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Terrible Typhoid Mary: A True Story of the Deadliest Cook in America
From a Newbery Honor winner, “[a] well-researched biography of Mary Mallon, also known as Typhoid Mary…compelling.”—School Library Journal (starred review) Long Island, 1906: Mary Mallon has been working as a cook for a wealthy family for just a few weeks when members of the household were felled by typhoid. Mary herself wasn’t sick—but as it turned out, she was a carrier—a healthy person who spread the disease to others. When the New York City Board of Health found out about her, she was arrested and quarantined on an island. This biography tells the story of what she went through as she became the subject of a tabloid scandal. How she was treated by medical and legal officials reveals a lesser-known story of human and constitutional rights, entangled with the science of pathology and enduring questions about who Mary Mallon really was. How did her name become synonymous with deadly disease? And who is really responsible for the lasting legacy of Typhoid Mary? This thorough exploration also includes archival photographs and primary sources, an author's note, a timeline, annotated source notes, and bibliography.
243 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 4, 2015
230 people are currently reading
4066 people want to read
About the author
Susan Campbell Bartoletti
33 books235 followersSusan Campbell Bartoletti is an American writer of children's literature. She was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but eventually the family ended up in a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania. Susan started as an English teacher and inspired many students before deciding to pursue writing in earnest. She sold her first short story in 1989. Three years later in 1992 she published her first picture book, Silver at Night. She held a rigid routine, awaking early in the morning in order to write before she left to teach. In 1997 she turned to writing full time. Susan has since returned to inspiring future writers. She teaches writing classes at a number of MA and MFA programs, among them Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky, and Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. Additionally she leads workshops offered through the Highlights Foundation.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 775 reviews
January 16, 2018
The tale of Typhoid Mary is one of those stories I thought I knew . . . but I was wrong.
Mary Mallon worked as a cook for wealthy families in the New York City area. In 1906, several members of the Warren family, her latest employer, grew ill with what was later diagnosed as typhoid fever. Convinced that tainted drinking water was to blame, the family packed up and fled the rented seaside house for their city home. The owner of the Oyster Bay house, fearing that he would have trouble reletting the place with the stigma of typhoid fever hanging overhead, contacted the local health department. Enter George Soper, a sanitary engineer, who managed to trace the contamination back to some homemade peach ice cream which had been prepared by Mary Mallon.
Though it took many months, Soper tracked Mary down after two women died of the fever in a Park Avenue townhouse. The confrontation did not go well. Mary, mistrustful of science, and fearful for her livelihood, was uncooperative when Soper demanded blood, urine, and stool samples. But eventually, the combative cook ended up being taken into custody. She spent decades hidden away on a small island in the East River, still unconvinced that she, a healthy person, had somehow made others ill.
This is an interesting tale of medical detection which reads almost like a novel. The book is aimed at younger readers, which, to me anyway, means that the author cuts right to the heart of the matter, and there is less repetition than in adult history books. It would be a great read for a book club, opening all sorts of discussions about public safety versus one individual's civil rights.
Mary Mallon worked as a cook for wealthy families in the New York City area. In 1906, several members of the Warren family, her latest employer, grew ill with what was later diagnosed as typhoid fever. Convinced that tainted drinking water was to blame, the family packed up and fled the rented seaside house for their city home. The owner of the Oyster Bay house, fearing that he would have trouble reletting the place with the stigma of typhoid fever hanging overhead, contacted the local health department. Enter George Soper, a sanitary engineer, who managed to trace the contamination back to some homemade peach ice cream which had been prepared by Mary Mallon.
Though it took many months, Soper tracked Mary down after two women died of the fever in a Park Avenue townhouse. The confrontation did not go well. Mary, mistrustful of science, and fearful for her livelihood, was uncooperative when Soper demanded blood, urine, and stool samples. But eventually, the combative cook ended up being taken into custody. She spent decades hidden away on a small island in the East River, still unconvinced that she, a healthy person, had somehow made others ill.
This is an interesting tale of medical detection which reads almost like a novel. The book is aimed at younger readers, which, to me anyway, means that the author cuts right to the heart of the matter, and there is less repetition than in adult history books. It would be a great read for a book club, opening all sorts of discussions about public safety versus one individual's civil rights.
December 13, 2015
This is the best book about Typhoid Mary that I have read. The author makes the book very engaging by adding many interesting facts surrounding the case such as the laws in place to protect people's rights,living conditions and disease knowledge.
December 18, 2020
An incredibly interesting book
I've known about Typhoid Mary from comments on television or in the press. However, I knew little of the backstory of this woman's beyond her carrying typhoid disease.
The Irish immigrant, Mary Mallon was entrapped by her times. Further, she was clearly a victim of numerous unjust actions, including, sexism; yellow journalism and the malpractice scientists and doctors,
What was incredibly sad, was that up until this book I thought she was the only carrier of typhoid in New York City. No, she was one of many. Additionally, there were many who infected more people than her.
.
The author should be complimented for her extensive research and being able to present this book in a highly readable manner
And then I feel sorry for Mary Mallon. She was a hard-working lady who was paid very little money and because of New York City government's willingness to treat her like a criminal, she was dispossessed of many of her constitutional rights – yes she was a naturalized citizen.
Highly recommended
I've known about Typhoid Mary from comments on television or in the press. However, I knew little of the backstory of this woman's beyond her carrying typhoid disease.
The Irish immigrant, Mary Mallon was entrapped by her times. Further, she was clearly a victim of numerous unjust actions, including, sexism; yellow journalism and the malpractice scientists and doctors,
What was incredibly sad, was that up until this book I thought she was the only carrier of typhoid in New York City. No, she was one of many. Additionally, there were many who infected more people than her.
.
The author should be complimented for her extensive research and being able to present this book in a highly readable manner
And then I feel sorry for Mary Mallon. She was a hard-working lady who was paid very little money and because of New York City government's willingness to treat her like a criminal, she was dispossessed of many of her constitutional rights – yes she was a naturalized citizen.
Highly recommended
July 11, 2015
Richie’s Picks: TERRIBLE TYPHOID MARY: A TRUE STORY OF THE DEADLIEST COOK IN AMERICA by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, August 2015, 240p., ISBN: 978-0-544-31367-5
“Adopting one of the most far-reaching vaccination laws in the nation, California on Tuesday barred religious and other personal-belief exemptions for schoolchildren, a move that could affect tens of thousands of students and sets up a potential court battle with opponents of immunization…Public health officials said a proliferation of waivers, many sought because of unfounded concerns about the safety of vaccines, helped fuel a measles outbreak that started at Disneyland in December, and quickly spread across the West, infecting 150 people.”
-- from the Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2015
“Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night”
-- Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell (1956)
“[Sanitary engineer George A. Soper] felt certain that he had gathered enough epidemiological evidence to prove that Mary was spreading the killer disease.
At this point, however, the evidence that Mary Mallon caused typhoid wherever she worked was circumstantial. The fact that she happened to work at places where typhoid fever broke out did not prove that she caused the outbreaks. The outbreaks may have been a coincidence. The fact that Mary escaped the illness wasn’t proof either. Nor was the fact that she left her employment soon after typhoid broke out.
But these facts--and her behavior--convinced Soper that Mary Mallon was ‘a menace to the public health.’ The circumstantial nature of the evidence did not deter him.
‘As a matter of fact, I did not need the specimens [of her urine, feces, and blood] in order to prove that Mary was a focus of typhoid germs,’ he said. ‘My epidemiological evidence had proved that’
Soper was wrong. He did need the specimens. As scientists and statisticians know, correlation does not imply causation. So far, he had only established a pattern that put Mary at the scene of the outbreaks. He needed the specimens to prove that Mary had caused the outbreaks.”
Imagine feeling perfectly healthy and having some stranger come up to you, tell you that you are a public health menace to society, and demand that you immediately provide him specimens of your urine, feces, and blood.
Having been hired in 1906 by the owner of a seaside rental home to resolve the issue of a typhoid outbreak at the dwelling, sanitary engineer George Soper, who was neither medical doctor, health professional, nor scientist, tracked down, spied on, and confronted Mary Mallon, who had recently been a cook at that seaside rental property. Soper insisted that Mary provide him specimens. When he did not receive the response he desired, Soper persuaded the New York City Board of Health to arrest and forcibly obtain those specimens from Mary Mallon.
In TERRIBLE TYPHOID MARY, author Susan Campbell Bartoletti takes readers on a roller coaster ride. We initially empathize as we read how “Typhoid Mary” was treated. Mary was a thirty-something Irish immigrant with no family or friends to come to her rescue. She’d been working nonstop since arriving in America as a young teenager. After George Soper contacted them, the NYC Board of Health had a doctor and a bunch of policemen tackle Mary, shove her in a horse-drawn ambulance, and lock her up in a quarantine hospital. (The author shares a lively, detailed, first-hand account of the fight to take Mary into custody.) Since she was given no due process as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, it is easy to view Mary’s treatment as a governmental kidnapping. The Board of Health had no idea what to do with her, so they just locked her up:
“Mary had committed no crime, yet here she was, kidnapped, surrounded by sick people, cut off from the outside world, and forced to submit to medical tests. She had no idea how long the hospital intended to hold her.”
