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The Capture of Typhoid Mary

In 1907 Sara Josephine Baker, a physician and New Your City medical inspector, was dispatched to visit Mary Mallon, the famous cook who became known as "Typhoid Mary." George Soper at the [New York City] Department of Health Laboratories had investigated seven family epidemics of typhoid going back to 1900. He found that they were all linked to the cook in each family. Baker was sent to collect specimens for culture. On her first visit, Baker had the door slammed in her face. The next day, when she returned with several policemen, Mary answered the door and against tried to slam it shut, but a policeman's food was in the door. Mary ran into the house and could not be found in a search of the house. But looking out the rear window, Dr. Baker noticed a chair against the fence and footprints in the snow. Mary was found next door hiding in a closet. She was most uncooperative and fought against having blood taken so she was forcibly transported in an ambulance to a hospital where specimens were obtained. The blood and urine cultures were negative but the stool culture was teaming with typhoid bacilli. Captured on March 20, 1907, Mary Mallon was confined to Willard Parker Hospital for two years and 11 months during which time every available remedy was tried to rid her of the typhoid organisms., All efforts failed. On the promise that she would return every three months to the laboratory and take up some occupation other than cooking, Mary was released. She promptly disappeared.

For the next five years Mary worked in homes and institutions in and around New York, often under assumed names. In February 1915, a devastating outbreak of typhoid (1,300 reported cases) was traced to her. She was apprehended and made no struggle against the second capture. This time she was sent to North Brother Island where she remained for 23 years, to the end of her life in 1938, a special guest of New York City.

Discussions of the ethics of her case, the morality of depriving her of liberty, had commenced at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association in Chicago in 1910. Concurrently there was consternation of the probability that many more typhoid carriers must be at liberty in many communities.