they were suspected carriers, they were sent back to their countries. Mary Mallon was an Irish immigrant to the new city life of the United States, and like many others, moved for better opportunities. She was let in, thus assuming when she came she had no disease.

A common disease of the early 1900’s, was Typhoid Fever. In the 1920’s over 35,000 cases were reported, and today there a fewer than 400. When someone carrying typhoid doesn’t wash their hands, touches someone else’s food, and then the other person consumes it, they catch typhoid. A carrier of a disease is someone who has no visible sickness on the outside, but inside carries the disease around with them, and they are still highly contagious. In the 20^th century, carries, if found, were locked into isolation. Often these carriers deteriorated mentally by the conditions they lived in, rather than from the disease. The first vaccine for Typhoid was created in 1896, but was not in general use, meaning most populations were without, until around 1948. Reasons for death of Typhoid include pneumonia, intestinal bleeding, and infection.

In 1906, Mallon was hired to cook for a family on Long Island. As the family started to get sick, the question was who was first spreading the disease? Mallon left the family after they started questioning, was it the cook? The family hired an engineer in Typhoid outbreaks, Souper, to find out. Souper soon found that it was Mary Mallon who was the carrier of Typhoid, as his research found that throughout 1900-1907, 22 outbreaks of Typhoid occurred wherever she was working. He became more curious, as he didn’t have blood samples to prove she was a carrier, and she had already left the family. Mallon at this time had a job to cook for an Oak Park High School banquet. Many cases of Typhoid from these students were reported thereafter. She denied ever cooking that night, saying she just washed dishes. This gave Souper an opportunity to get the police to come enforce a blood sample. Under the Illinois state board of health, in 1907, she was detained to the hospital in which they found typhoid bacilli in her. She was moved to a cottage in North Brother Island, and she sued the state board of health for not having the right to isolate her. She was released under one condition-that she can never be a cook again. 5 years later there were more typhoid outbreaks, as Mallon did return to cooking because it paid better than a domestic job. She was isolated again because she broke the agreement. 23 years later she began helping in the hospitals lab. She suffered a stroke, later, in 1938, Mallon died of Pneumonia.

Mallon’s friends had wondered if the health authorities just needed an alibi for all of the typhoid outbreaks for letting an epidemic develop. As Mallon was not the ONLY carrier. There were 3,000-4,500 cases around this time and 3% percent become carriers, so 90-135 a year. She wasn’t the worse either, a man named Tony Cabella caused 122 illnesses and 5 deaths rather Mallon only cause 47 illnesses and 3 deaths. Mallon was prejudiced as an Irish Immigrant, because she was old and had no family. Mallon can’t be to blamed as a villain for returning as a cook, even though it was a choice to live in freedom, she had no safety net. She could be claimed as second degree murder and even referred to herself as a “goat.” She can be blamed a villain though because a health commissioner helped her find a job in laundry, but it did not pay as much. Because of her nickname “Typhoid Mary, this made it hard for her to find a job. She lived in denial of her disease because she did not know how to cope with what a healthy carrier really was. It wasn’t her choice to be this, and vaccines were not available.

“I was nervous and prostrated with grief and trouble.” –Mary Mallon. Mallon was in belief that the health authorities treated her inability to cope with no respect. She believed she was at loss of civil liberty, and she was even called the kidnapped woman, along with Typhoid Mary.

“I have been in fact a peep show for everybody. Dr. Park has had me illustrated in Chicago. [Her breaking skulls in a skillet] I wonder how the said Dr. Park would like to be insulted and put in the journal and call him Typhoid Park.

          The question here is did the city authorities treat her with enough respect towards her civil liberty as a person, or did they put public health over her. Was she guilty or innocent? Should we lock people up that are sick? Was this scandal just a blame resource for the epidemic? Did they reject Mallon, or did they sympathize with her? Typhoid Mary should have been locked up for the safety of others, even though it wasn't her fault for being a carrier. She was at loss because of her inability to cope, but the greater idea is to keep more people safe from disease in such immensely populated areas.

Cottage Mallon was detained in

Typhoid Mary breaking skulls in skillet

Sources:

chroniclingamerica.loc.gov

chroniclingamerica.loc.gov

chroniclingamerica.loc.gov

history1900s.about.com

pbs.org

pbs.org

history.howstuffworks.com

medicinenet.com

wikipedia.org

Dr. Park and Mallon

wikipedia.org

vlib.us
American History Textbook
eyewitnesstohistory.com