We eventually have to reexamine our initial judgments when increasing evidence suggests that Mary Mallon was, in fact, responsible for infecting large numbers of people. The Board of Health determined through lab tests that Mary was a healthy carrier of typhoid. When, after several years, she finally obtained her freedom through a contractual agreement with the Department of Health, she seems to have subsequently infected a lot more people before she was once again locked away.
Public health versus individual rights: That’s what we’ve been debating here in California as this new immunization law was working its way through the system. In telling the story of Susan Campbell Bartoletti has done a great job of framing TERRIBLE TYPHOID MARY within a similar public policy versus individual rights debate. It provides readers a great American history tale and leaves them with plenty to think about.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.pbworks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
https://www.facebook.com/richie.parti...
Moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_...
“Adopting one of the most far-reaching vaccination laws in the nation, California on Tuesday barred religious and other personal-belief exemptions for schoolchildren, a move that could affect tens of thousands of students and sets up a potential court battle with opponents of immunization…Public health officials said a proliferation of waivers, many sought because of unfounded concerns about the safety of vaccines, helped fuel a measles outbreak that started at Disneyland in December, and quickly spread across the West, infecting 150 people.”
-- from the Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2015
“Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night”
-- Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell (1956)
“[Sanitary engineer George A. Soper] felt certain that he had gathered enough epidemiological evidence to prove that Mary was spreading the killer disease.
At this point, however, the evidence that Mary Mallon caused typhoid wherever she worked was circumstantial. The fact that she happened to work at places where typhoid fever broke out did not prove that she caused the outbreaks. The outbreaks may have been a coincidence. The fact that Mary escaped the illness wasn’t proof either. Nor was the fact that she left her employment soon after typhoid broke out.
But these facts--and her behavior--convinced Soper that Mary Mallon was ‘a menace to the public health.’ The circumstantial nature of the evidence did not deter him.
‘As a matter of fact, I did not need the specimens [of her urine, feces, and blood] in order to prove that Mary was a focus of typhoid germs,’ he said. ‘My epidemiological evidence had proved that’
Soper was wrong. He did need the specimens. As scientists and statisticians know, correlation does not imply causation. So far, he had only established a pattern that put Mary at the scene of the outbreaks. He needed the specimens to prove that Mary had caused the outbreaks.”
Imagine feeling perfectly healthy and having some stranger come up to you, tell you that you are a public health menace to society, and demand that you immediately provide him specimens of your urine, feces, and blood.
Having been hired in 1906 by the owner of a seaside rental home to resolve the issue of a typhoid outbreak at the dwelling, sanitary engineer George Soper, who was neither medical doctor, health professional, nor scientist, tracked down, spied on, and confronted Mary Mallon, who had recently been a cook at that seaside rental property. Soper insisted that Mary provide him specimens. When he did not receive the response he desired, Soper persuaded the New York City Board of Health to arrest and forcibly obtain those specimens from Mary Mallon.
In TERRIBLE TYPHOID MARY, author Susan Campbell Bartoletti takes readers on a roller coaster ride. We initially empathize as we read how “Typhoid Mary” was treated. Mary was a thirty-something Irish immigrant with no family or friends to come to her rescue. She’d been working nonstop since arriving in America as a young teenager. After George Soper contacted them, the NYC Board of Health had a doctor and a bunch of policemen tackle Mary, shove her in a horse-drawn ambulance, and lock her up in a quarantine hospital. (The author shares a lively, detailed, first-hand account of the fight to take Mary into custody.) Since she was given no due process as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, it is easy to view Mary’s treatment as a governmental kidnapping. The Board of Health had no idea what to do with her, so they just locked her up:
“Mary had committed no crime, yet here she was, kidnapped, surrounded by sick people, cut off from the outside world, and forced to submit to medical tests. She had no idea how long the hospital intended to hold her.”
We eventually have to reexamine our initial judgments when increasing evidence suggests that Mary Mallon was, in fact, responsible for infecting large numbers of people. The Board of Health determined through lab tests that Mary was a healthy carrier of typhoid. When, after several years, she finally obtained her freedom through a contractual agreement with the Department of Health, she seems to have subsequently infected a lot more people before she was once again locked away.
Public health versus individual rights: That’s what we’ve been debating here in California as this new immunization law was working its way through the system. In telling the story of Susan Campbell Bartoletti has done a great job of framing TERRIBLE TYPHOID MARY within a similar public policy versus individual rights debate. It provides readers a great American history tale and leaves them with plenty to think about.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.pbworks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
https://www.facebook.com/richie.parti...
Moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_...
June 14, 2020
It's been very interesting to read this book whilst in the middle of the covid 19 pandemic and quarantining of healthy people. I think this book shows how so much can be destroyed by fear.
Mary had no signs of typhoid, all the "evidence" against her at the time of her imprisonment was circumstantial. She was persecuted and her livelihood was destroyed. No other healthy carriers were imprisoned or treated so terribly. Yes, Mary was proven to be a healthy carrier of typhoid but that was only proven after she was forced to give specimens for testing. Unfortunately I think that gives the idea that the ends justify the means. The health department was given power to disregard civil rights and imprison people if they were even suspected of carrying disease in the interest of public health. That just doesn't sit well with me.
From the book: "This I know for sure: Life is, as Mary says, uncertain. As a society and as individuals, we must protect healthy people from disease. We must also treat those suffering from disease in an intelligent, humane, and compassionate way. We need to be rational and keep our fears in check."
Mary had no signs of typhoid, all the "evidence" against her at the time of her imprisonment was circumstantial. She was persecuted and her livelihood was destroyed. No other healthy carriers were imprisoned or treated so terribly. Yes, Mary was proven to be a healthy carrier of typhoid but that was only proven after she was forced to give specimens for testing. Unfortunately I think that gives the idea that the ends justify the means. The health department was given power to disregard civil rights and imprison people if they were even suspected of carrying disease in the interest of public health. That just doesn't sit well with me.
From the book: "This I know for sure: Life is, as Mary says, uncertain. As a society and as individuals, we must protect healthy people from disease. We must also treat those suffering from disease in an intelligent, humane, and compassionate way. We need to be rational and keep our fears in check."
August 24, 2021
3.5 stars
Happy I read this. For the story to be over a century old, it is very relevant to our world today. In 1906 it was Typhoid, however today you can just replace that word with Covid. Pandemic, easily transferred, the unsick, unknown carriers, thousands lost, hospitals over loaded, vaccinations at the center of controversy. Oh so little our world has changed it the last century.
Mary Mallon was accused of harboring the typhoid germ within her body and then passing it onto unsuspecting people, for whom she worked as a cook, by 'unclean' practices. Although there were many known carries of Typhoid - those who looked and felt perfectly healthy - but could pass the germs on to other people, Mary was the only known person to be sent into quarantine on North Brother Island, or any where else for that matter.
This book brings forth the civil rights violations and the issue of how people looked at the female population in that day and age. Even finally finding a way to take her case to trial, the judge overlooked Marys human rights and sent her back to the Island.
Whether a Typhoid carrier or not, Mary was made a scapegoat, an example, and lived out her life thereafter as an undesirable and wanted person.
Happy I read this. For the story to be over a century old, it is very relevant to our world today. In 1906 it was Typhoid, however today you can just replace that word with Covid. Pandemic, easily transferred, the unsick, unknown carriers, thousands lost, hospitals over loaded, vaccinations at the center of controversy. Oh so little our world has changed it the last century.
Mary Mallon was accused of harboring the typhoid germ within her body and then passing it onto unsuspecting people, for whom she worked as a cook, by 'unclean' practices. Although there were many known carries of Typhoid - those who looked and felt perfectly healthy - but could pass the germs on to other people, Mary was the only known person to be sent into quarantine on North Brother Island, or any where else for that matter.
This book brings forth the civil rights violations and the issue of how people looked at the female population in that day and age. Even finally finding a way to take her case to trial, the judge overlooked Marys human rights and sent her back to the Island.
Whether a Typhoid carrier or not, Mary was made a scapegoat, an example, and lived out her life thereafter as an undesirable and wanted person.
October 1, 2015
Oh, man, what a great narrative nonfiction title! The book reads like fiction, presenting the true story of Mary Mallon ("Typhoid Mary") with finely crafted writing that kept me interested (even though I read another book about Mary Mallon earlier this year). I especially appreciated how Bartoletti includes stats and examples relevant to today's world to put Mary Mallon's story in perspective. Also, I think she presents a balanced view of both Mallon and the health workers who sought to keep her locked up for what they ostensibly thought was the greater good.
Recommended for fans of The Family Romanov by Candace Fleming for how it uses narrative structure to bring a true story to gripping, dramatic life.
Recommended for fans of The Family Romanov by Candace Fleming for how it uses narrative structure to bring a true story to gripping, dramatic life.
February 15, 2025
Terrible Typhoid Mary by Susan Campbell Bartoletti this well researched Non-fiction book is based on Mary Mallon. Mary is a unwitting carrier of Typhoid fever. Basically taken prisoner in order to quarantine her due to allegedly infecting 24 individuals. This is a horrible account of slander and medical neglect. This woman lost all of her rights and made a victim to the world as a person that spreads “death and disease” to all. She has lost all rights in order to be used as a scapegoat to place blame due to her gender, social class and immigrant status. Sort of reminds me of what the world went through with Covid-19 without all the drama placed on one person This was a clear example of this lady losing all of her civil rights.
