March 19, 1907: The Quarantine of "Typhoid Mary"

March 19, 1907: Mary Mallon is quarantined, to prevent her from infecting anyone else with the disease typhoid. The legend of "Typhoid Mary" is born.

Mary Mallon was born on September 23, 1869 in, with some retroactive appropriateness, Cookstown, in County Tyrone, in what is now Northern Ireland. Her mother was infected with typhoid, and passed it to her in utero. At the age of 15, she moved to New York, living with an aunt and uncle, working first as a maid, then as a cook.

Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid for short, causes a high fever, a rash, weakness, abdominal pain, headaches and vomiting. Diahrrea is possible, but its opposite, constipation, is considerably more common. It was often spread through infected water sources. Without treatment, it can be survived, but not always.

As with COVID-19, washing hands is a good prevention. The earliest vaccines against typhoid were developed around the time of Mallon's infectings. But until the development and distribution of antibiotics in the 1940s, treatment for those who already had it was difficult. Typhoid should not be confused with typhus, although that is also caused by a bacteria and produces high fever and rash.

From 1900 to 1907, Mallon worked as a cook in the New York City area for eight families, seven of whom contracted typhoid. In 1900, she worked in Mamaroneck, Westchester County, north of New York City, where, within 2 weeks of her employment, residents developed typhoid fever. In 1901, she moved to Manhattan, where members of the family for whom she worked developed fevers and diarrhea. Mallon then went to work for a lawyer, and left after 7 of the 8 people in that household became ill.

In June 1904, she was hired by a prosperous lawyer, Henry Gilsey. Soon, 4 of the 7 servants were ill. No members of Gilsey's family were infected, because they resided separately, and the servants lived in their own house. Immediately after the outbreak began, Mallon left and moved to nearby Tuxedo Park, Orange County, where she was hired by George Kessler. Two weeks later, the laundry worker in his household was infected, and taken to St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center, where her case of typhoid was the first in a long time. The investigator Dr. R.L. Wilson concluded that the laundry worker had caused the outbreak, but he failed to prove it. The laundry worker died soon after.

In August 1906, Mallon took a position with the family of a wealthy New York banker, Charles Elliot Warren. She went along with the Warrens when they rented a house in Oyster Bay, Long Island for the Summer of 1906. From August 27 to September 3, 6 of the 11 people in the family came down with typhoid fever. The disease at that time was "unusual" in Oyster Bay -- where President Theodore Roosevelt had his family home -- according to 3 medical doctors who practiced there.

George Soper, an investigator hired by the Oyster Bay property owner after the outbreak there, had been trying to determine the cause of typhoid outbreaks in well-to-do families, when it was known that the disease typically struck in unsanitary conditions. He discovered that a female Irish cook, who fitted the physical description he had been given, was involved in all of the outbreaks. He was unable to locate her because she generally left after an outbreak began, without giving a forwarding address. The Park Avenue outbreak helped to identify Mallon as the source of the infections.

Soper notified the New York City Health Department. Under sections 1169 and 1170 of the Greater New York Charter, Mallon was arrested as a public health threat. She was forced into an ambulance by five policemen and Dr. Josephine Baker (not the Jazz Age entertainer). Under questioning, Mallon admitted that she almost never washed her hands. On March 19, 1907, Mallon was sentenced to quarantine at Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island. (North and South Brother Islands are between The Bronx and Queens, with Rikers Island to the east and Randall's Island to the west. Since the 1960s, they have been abandoned as bird sanctuaries.)

After the publication of Soper's article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Mallon attracted extensive media attention and received the nickname "Typhoid Mary." In 1909, she tried to sue the New York Health Department, but her complaint was denied and the case closed by the New York Supreme Court.

After a series of samples taken from her turned up negative, she was freed on February 19, 1910, on the condition that she give up working as a cook. She got a job as a laundry worker, but it paid less than cooking. By giving false names, she was able to "disappear," and Dr. Soper lost track of her.

In 1915, she started working at Sloane Hospital for Women (now part of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital system). Soon, 25 people were infected, and 2 died. The head obstetrician, Dr. Edward B. Cragin, called Soper and asked him to help in the investigation. Soper identified Mallon from the servants' verbal descriptions, and also by her handwriting. She was returned to North Brother Island. There she remained until November 11, 1938, dying not from the effects of typhoid, or from the effects of a stroke that left her partially paralyzed in 1932, but from pneumonia.

Ever since her initial confinement in 1907, a spreader of disease, wittingly or otherwise, regardless of gender, has been called a "Typhoid Mary."

*

March 19, 1907 was a Tuesday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. Professional basketball did not yet exist. The day before, the Stanley Cup was won by the Kenora Thistles, defeating the Montreal Wanderers. But there were no scores on this historic day.