Mary Mallon (1869 - 1938)

Born 23 Sep 1869 in Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland

Died 11 Nov 1938 at age 69 in Riverside Hospital, North Brother Island, New York, United States

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Theresa Carrier-Torrealba [send private message]

Biography

Mary Mallon is Notable.

Mary Mallon was born in Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland in 1869. According to her death certificate, her parents were John Mallon and Catherine Igo.

In 1883, when she was 15, she immigrated to the United States where she lived with her aunt and uncle for a time and later found work as a cook for affluent families,

Mary, better known as Typhoid Mary, was the first person in the U.S. identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with typhoid fever. It is believed she infected 51 people, three of whom died, over the course of her career as a cook.

She was employed as a cook by a wealthy NY Banker, Charles Henry Warren, in Oyster Bay, NY, in the summer of 1906, and within 3 weeks, six of the 11 people living in the house came down with typhoid. Typhoid although fairly common disease among the poor, was unusual among the rich. A sanitary engineer, George Soper, was hired to find the source of the outbreak. He was the first person to determine that typhoid could be carried by a healthy appearing person who had survived the disease earlier. Soper traced Mary's work history and found she had worked for 8 families in the past 10 years, with seven of those families having a typhoid outbreaks resulting in one death.

"It was found that the family changed cooks on August 4. This was about three weeks before the typhoid epidemic broke out... She remained in the family only a short time, leaving about three weeks after the outbreak occurred. The cook was described as an Irish woman about 40 years of age, tall, heavy, single. She seemed to be in perfect health." ^[1]

In 1907, the NYC Health Department, isolated her to the grounds of Riverside Hospital, The press dubbed her "Typhoid Mary," a name she hated and she always insisted that she was healthy. On February 19, 1910, Mary was released under the condition she never be employed as a cook again and she signed an affidavit that she would, "upon her release take such hygienic precautions as would protect those with whom she came in contact, from infection." Mary worked briefly as a laundress but it paid less than cooking so she changed her name to Mary Brown and once again began cooking. In 1915, she was found working as a cook for the Sloane Maternity Hospital in Manhattan. During her 3 months there, she spread typhoid to 25 doctors, nurses and staff, and 2 died. She was once again sent to North Brother Island, where she spent the rest of her life living in isolation.

On 6 June 1900 Mary Mallon resided in household of Alexander Humphreys ^[2]

Mary died of pneumonia on November 11, 1938, a complication from a stroke that had left her paralyzed six years earlier. She was 69 years old at the time and had spent nearly thirty years in isolation on North Brother Island. An autopsy performed upon her death revealed live typhoid bacteria in her gallbladder. That same year, a newspaper noted that there were 237 others living under city health department observation for typhoid.

Sources

1. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_Bay_History_Walk
2. ↑ "United States Census, 1900," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MSVT-8ZK : accessed 13 May 2015), Mary Mallon in household of Alexander Humphreys, Borough of Manhattan, Election District 26 New York City Ward 19, New York County, New York, United States; citing sheet 14A, family 168, NARA microfilm publication T623 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,241,103.

• Mary Mallon (1869-1938) and the history of typhoid fever https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3959940/

• "New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1891," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVSJ-TP87 : accessed 15 May 2015), Mary Malone, 1884; citing NARA microfilm publication M237 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm.

• "New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2WP2-Z3V : 10 February 2018), Mary Mallon, 11 Nov 1938; citing Death, Bronx, New York, New York, United States, New York Municipal Archives, New York; FHL microfilm 2,194,891.

See also:

• Typhoid Mary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoid_Mary : accessed 12 may 2015).

• "Find a Grave," database with images, (Find A Grave: Memorial #2166 : accessed 15 February 2023), Memorial page for Mary “Typhoid Mary” Mallon Famous memorial (23 Sep 1869-11 Nov 1938), citing Old Saint Raymond's Cemetery, Bronx, Bronx County, New York, USA (plot: Section 15 Row 19, Grave 55 [S15-R19-G55]); Maintained by Find a Grave.