November 2, 2016
There was more research and detail given in the historical fiction account Fever. If one is interested in this subject, I suggest that book instead.
August 15, 2015
3.5 stars, really, but 4 stars is a rating I give books I really, really like, so I'm not quite bumping it up.
Definitely written for kids/tweens, but I found it informative and interesting. Some things I learned:
1. Mary Mallon ("Typhoid Mary") was not some sloppy cook who didn't wash her hands. She was actually very clean and well-kept. It's just that at the time, without antibacterial soap or anything, it would be virtually impossible for her to wash her hands well enough to kill all the typhoid germs that got on them. She would have had to not only be very thorough, but use water that was hot enough to give her actual burns.
2. Mary was not the only known "healthy carrier" of typhoid at the time. In fact, many other carriers - including a confectioner - infected more people than she did. Virtually none of these were locked up like she was, and not one was so sensationalized.
3. A total of three people are known to have died from typhoid probably given to them by Mary. I'd imagined it to be more.
Also, I think that when I learned about her in history class as a kid, I assumed that a cook who made food for, and infected, many people must work in a restaurant. Actually, Mary was a cook hired in various households and, at one point, a maternity hospital *wince*. Never a restaurant.
Another fascinating character who emerges here: Dr. S. Josephine Baker. Unlike George Soper, the epidemiologist who first discovered Mary, Baker does not seem to have been hungry for fame and recognition. She does, however, seem to have been awesome. A female doctor at a time when that was unusual, she was well-respected and did great work toward helping the poor of New York with hygiene, especially as regarded their children. She reduced infant mortality as the first director of New York's Bureau of Child Hygiene. Before that, she personally went into the homes of the poor, delivered babies, and taught their parents safe and healthful ways to care for them.
Also, one time, after a drunken man threw scalding water on his pregnant wife, Dr. Baker punched him in the face so hard she knocked him down a flight of stairs. She then stepped over him on her way out.
(Not maybe the BEST way to solve a problem, but, you know, isn't that what we'd all WANT to do?)
Definitely written for kids/tweens, but I found it informative and interesting. Some things I learned:
1. Mary Mallon ("Typhoid Mary") was not some sloppy cook who didn't wash her hands. She was actually very clean and well-kept. It's just that at the time, without antibacterial soap or anything, it would be virtually impossible for her to wash her hands well enough to kill all the typhoid germs that got on them. She would have had to not only be very thorough, but use water that was hot enough to give her actual burns.
2. Mary was not the only known "healthy carrier" of typhoid at the time. In fact, many other carriers - including a confectioner - infected more people than she did. Virtually none of these were locked up like she was, and not one was so sensationalized.
3. A total of three people are known to have died from typhoid probably given to them by Mary. I'd imagined it to be more.
Also, I think that when I learned about her in history class as a kid, I assumed that a cook who made food for, and infected, many people must work in a restaurant. Actually, Mary was a cook hired in various households and, at one point, a maternity hospital *wince*. Never a restaurant.
Another fascinating character who emerges here: Dr. S. Josephine Baker. Unlike George Soper, the epidemiologist who first discovered Mary, Baker does not seem to have been hungry for fame and recognition. She does, however, seem to have been awesome. A female doctor at a time when that was unusual, she was well-respected and did great work toward helping the poor of New York with hygiene, especially as regarded their children. She reduced infant mortality as the first director of New York's Bureau of Child Hygiene. Before that, she personally went into the homes of the poor, delivered babies, and taught their parents safe and healthful ways to care for them.
Also, one time, after a drunken man threw scalding water on his pregnant wife, Dr. Baker punched him in the face so hard she knocked him down a flight of stairs. She then stepped over him on her way out.
(Not maybe the BEST way to solve a problem, but, you know, isn't that what we'd all WANT to do?)
April 1, 2021
Not to long not to short. I enjoyed listening to this story. So frustrating and at times unfair to be Mary and at the same time I wanted to smack her upside the head.
July 13, 2021
Thoughts soon.
February 12, 2017
A non-fiction true story about a house cook in 1907 who was a carrier of typhoid fever and infected many. Typhoid is an infectious disease and more common today in developing countries. It is a type of bacteria that is transmitted through fecal matter and sometimes urine. If a person does not wash their hands with hot, soapy water it can be transmitted through food, as in the case of this cook. I learned that she was quarantined for many years of her life. She was not able to move about freely. She was sequestered on Northerly Island in New York. What struck me was the unfairness of her treatment as compared to the other carriers of this disease who were the majority men. They were able to live seemingly "normal" lives. With the invention of antibiotics in the 1940's typhoid is not a big issue today. I learned a lot about how this disease was the impetus for the building of sanitation sewers and a system for safe removal of garbage. You can learn a lot about the time period from this book. It's a quick read.
June 22, 2015
This was an absolutely fascinating read that not only focused on the person "Typhoid Mary" which is still prevalent today, but numerous other topics including public health, infectious disease treatments prior to antibiotics and vaccinations, civil rights or the forcible detention of an individual for public health reasons. The author covered them all in a book that started out strong and didn't let up. It was written at the age appropriate level, but was still fascinated to an adult reader such as myself. I ended up reading this book in two days. I would have done it in one, but had to force myself to put it down.
I could see this book being used to stimulate a lot of debate for middle school readers.
I could see this book being used to stimulate a lot of debate for middle school readers.
December 21, 2020
Susan Campbell Bartoletti's career in kids' fiction is impressive, with such successes to her name as The Boy Who Dared and Down the Rabbit Hole, Chicago, Illinois, 1871: The Diary of Pringle Rose, but nonfiction is where she piles up the awards, including a Sibert Medal (Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850) and a Newbery Honor (Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow). When Ms. Bartoletti writes on issues of historical or cultural significance, teachers want their kids to read it, for few are more precise with facts and can better turn a distant historical event into a relevant lesson for today, engendering emotional understanding for people who lived many years ago and the tragic mistakes they made. Such is the case with Mary Mallon in this book, victim of a perfect storm of cultural biases and mitigating factors that stole her liberty for no real fault of her own in an age when bureaucracy held ultimate power to wreck the lives of innocents if they considered it the right move to make. Was "Typhoid Mary" a pawn in a cruel game played by public health officials prejudiced against her divergences from the cultural norm for women, or were their concerns legitimate that she was dangerous to society and must be contained? Buckle up for a tumultuous ride; Terrible Typhoid Mary: A True Story of the Deadliest Cook in America sorts through these issues and more to arrive at some surprising conclusions regarding the handling of the affair. You'll never view Mary's strange case—or the everyday spread of germs around and on you—the same way again.
The wealthy Warren family was pleased with the cook they hired to manage the kitchen of their Oyster Bay, Long Island mansion in 1906. Mary Mallon ran a tight ship, keeping her kitchen meticulously clean and crisply delegating responsibility to the domestic staff. Her job included preparing food for the family and all the servants, so she was rarely afforded time to sit and rest, but relaxing was foreign to her nature anyway. An unmarried Irish Catholic who immigrated from the Emerald Isle as a teen, Mary parlayed her culinary efficiency into gainful employment in America, earning a nice salary for a young woman on her own. The Warrens liked the dishes she whipped up, in particular her specialty: homemade ice cream with fresh peach slices stirred in, a mixture of sweet and tangy no one could create quite like Mary. Her arrangement with the Warrens appeared to be a promising career track.
But then nine-year-old Margaret Warren took sick, a slight fatigue and fever at first that degenerated into violent, life-threatening illness, and the girl was rushed to the hospital. The other Warrens and their servants began falling ill as well, though not Mary, who helped care for Margaret as her symptoms worsened. Doctors identified the contagious malady as typhoid fever, an infection that slew one out of five sufferers at the time, but they diagnosed it soon enough to spare the Warren family and their servants. Fearing contaminated water or typhoid germs in the house itself, the Warrens deserted Oyster Bay, and Mary was on her own to find new employment. Mrs. Thompson, whose husband owned the Oyster Bay manor and let it out to well-off families like the Warrens, was concerned about the incident. Investigators couldn't trace the typhoid outbreak to bad water, milk, or other perishable products, and close inspection of the house turned up nothing alarming. If the mini epidemic couldn't be dealt with to assure prospective tenants they weren't at risk of contracting typhoid, no one would rent the Thompsons' lovely shoreline property. Mrs. Thompson hired George Soper, sanitary engineer and private health detective of modest renown, to solve the mystery. With all the gusto and ambition that drove him when he eventually came face to face with Mary, Soper took up the trail and started asking questions.
