She’s a Mary everyone knows
Mary Mallon was excited as she boarded the ship bound for the
United States in 1883. She put aside her regret at leaving Ireland
with the dreams of a 14-year-old embarking for a new land and
bright opportunities.
She’s a Mary everyone knows
Mary Mallon was excited as she boarded the ship bound for the United States in 1883. She put aside her regret at leaving Ireland with the dreams of a 14-year-old embarking for a new land and bright opportunities.
She was willing to work and find a better place in life than her native land could offer and – who knows? – perhaps in time, a husband and a family. Mary was determined to do her best, and with the grace of God her dream could become reality.
She took whatever honest work came to hand in her new country, from scrubwoman to maid, but eventually got a position as a cook. It is in that occupation that history best remembers her.
After a wealthy banker’s family was stricken with typhoid at a rented summer home at Oyster Bay in 1904, a sanitary engineer named George Soper determined to find the cause. He questioned family members and servants who said that the cook who had already left for another job was named Mary Mallon. She was described as “an Irish woman of about 40, tall, heavy and single,” but they added that she seemed healthy.
Soper followed a hunch and traced her work history from 1900. After learning that she was the common denominator in more than 20 typhoid cases, including one death, he tracked her down.
When Soper identified himself and imperiously told Mary that she had to give him samples of her blood and excrement, she angrily advanced on him with a carving fork. He fled but reported the encounter to the New York Health Department.
A woman doctor tried a gentler approach but Mary refused again, protesting that she had never suffered from typhoid. The doctor returned with police officers and Mary was hauled off, cursing and kicking.
When it was determined that her body teemed with the typhoid bacillus, she called it “governmental discrimination.” She was detained on an island in the East River for three years, eating alone and rarely seeing anyone. She was finally released with the admonition that she could never cook for others again.
Shortly afterwards Mary Mallon disappeared. But following a typhoid outbreak at a maternity hospital, it was determined that the cook, “Mary Brown,” had already quit.
Mary Mallon was tracked down again, and in 1915 was returned to the East River island where she was compelled to live for the rest of her life. By the time she died of pneumonia on Nov. 11, 1938, the legend of Typhoid Mary was known throughout the world. As a carrier she had infected scores, of whom at least three persons had died.
She was cremated – “incinerated like the Black Plague victims,” one newspaper account said – and her ashes interred at St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx. A handful of kind people who had never known her gathered there to pray for the immortal soul of Mary Mallon, the hopeful girl who had followed a shining dream to America so many years before.