George Soper was no doctor, but he knew his business, and began systematically ruling out causes of the typhoid outbreak just as public health officials had done. He, too, was headed for a dead end, until he found out there had recently been someone new in the Warren household at the time of the infections: the cook. Immediately Soper hypothesized that Mary, described as healthy and immaculately clean, might be a "healthy carrier" of typhoid bacteria, a former sufferer of the disease whose body hadn't fully eradicated its germs. If Mary were a healthy carrier, her gallbladder could still teem with bacteria that would get into the food she prepared and make anyone sick who consumed it. The discovery of a healthy carrier would be a godsend for Soper's career, vaulting him into the conversation with the great medical pioneers of his day and bringing him fortune. Piecing together Mary's employment history, he found a trend of typhoid outbreaks at most places she worked, reinforcing his theory. But the sanitary engineer had a major hurdle to clear: where was Mary now? Soper had no solid leads on where she'd gone after parting ways with the Warrens. He had to find her forthwith, however: if his idea was correct that Mary was a carrier, anyone she prepared food for would be in jeopardy. Life or death could depend on Soper's detective skills.
By the time he located the cook, now working at a Park Avenue house, the family's twenty-five-year-old daughter was dying of typhoid. Soper confronted Mary in her kitchen with his theories regarding her unusual status as a healthy carrier, wondering how the spunky thirty-something immigrant would respond, and Mary showed she was more wild Irish rose than shrinking violet. Incensed that Soper would question her sanitary habits (he suggested she didn't wash her hands after using the bathroom) and her health (Mary didn't understand how a healthy person could spread deadly bacteria), Mary grabbed a sharp carving fork and attacked Soper, expelling him from her kitchen. The nerve of that man, demanding specimens of her blood and excretory waste for study! If Soper was to confirm Mary as the cause of the typhoid cases that seemed to surface wherever she worked, he'd have to come up with a Plan B.
George Soper later wrote that he only wished to help Mary devise a strategy for preventing the spread of her germs, and was disappointed that she showed no concern for the harm she inflicted on others. He followed Mary to the apartment of decommissioned police officer August Breihof, a close friend she regularly visited, and Soper became pals with him behind her back. But cornering her in the apartment yielded no better result than the kitchen confrontation, so Soper enlisted the help of Dr. Josephine Baker to reason with Ms. Mallon, again to no effect. When Soper, Baker, and three policemen showed up to force Mary to comply with their request for physical samples, she took off running and hid, but was discovered on the premises and taken into custody. The Irish spitfire who wouldn't demurely accept Soper's ridicule of her professionalism was out of options.
Thorough analysis of Mary's specimens proved George Soper correct: she was a healthy carrier of typhoid, the reason for the Warren outbreak and every other occurrence of typhoid at the houses that employed her. A big question could no longer be delayed: what was the New York City Board of Health to do about this woman? Removing her gallbladder was one recourse, though surgery in the first decade of the 1900s was a dubious proposition, and would by no means guarantee the end of the threat posed by Mary. She could be released if they trained her in special cleansing measures and she promised never again to take a job as cook, but what would she do for a living? Mary didn't trust the health board or their scientists, fearing they were railroading her not because she presented any actual peril to people she came in contact with, but because they wanted a patient to experiment on. She wasn't about to consent to that. Refusing to cooperate with Soper and his colleagues in every way she could, Mary gave the Board of Health no other option: she would be remanded into custody at Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island, where she would be free to walk the grounds and live in a small shack by herself where she couldn't infect the population of New York. Besides a fox terrier that lived with her, she would be utterly alone.
Important as decisions pertaining to Mary's freedom were, the average American knew only limited specifics of her case until June 1909, when William Randolph Hearst's New York American newspaper blew her anonymity to bits by publishing every detail of the case on its front pages. Paranoid and fearful before, Mary's anxiety was at an all-time high as the last vestiges of her privacy were snatched away. For a woman forced to live in exile and dependence on others for her every need after a life of diligent work and proud independence, this was as low as it could get. Yet it was the New York American headlines that began turning the tide of public opinion in Mary's favor. Attorney George O'Neill followed up on her personal information and offered the quarantined woman representation in court, a basic right she had been denied by the unilateral authority of the New York Board of Health. Dressed to the nines and exuding quiet dignity, Mary showed up in court to hear O'Neill deliver an impassioned defense of her civil rights to the judge. Mary was a healthy woman, yet the government had ignored her rights and subjected her to indefinite incarceration without due process. If this were permitted to continue, the precedent set would imperil the American justice system. Were civil rights mere suggestions the courts could waive if they wanted to, or an ironclad contract they were obligated to honor? Not only that, but other healthy carriers identified in New York and elsewhere had been allowed to resume normal lives without government inhibition. Why was Mary any different? A double standard was being employed, and it had to stop. Many Americans agreed with George O'Neill's eloquent arguments, raising the hue and cry for Mary's liberation, but the judge saw it differently. The New York City Board of Health had the right to protect its citizens from a typhoid pandemic, he decreed, and Mary was to remain on North Brother Island. After all the positive press and hype for Mary's day in court, O'Neill's representation amounted to little.
It did not, however, amount to nothing. Under increasing public pressure to do right by the nation's most famed typhoid carrier, new health commissioner Ernest J. Lederle offered Mary a deal: if she promised not to cook, and to abide by precautions taught her by the health department to prevent disseminating germs, she would be released. She also had to check in with the health department on a monthly basis to be reevaluated. Mary sullenly agreed to the conditional release, for she had been detained on the island three years, and freedom was immeasurably preferable to incarceration. Without an occupation and no training in another field of employment, though, Mary's prospects were bleak, and there wasn't much improvement over the next several years. The public forgot about her; George Soper and the New York Board of Health eventually did, too, and when she stopped reporting for her monthly reevaluations in 1914, few took notice. This would mark the start of her second wave of typhoid epidemics.
In early 1915, typhoid engulfed Manhattan's Sloane Hospital for Women, infecting twenty-five people. The hospital kept strictly sanitary conditions that should have limited a typhoid outbreak; it was a mystery, and for health mysteries in New York City, George Soper was now more than ever the man to call. It didn't take long to trace the rash of typhoid occurrences to the arrival of the new cook, who vanished before authorities could apprehend her. But police caught up with her in less than a month, and Mary Mallon was remanded for a lifetime stay on North Brother Island. What else could be done if she couldn't be trusted not to prepare food for unsuspecting victims? Mary's youthful feistiness had dimmed, but her spirit wasn't broken by being sentenced to lifelong isolation. She made friends at Riverside Hospital, including Dr. Alexandra Plavska, who trained Mary in laboratory work and hired her as an assistant. Mary approached her new field of employment with the same enthusiasm she brought to the kitchen, earning her decent salary and providing outlet for her self-discipline and desire to contribute to society. In a day and age when the average American woman's life expectancy was fifty years, Mary lived a healthy life into her sixties, before suffering a stroke and becoming bedridden in her twilight years. She died at sixty-nine in 1938, having led something of a full life despite her permanent quarantine, holding on to as much privacy as possible by revealing little about herself publicly, speaking only with trusted friends who never broke confidence. Thus ended the life of a person the public couldn't decide between labeling as a hero or villain, an innocent martyr or loathsome scourge to society. How you think of Mary Mallon is up to you.
Terrible Typhoid Mary encourages hot debate not just about civil liberties, but fundamentals of right and wrong. What is the proper course of action if a majority of society agrees someone is a public menace, for whatever reason? Is it okay to lock them up even if they appear to present no danger, and insist they wouldn't hurt a soul? Does might make right, majority consensus overruling all else? What happens, then, when government starts arresting people for having opinions contrary to those of the bureaucracy, declaring them "dangerous" individuals? Is the passage of laws an absolute that suddenly makes a behavior morally wrong even if it was considered not objectionable—or at least not worthy of legal repercussions—a short time ago? What about the people affected by these changes to the moral code, people whose lifestyle may be infringed upon as Mary Mallon's lifestyle as a professional cook was by accusations that her food preparation harmed others? What standard should be employed in order for someone to be declared objectively dangerous to innocent citizens so the government has a responsibility to stop them? It's a massive quagmire, brimming with implications for any organized society. Mary Mallon couldn't be blamed for the fact that her body harbored typhoid bacteria; it wasn't her choice, yet the Board of Health and the judge who upheld their decision kept her marooned on an island for decades. What would you do if authorities decided something about you that you can't change is reprehensible, and you must be punished for it? Would you have turned into a despicable person overnight? Of course not, but you'd be treated as though you had. The personal nature of the accusations is what goaded Mary, as we read from her initial encounter with George Soper. "Soper's words may have sounded preposterous to her. How could a healthy person make someone sick? Soper's accusation must have struck at the very core of her self-worth. Mary took great pride in her work. She kept a clean kitchen. She herself was clean. Mary's reaction surprised Soper. Instead of sharing his concern, she grew angry. She told him that she had never had typhoid. She had never been sick, but had nursed those around her who were sick, helping them through the terrible disease." If one takes pride in being a nurturer, cooling the brow of feverish sufferers and talking them gently through their travails, no accusation could hurt more than that you're the cause of the trouble, that you are harmful to the people you care for. This must have contributed heavily to Mary's refusal to believe the typhoid outbreaks that followed her were her fault. Who wants to believe their life's work is, at best, undoing damage they created themselves?
But the persecution of Mary can also undoubtedly be attributed in part to her nonconformity to contemporary standards of how women should act, Terrible Typhoid Mary notes. "In 1907 society had strict ideas about womanhood and marriage, too, based on something called 'the middle-class ideal.' This ideal said that a proper woman should be married and have children. That she should be a good mother and the foundation of the home. That she should not work outside the home. That she should attend to the needs of her husband and children. That the welfare of society—and even the fate of a nation—depended on her." Mary's brash demeanor and unapologetic independence caused Soper to suspicion her immediately, as in any era the quirks of those who don't behave like everyone else often bring retribution down on their heads. Disturbing the universe is risky business, and refusing to conform to mainstream standards is the surest way to cause noticeable disturbance. Soper assumed Mary would be grateful for his intervention, that she'd want to work with him to defuse the bacterial time bomb in her gallbladder, but the cook wasn't interested. This, too, raises a question: when society says something's wrong with us and they can fix it, how are we to respond if we don't believe we have a problem? Others may see us as in need of alteration, but what if we're happy with ourselves the way we are? What if society joins forces to make us undergo the change, or be branded for life as a pariah? These considerations are part of Mary Mallon's story, and are given thoughtful treatment in this book. As Susan Campbell Bartoletti concludes, "This I know for sure: Life is, as Mary says, uncertain. As a society and as individuals, we must protect healthy people from disease. We must also treat those suffering from disease in an intelligent, humane, and compassionate way. We need to be rational and keep our fears in check." Only if we make that our priority can we end the cycle of Typhoid Marys chewed up and spit out by societies that fear and hate them for reasons beyond their control, for aspects of themselves they have limited power over. After we've tamed our impulse to punish those different from us, we can approach our issues in mutual understanding, and that is where the battle is won.
"There's a danger in writing a person's life from a historical vantage point, for hindsight can be smug." Susan Campbell Bartoletti leaves us this warning about judging people of the past, a vital reminder for those who pay attention to history. Too often we live as prisoners of today, seeing modern society as superior to everything that came before, regarding ourselves as better and more open-minded than our predecessors. That isn't true, of course; we're no better or worse than people of another era. We're just as given to shortsightedness, prejudice, and not living up to our potential as individuals and a society, and it's counterproductive to pretend otherwise. We can, however, humbly learn lessons from the past and apply them to our lives, and there's virtually no limit to what we can learn from Mary Mallon. Empathize with others, and don't casually throw away human life. Be tolerant, merciful, and guard the rights of those bullied by society. Terrible Typhoid Mary is one of Susan Campbell Bartoletti's best, most provocative nonfiction books, and I highly recommend it. Use it well.
The wealthy Warren family was pleased with the cook they hired to manage the kitchen of their Oyster Bay, Long Island mansion in 1906. Mary Mallon ran a tight ship, keeping her kitchen meticulously clean and crisply delegating responsibility to the domestic staff. Her job included preparing food for the family and all the servants, so she was rarely afforded time to sit and rest, but relaxing was foreign to her nature anyway. An unmarried Irish Catholic who immigrated from the Emerald Isle as a teen, Mary parlayed her culinary efficiency into gainful employment in America, earning a nice salary for a young woman on her own. The Warrens liked the dishes she whipped up, in particular her specialty: homemade ice cream with fresh peach slices stirred in, a mixture of sweet and tangy no one could create quite like Mary. Her arrangement with the Warrens appeared to be a promising career track.
But then nine-year-old Margaret Warren took sick, a slight fatigue and fever at first that degenerated into violent, life-threatening illness, and the girl was rushed to the hospital. The other Warrens and their servants began falling ill as well, though not Mary, who helped care for Margaret as her symptoms worsened. Doctors identified the contagious malady as typhoid fever, an infection that slew one out of five sufferers at the time, but they diagnosed it soon enough to spare the Warren family and their servants. Fearing contaminated water or typhoid germs in the house itself, the Warrens deserted Oyster Bay, and Mary was on her own to find new employment. Mrs. Thompson, whose husband owned the Oyster Bay manor and let it out to well-off families like the Warrens, was concerned about the incident. Investigators couldn't trace the typhoid outbreak to bad water, milk, or other perishable products, and close inspection of the house turned up nothing alarming. If the mini epidemic couldn't be dealt with to assure prospective tenants they weren't at risk of contracting typhoid, no one would rent the Thompsons' lovely shoreline property. Mrs. Thompson hired George Soper, sanitary engineer and private health detective of modest renown, to solve the mystery. With all the gusto and ambition that drove him when he eventually came face to face with Mary, Soper took up the trail and started asking questions.
George Soper was no doctor, but he knew his business, and began systematically ruling out causes of the typhoid outbreak just as public health officials had done. He, too, was headed for a dead end, until he found out there had recently been someone new in the Warren household at the time of the infections: the cook. Immediately Soper hypothesized that Mary, described as healthy and immaculately clean, might be a "healthy carrier" of typhoid bacteria, a former sufferer of the disease whose body hadn't fully eradicated its germs. If Mary were a healthy carrier, her gallbladder could still teem with bacteria that would get into the food she prepared and make anyone sick who consumed it. The discovery of a healthy carrier would be a godsend for Soper's career, vaulting him into the conversation with the great medical pioneers of his day and bringing him fortune. Piecing together Mary's employment history, he found a trend of typhoid outbreaks at most places she worked, reinforcing his theory. But the sanitary engineer had a major hurdle to clear: where was Mary now? Soper had no solid leads on where she'd gone after parting ways with the Warrens. He had to find her forthwith, however: if his idea was correct that Mary was a carrier, anyone she prepared food for would be in jeopardy. Life or death could depend on Soper's detective skills.
By the time he located the cook, now working at a Park Avenue house, the family's twenty-five-year-old daughter was dying of typhoid. Soper confronted Mary in her kitchen with his theories regarding her unusual status as a healthy carrier, wondering how the spunky thirty-something immigrant would respond, and Mary showed she was more wild Irish rose than shrinking violet. Incensed that Soper would question her sanitary habits (he suggested she didn't wash her hands after using the bathroom) and her health (Mary didn't understand how a healthy person could spread deadly bacteria), Mary grabbed a sharp carving fork and attacked Soper, expelling him from her kitchen. The nerve of that man, demanding specimens of her blood and excretory waste for study! If Soper was to confirm Mary as the cause of the typhoid cases that seemed to surface wherever she worked, he'd have to come up with a Plan B.
George Soper later wrote that he only wished to help Mary devise a strategy for preventing the spread of her germs, and was disappointed that she showed no concern for the harm she inflicted on others. He followed Mary to the apartment of decommissioned police officer August Breihof, a close friend she regularly visited, and Soper became pals with him behind her back. But cornering her in the apartment yielded no better result than the kitchen confrontation, so Soper enlisted the help of Dr. Josephine Baker to reason with Ms. Mallon, again to no effect. When Soper, Baker, and three policemen showed up to force Mary to comply with their request for physical samples, she took off running and hid, but was discovered on the premises and taken into custody. The Irish spitfire who wouldn't demurely accept Soper's ridicule of her professionalism was out of options.
Thorough analysis of Mary's specimens proved George Soper correct: she was a healthy carrier of typhoid, the reason for the Warren outbreak and every other occurrence of typhoid at the houses that employed her. A big question could no longer be delayed: what was the New York City Board of Health to do about this woman? Removing her gallbladder was one recourse, though surgery in the first decade of the 1900s was a dubious proposition, and would by no means guarantee the end of the threat posed by Mary. She could be released if they trained her in special cleansing measures and she promised never again to take a job as cook, but what would she do for a living? Mary didn't trust the health board or their scientists, fearing they were railroading her not because she presented any actual peril to people she came in contact with, but because they wanted a patient to experiment on. She wasn't about to consent to that. Refusing to cooperate with Soper and his colleagues in every way she could, Mary gave the Board of Health no other option: she would be remanded into custody at Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island, where she would be free to walk the grounds and live in a small shack by herself where she couldn't infect the population of New York. Besides a fox terrier that lived with her, she would be utterly alone.
Important as decisions pertaining to Mary's freedom were, the average American knew only limited specifics of her case until June 1909, when William Randolph Hearst's New York American newspaper blew her anonymity to bits by publishing every detail of the case on its front pages. Paranoid and fearful before, Mary's anxiety was at an all-time high as the last vestiges of her privacy were snatched away. For a woman forced to live in exile and dependence on others for her every need after a life of diligent work and proud independence, this was as low as it could get. Yet it was the New York American headlines that began turning the tide of public opinion in Mary's favor. Attorney George O'Neill followed up on her personal information and offered the quarantined woman representation in court, a basic right she had been denied by the unilateral authority of the New York Board of Health. Dressed to the nines and exuding quiet dignity, Mary showed up in court to hear O'Neill deliver an impassioned defense of her civil rights to the judge. Mary was a healthy woman, yet the government had ignored her rights and subjected her to indefinite incarceration without due process. If this were permitted to continue, the precedent set would imperil the American justice system. Were civil rights mere suggestions the courts could waive if they wanted to, or an ironclad contract they were obligated to honor? Not only that, but other healthy carriers identified in New York and elsewhere had been allowed to resume normal lives without government inhibition. Why was Mary any different? A double standard was being employed, and it had to stop. Many Americans agreed with George O'Neill's eloquent arguments, raising the hue and cry for Mary's liberation, but the judge saw it differently. The New York City Board of Health had the right to protect its citizens from a typhoid pandemic, he decreed, and Mary was to remain on North Brother Island. After all the positive press and hype for Mary's day in court, O'Neill's representation amounted to little.
It did not, however, amount to nothing. Under increasing public pressure to do right by the nation's most famed typhoid carrier, new health commissioner Ernest J. Lederle offered Mary a deal: if she promised not to cook, and to abide by precautions taught her by the health department to prevent disseminating germs, she would be released. She also had to check in with the health department on a monthly basis to be reevaluated. Mary sullenly agreed to the conditional release, for she had been detained on the island three years, and freedom was immeasurably preferable to incarceration. Without an occupation and no training in another field of employment, though, Mary's prospects were bleak, and there wasn't much improvement over the next several years. The public forgot about her; George Soper and the New York Board of Health eventually did, too, and when she stopped reporting for her monthly reevaluations in 1914, few took notice. This would mark the start of her second wave of typhoid epidemics.
In early 1915, typhoid engulfed Manhattan's Sloane Hospital for Women, infecting twenty-five people. The hospital kept strictly sanitary conditions that should have limited a typhoid outbreak; it was a mystery, and for health mysteries in New York City, George Soper was now more than ever the man to call. It didn't take long to trace the rash of typhoid occurrences to the arrival of the new cook, who vanished before authorities could apprehend her. But police caught up with her in less than a month, and Mary Mallon was remanded for a lifetime stay on North Brother Island. What else could be done if she couldn't be trusted not to prepare food for unsuspecting victims? Mary's youthful feistiness had dimmed, but her spirit wasn't broken by being sentenced to lifelong isolation. She made friends at Riverside Hospital, including Dr. Alexandra Plavska, who trained Mary in laboratory work and hired her as an assistant. Mary approached her new field of employment with the same enthusiasm she brought to the kitchen, earning her decent salary and providing outlet for her self-discipline and desire to contribute to society. In a day and age when the average American woman's life expectancy was fifty years, Mary lived a healthy life into her sixties, before suffering a stroke and becoming bedridden in her twilight years. She died at sixty-nine in 1938, having led something of a full life despite her permanent quarantine, holding on to as much privacy as possible by revealing little about herself publicly, speaking only with trusted friends who never broke confidence. Thus ended the life of a person the public couldn't decide between labeling as a hero or villain, an innocent martyr or loathsome scourge to society. How you think of Mary Mallon is up to you.
Terrible Typhoid Mary encourages hot debate not just about civil liberties, but fundamentals of right and wrong. What is the proper course of action if a majority of society agrees someone is a public menace, for whatever reason? Is it okay to lock them up even if they appear to present no danger, and insist they wouldn't hurt a soul? Does might make right, majority consensus overruling all else? What happens, then, when government starts arresting people for having opinions contrary to those of the bureaucracy, declaring them "dangerous" individuals? Is the passage of laws an absolute that suddenly makes a behavior morally wrong even if it was considered not objectionable—or at least not worthy of legal repercussions—a short time ago? What about the people affected by these changes to the moral code, people whose lifestyle may be infringed upon as Mary Mallon's lifestyle as a professional cook was by accusations that her food preparation harmed others? What standard should be employed in order for someone to be declared objectively dangerous to innocent citizens so the government has a responsibility to stop them? It's a massive quagmire, brimming with implications for any organized society. Mary Mallon couldn't be blamed for the fact that her body harbored typhoid bacteria; it wasn't her choice, yet the Board of Health and the judge who upheld their decision kept her marooned on an island for decades. What would you do if authorities decided something about you that you can't change is reprehensible, and you must be punished for it? Would you have turned into a despicable person overnight? Of course not, but you'd be treated as though you had. The personal nature of the accusations is what goaded Mary, as we read from her initial encounter with George Soper. "Soper's words may have sounded preposterous to her. How could a healthy person make someone sick? Soper's accusation must have struck at the very core of her self-worth. Mary took great pride in her work. She kept a clean kitchen. She herself was clean. Mary's reaction surprised Soper. Instead of sharing his concern, she grew angry. She told him that she had never had typhoid. She had never been sick, but had nursed those around her who were sick, helping them through the terrible disease." If one takes pride in being a nurturer, cooling the brow of feverish sufferers and talking them gently through their travails, no accusation could hurt more than that you're the cause of the trouble, that you are harmful to the people you care for. This must have contributed heavily to Mary's refusal to believe the typhoid outbreaks that followed her were her fault. Who wants to believe their life's work is, at best, undoing damage they created themselves?
But the persecution of Mary can also undoubtedly be attributed in part to her nonconformity to contemporary standards of how women should act, Terrible Typhoid Mary notes. "In 1907 society had strict ideas about womanhood and marriage, too, based on something called 'the middle-class ideal.' This ideal said that a proper woman should be married and have children. That she should be a good mother and the foundation of the home. That she should not work outside the home. That she should attend to the needs of her husband and children. That the welfare of society—and even the fate of a nation—depended on her." Mary's brash demeanor and unapologetic independence caused Soper to suspicion her immediately, as in any era the quirks of those who don't behave like everyone else often bring retribution down on their heads. Disturbing the universe is risky business, and refusing to conform to mainstream standards is the surest way to cause noticeable disturbance. Soper assumed Mary would be grateful for his intervention, that she'd want to work with him to defuse the bacterial time bomb in her gallbladder, but the cook wasn't interested. This, too, raises a question: when society says something's wrong with us and they can fix it, how are we to respond if we don't believe we have a problem? Others may see us as in need of alteration, but what if we're happy with ourselves the way we are? What if society joins forces to make us undergo the change, or be branded for life as a pariah? These considerations are part of Mary Mallon's story, and are given thoughtful treatment in this book. As Susan Campbell Bartoletti concludes, "This I know for sure: Life is, as Mary says, uncertain. As a society and as individuals, we must protect healthy people from disease. We must also treat those suffering from disease in an intelligent, humane, and compassionate way. We need to be rational and keep our fears in check." Only if we make that our priority can we end the cycle of Typhoid Marys chewed up and spit out by societies that fear and hate them for reasons beyond their control, for aspects of themselves they have limited power over. After we've tamed our impulse to punish those different from us, we can approach our issues in mutual understanding, and that is where the battle is won.
"There's a danger in writing a person's life from a historical vantage point, for hindsight can be smug." Susan Campbell Bartoletti leaves us this warning about judging people of the past, a vital reminder for those who pay attention to history. Too often we live as prisoners of today, seeing modern society as superior to everything that came before, regarding ourselves as better and more open-minded than our predecessors. That isn't true, of course; we're no better or worse than people of another era. We're just as given to shortsightedness, prejudice, and not living up to our potential as individuals and a society, and it's counterproductive to pretend otherwise. We can, however, humbly learn lessons from the past and apply them to our lives, and there's virtually no limit to what we can learn from Mary Mallon. Empathize with others, and don't casually throw away human life. Be tolerant, merciful, and guard the rights of those bullied by society. Terrible Typhoid Mary is one of Susan Campbell Bartoletti's best, most provocative nonfiction books, and I highly recommend it. Use it well.
August 24, 2015
Quick read. Increased my own hand washing as a result:)
January 2, 2021
"Typhoid Mary" was the nomenclature yellow journalism, compliments of William Randolph Hearst and other contemporary newspapers, gave Mary Mallon, an Irish immigrant.
She worked as a cook in several well to do families, earning a very good living. Then one summer the family she was currently working for had an outbreak of typhoid. This was in 1907.
The family and servants who came down with typhoid survived then enjoyed a natural immunity and that might have been the end of it, except the couple that leased the house to them wanted an investigation. Houses known to carry typhoid were often razed to the ground, and since no other renters had suffered before or after this particular family, it seemed more likely that an individual was responsible for the outbreak.
Thus arrives George Soper a health investigator. By this time, it was known that typhoid was caused by Salmonella Tyhpi (not to be confused with Salmonella: food poisoning caused by eating raw chicken or handling turtles). Salmonelle Typhi is a microorganism that is carried by individuals, often people who show no symptoms themselves. These people are called "healthy carriers".
After eliminating all other possibilities and following the trail of typhoid victims from one house to another he arrived at the common denominator: the cook. Who was the cook? Mary Mallon.
Mary Mallon was a healthy carrier and, being a volatile, belligerent person to boot, she was not persuaded nor cooperative with Soper when he arrived at the kitchen of her current employment. How could she be responsible for making people ill, when she wasn't ill herself?
All Soper asked for was a stool and urine sample, but she refused. And then she chased him down the street with a carving fork.
Eventually Mary was arrested and forced to give samples and then was quarantined on North Brother's Island between Queens and the Bronx, which was then used as a hospital.
The author then ponders the question: where does a private individual's rights end and where does the public welfare begin? A rather pertinent question today as well in view of all that's come down the pike in our present situation.
Are draconian measures sometimes warranted? It's rather hard to prove one way or the other and I'm not sure exactly where I stand. Here in Texas we have more freedom than other places. I wear a mask, going inside stores and work, but otherwise my life is unchanged. However the quarantine seems to have increased the number of bankruptcy and mental health issues with the suicide rate increasing. Where is the balance? I'm not sure.
It's easy to feel sorry for Mary Mallon because of the rather draconian way she was handled. It is also interesting to note that other typhoid carriers who were also responsible for deaths were not arrested, but allowed to be free as long as they promised not to work in the food business in any way. (Some kept their promise, some did not).
On the other hand, no one wanted to arrest her or force her to give samples. Her belligerent and combative nature probably encouraged officials to be less than easy on her. The newspapers did not help in that they made every effort to sensationalize her story, even exaggerating how many people were struck with typhoid at her hands.
Still, even though she was stuck on an island, she had her own house, food was provided, they even gave her a little dog. She also became close friends with many of the nursing staff.
After five years she was released on probation and a promise that she would not cook nor serve food professionally.
Being a single, middle aged woman, her only employment was as a cleaning lady, which earned only a fraction of what she earned as a cook.
Then Mary Mallon disappeared.
In 1915, an outbreak of typhoid struck a children's hospital. Soper and the New York City healthy officials investigated and discovered that a "Mary Brown" was working there as cook. It did not take long to uncover Mary Brown as Mary Mallon. Mary was taken to trial and sent back to North Brother's Island. After a total of twenty-six years in quarantine, she eventually died alone, but found consolation in her Catholic faith.
I thought the author, Susan Campbell Bartoletti covered her topic well and was fairly objective, other than blaming Mary's attitude on a lack of faith in science. "If she only believed in science..." was a mantra repeated often.
At one point Bartoletti exclaims, "the THEORY of transmitting typhoid through healthy carriers PROVED..."
I capitalized the subject and verb of the above sentence for emphasis.
Excuse me, but a theory does not prove anything. It proposes something. If something is proven, it is no longer a theory, it becomes a fact or a law of nature.
It seems to me that Bartoletti's own understanding of science is not as grounded as it should be. Maybe she should be more scientific in looking critically at theories until they do become facts.
Not to start anything, but that is why it is still the Theory of Evolution, not the Law of Evolution.
Things don't become facts just because we want them to.
That quibble aside, I'm glad to finally know the story about a woman who has gone down in history, perhaps justifiably so, indeed tragically so, as infamous.
She worked as a cook in several well to do families, earning a very good living. Then one summer the family she was currently working for had an outbreak of typhoid. This was in 1907.
The family and servants who came down with typhoid survived then enjoyed a natural immunity and that might have been the end of it, except the couple that leased the house to them wanted an investigation. Houses known to carry typhoid were often razed to the ground, and since no other renters had suffered before or after this particular family, it seemed more likely that an individual was responsible for the outbreak.
Thus arrives George Soper a health investigator. By this time, it was known that typhoid was caused by Salmonella Tyhpi (not to be confused with Salmonella: food poisoning caused by eating raw chicken or handling turtles). Salmonelle Typhi is a microorganism that is carried by individuals, often people who show no symptoms themselves. These people are called "healthy carriers".
After eliminating all other possibilities and following the trail of typhoid victims from one house to another he arrived at the common denominator: the cook. Who was the cook? Mary Mallon.
Mary Mallon was a healthy carrier and, being a volatile, belligerent person to boot, she was not persuaded nor cooperative with Soper when he arrived at the kitchen of her current employment. How could she be responsible for making people ill, when she wasn't ill herself?
All Soper asked for was a stool and urine sample, but she refused. And then she chased him down the street with a carving fork.
Eventually Mary was arrested and forced to give samples and then was quarantined on North Brother's Island between Queens and the Bronx, which was then used as a hospital.
The author then ponders the question: where does a private individual's rights end and where does the public welfare begin? A rather pertinent question today as well in view of all that's come down the pike in our present situation.
Are draconian measures sometimes warranted? It's rather hard to prove one way or the other and I'm not sure exactly where I stand. Here in Texas we have more freedom than other places. I wear a mask, going inside stores and work, but otherwise my life is unchanged. However the quarantine seems to have increased the number of bankruptcy and mental health issues with the suicide rate increasing. Where is the balance? I'm not sure.
It's easy to feel sorry for Mary Mallon because of the rather draconian way she was handled. It is also interesting to note that other typhoid carriers who were also responsible for deaths were not arrested, but allowed to be free as long as they promised not to work in the food business in any way. (Some kept their promise, some did not).
On the other hand, no one wanted to arrest her or force her to give samples. Her belligerent and combative nature probably encouraged officials to be less than easy on her. The newspapers did not help in that they made every effort to sensationalize her story, even exaggerating how many people were struck with typhoid at her hands.
Still, even though she was stuck on an island, she had her own house, food was provided, they even gave her a little dog. She also became close friends with many of the nursing staff.
After five years she was released on probation and a promise that she would not cook nor serve food professionally.
Being a single, middle aged woman, her only employment was as a cleaning lady, which earned only a fraction of what she earned as a cook.
Then Mary Mallon disappeared.
In 1915, an outbreak of typhoid struck a children's hospital. Soper and the New York City healthy officials investigated and discovered that a "Mary Brown" was working there as cook. It did not take long to uncover Mary Brown as Mary Mallon. Mary was taken to trial and sent back to North Brother's Island. After a total of twenty-six years in quarantine, she eventually died alone, but found consolation in her Catholic faith.
I thought the author, Susan Campbell Bartoletti covered her topic well and was fairly objective, other than blaming Mary's attitude on a lack of faith in science. "If she only believed in science..." was a mantra repeated often.
At one point Bartoletti exclaims, "the THEORY of transmitting typhoid through healthy carriers PROVED..."
I capitalized the subject and verb of the above sentence for emphasis.
Excuse me, but a theory does not prove anything. It proposes something. If something is proven, it is no longer a theory, it becomes a fact or a law of nature.
It seems to me that Bartoletti's own understanding of science is not as grounded as it should be. Maybe she should be more scientific in looking critically at theories until they do become facts.
Not to start anything, but that is why it is still the Theory of Evolution, not the Law of Evolution.
Things don't become facts just because we want them to.
That quibble aside, I'm glad to finally know the story about a woman who has gone down in history, perhaps justifiably so, indeed tragically so, as infamous.
August 16, 2015
Susan Campbell Bartoletti continues to write well researched, informative, and highly interesting narrative juvenile nonfiction. "Terrible Typhoid Mary: A True Story of the Deadliest Cook in America," is the story of Mary Mallon, a cook who carried typhoid gems and is suspected of infecting people she worked for and with in the New York City area shortly after the turn of the century. In telling the story of Mary Mallong, Bartoletti examines cultural attitudes of the era, medical knowledge and attitudes, journalism practices, and human and civil rights violations. Bartoletti also manages to stay quite balanced in telling both story of Mallon and the stories of the physicians and others in the medical community. The vocabulary and language seem to be written at a lower level than some of Bartoletti's previous books, making this a good selection for middle school readers. Excellent end notes, a bibliography, and a timeline are great additions. Bartoletti's afterward, in which she explains some of her hypotheses, is also a strong component.
July 10, 2015
A great resource on the dynamic life of Mary Mallon -- known more wildly as Typhoid Mary. Bartoletti presents facts and a well rounded history of the Mary and medical team that treated her, but in an accessible way that will make it easy for children (Middle Grade) to follow. Injecting a wide range of views, Bartoletti invites readers to question what was happening at the time and why certain people acted how they did. A smooth, story-like narrative coupled with facts and critical thinking opportunities, "Terrible Typhoid Mary" is a fantastic read for children!
***Many thanks to HMH Books & Edelweiss for providing a galley to be used for honest bookseller/ review purposes***
***Many thanks to HMH Books & Edelweiss for providing a galley to be used for honest bookseller/ review purposes***
January 11, 2020
This is really excellent nonfiction for young readers, and I can’t wait to share it with my classes in a couple of weeks. The story of “Typhoid Mary” is fascinating, and despite my OCD around contagious infections/diseases, I was hooked. (Though it helps that typhoid isn’t really an issue today.) An excellent read on germ theory, personal rights, infectious diseases, yellow journalism, and history!
March 21, 2018
This book was about this cook that everyone thought was a psycho, because people in her house hold that she was feeding would get unexpectedly sick. Everyone thought she was poisoning the food, but was she though? Read the book to find out...
October 2, 2016
3 stars... This book is geared for a younger age, but an interesting story for sure. My 12- year-old daughter read for school and I read it along with her so we could discuss it together.
April 27, 2017
Loved it. I want my family to read this book! Very interesting and sad.
February 21, 2020
I learned so much from this book. I only heard of the name Typhoid Mary but knew nothing beyond that. Highly recommend this.
July 10, 2020
Terrible Typhoid Mary
Fascinating book. “Terrible Typhoid Mary” chronicles the events surrounding Mary Mallon in New York circa 1906. She was eventually identified as an asymptomatic typhoid carrier. She showed no symptoms. Was never sick. She just went about her daily work. City officials were baffled at how a group of people in a household would suddenly come down with typhoid fever while none of the servants had ever showed symptoms of the disease. That’s when an overzealous sanitary engineer narrowed it down to the cook, Mary Mallon. She was patient zero.
Mary refused to believe a non-medical doctor’s assessment that she would be the cause of such a claim. After all, she had never been sick! But when she went from employer to employer, she left a trail of infected people. The strong minded city official, in his attempt to contain the feisty Mary, nicknamed her “Typhoid Mary.” Though there were other “patient zeros,” Mary was signaled out by the New York city official, and her nickname was used in the newspapers and medical journals of the era. In short, this story was a battle of wills, stubbornness, and evadement. And, unfortunately for Mary, in the end she was quarantined for life.
The book is written in a journalistic style recounting many of the key players that came in contact with Mary Mallon. From the brash city official, to nurses, to the police, to even other cooks. Though some details were just not available, the book paints a pretty good picture of how the events took shape at that time.
Personal note:
I became interested in this book in light of the current pandemic of 2020, I was curious about how other pandemics had affected the public and government procedures. In the recent decades, here in the United States in the early and late 2000’s, we had the N1H1 and the SARS outbreaks. Both were under two different political administrations and both epidemics were held at bay. So I wondered, why did COVID-19 get so out of control?
So I decided to look to the past to find answers. In particular the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. At the time, some cities canceled major public events and others didn’t. And as you would guess, those who held events had hundreds of infected citizens. But even before 1918, there was another outbreak in the early 1900s. Though it wasn’t a mass pandemic, it still affected hundreds. In 1906, the name “Typhoid Mary” was coined. It became synonymous with “patient zero.” There were other “patient zeros,” but Mary and her nickname would forever be part of popular culture as a spreader of disease while not showing any symptoms herself.
This brings me back to our current pandemic. The majority of people in the US are taking the pandemic seriously and doing what the CDC recommends. Practicing social distancing, wearing face coverings and only going out in public when necessary. But there are other groups of people that refuse to practice these precautions. And even going so far as making it political. But if history, and in particular the story of Typhoid Mary, can teach us anything, it’s that listening to the infectious disease experts and taking the recommended steps early on could prevent hundreds of thousands from contracting a deadly virus and even preventing thousands of deaths.
I don’t want to make this review a political statement. This is just an observation from a historical point of view. So please, no hate comments. My hope is that, long after this pandemic is over, we can learn from the events of 2020 and apply the knowledge and the wisdom to the next major health threat.
..
Fascinating book. “Terrible Typhoid Mary” chronicles the events surrounding Mary Mallon in New York circa 1906. She was eventually identified as an asymptomatic typhoid carrier. She showed no symptoms. Was never sick. She just went about her daily work. City officials were baffled at how a group of people in a household would suddenly come down with typhoid fever while none of the servants had ever showed symptoms of the disease. That’s when an overzealous sanitary engineer narrowed it down to the cook, Mary Mallon. She was patient zero.
Mary refused to believe a non-medical doctor’s assessment that she would be the cause of such a claim. After all, she had never been sick! But when she went from employer to employer, she left a trail of infected people. The strong minded city official, in his attempt to contain the feisty Mary, nicknamed her “Typhoid Mary.” Though there were other “patient zeros,” Mary was signaled out by the New York city official, and her nickname was used in the newspapers and medical journals of the era. In short, this story was a battle of wills, stubbornness, and evadement. And, unfortunately for Mary, in the end she was quarantined for life.
The book is written in a journalistic style recounting many of the key players that came in contact with Mary Mallon. From the brash city official, to nurses, to the police, to even other cooks. Though some details were just not available, the book paints a pretty good picture of how the events took shape at that time.
Personal note:
I became interested in this book in light of the current pandemic of 2020, I was curious about how other pandemics had affected the public and government procedures. In the recent decades, here in the United States in the early and late 2000’s, we had the N1H1 and the SARS outbreaks. Both were under two different political administrations and both epidemics were held at bay. So I wondered, why did COVID-19 get so out of control?
So I decided to look to the past to find answers. In particular the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. At the time, some cities canceled major public events and others didn’t. And as you would guess, those who held events had hundreds of infected citizens. But even before 1918, there was another outbreak in the early 1900s. Though it wasn’t a mass pandemic, it still affected hundreds. In 1906, the name “Typhoid Mary” was coined. It became synonymous with “patient zero.” There were other “patient zeros,” but Mary and her nickname would forever be part of popular culture as a spreader of disease while not showing any symptoms herself.
This brings me back to our current pandemic. The majority of people in the US are taking the pandemic seriously and doing what the CDC recommends. Practicing social distancing, wearing face coverings and only going out in public when necessary. But there are other groups of people that refuse to practice these precautions. And even going so far as making it political. But if history, and in particular the story of Typhoid Mary, can teach us anything, it’s that listening to the infectious disease experts and taking the recommended steps early on could prevent hundreds of thousands from contracting a deadly virus and even preventing thousands of deaths.
I don’t want to make this review a political statement. This is just an observation from a historical point of view. So please, no hate comments. My hope is that, long after this pandemic is over, we can learn from the events of 2020 and apply the knowledge and the wisdom to the next major health threat.
..
July 12, 2024
I loved this book 😌
I need to buy the book as a hardback
YaaaaaaaaAaaaaAaaaaa
I need to buy the book as a hardback
YaaaaaaaaAaaaaAaaaaa
June 16, 2024
I did not know anything about Typhoid Mary prior to reading this book but I now feel like I can hold my own if there is ever Typhoid Mary trivia. The author well researched this book and provided the information in a way that was understandable and interesting.
June 18, 2015
I was really fascinated by this book, although I almost didn't want to read it after I read the author's note at the beginning: "Dear Reader, if you are squeamish" and don't like to read about germs, or you're the type of person who uses antibacterial spray every five minutes, or doesn't touch doorknobs, etc, then "you should stop now and find some other book to read." !! I loved that, because it's a fair warning, and because I'm sure it will serve to draw in some reluctant kid readers who might not have otherwise thought this looked like a good book. But a gross book about germs? They'll love it! Haha!
Previously I knew a little bit about Mary Mallon, but mostly just the legends that have sprung up about her. So this was a fascinating book to read, meticulously researched, that gives the truth about her, or as much as can be known. The author freely states "we don't know" or "it is thought that" whenever she comes to a gap in the historical record, which is good, so that readers know as much as she knows and what there still is unknown about this historical figure. I probably don't need to explain that she was the early twentieth century Irish cook who unwittingly was a "healthy carrier" of typhoid and most likely passed on the disease to many of her employers and their families and servants. I loved how this book reads, just like a novel, with a conversational style and melodramatic descriptive chapter titles such as "In Which There's Some Name-Calling," or, "In Which It Takes a Squad of Sanitary Police," etc, just like a 19th century dime novel. Poor Mary really was given the bad end of the deal once the NY Board of Health found out about her; the author does a good job of explaining why they did what they did (dragging her off the street, keeping her locked up in solitary, etc) in light of the cultural practices of the time, and how the civil rights we enjoy today were not always respected, and so forth. You also do get some details about germs and how to study them, the history of early epidemiology and entymology and sanitation, and so on. A major character is the sanitation engineer who was the "germ detective" trying to figure out where all of these typhoid cases originated. There is a great list of sources, citations for all of the quotations, a bibliography and notes from the author. The one thing I wish had been done differently is having all of the photographs in a "album" at the back of the book. I'd rather be able to see a photograph of a person as I'm reading about them in a chapter, rather than flipping to the back to hunt for them, and I think modern nonfiction for kids tends to be more appealing if done that way. But perhaps this was a decision made to keep the book looking more like a novel, with uninterrupted text. I don't know. In any case, it's still a darn good read and well worth picking up. Just make sure you aren't eating lunch while you read it...
Previously I knew a little bit about Mary Mallon, but mostly just the legends that have sprung up about her. So this was a fascinating book to read, meticulously researched, that gives the truth about her, or as much as can be known. The author freely states "we don't know" or "it is thought that" whenever she comes to a gap in the historical record, which is good, so that readers know as much as she knows and what there still is unknown about this historical figure. I probably don't need to explain that she was the early twentieth century Irish cook who unwittingly was a "healthy carrier" of typhoid and most likely passed on the disease to many of her employers and their families and servants. I loved how this book reads, just like a novel, with a conversational style and melodramatic descriptive chapter titles such as "In Which There's Some Name-Calling," or, "In Which It Takes a Squad of Sanitary Police," etc, just like a 19th century dime novel. Poor Mary really was given the bad end of the deal once the NY Board of Health found out about her; the author does a good job of explaining why they did what they did (dragging her off the street, keeping her locked up in solitary, etc) in light of the cultural practices of the time, and how the civil rights we enjoy today were not always respected, and so forth. You also do get some details about germs and how to study them, the history of early epidemiology and entymology and sanitation, and so on. A major character is the sanitation engineer who was the "germ detective" trying to figure out where all of these typhoid cases originated. There is a great list of sources, citations for all of the quotations, a bibliography and notes from the author. The one thing I wish had been done differently is having all of the photographs in a "album" at the back of the book. I'd rather be able to see a photograph of a person as I'm reading about them in a chapter, rather than flipping to the back to hunt for them, and I think modern nonfiction for kids tends to be more appealing if done that way. But perhaps this was a decision made to keep the book looking more like a novel, with uninterrupted text. I don't know. In any case, it's still a darn good read and well worth picking up. Just make sure you aren't eating lunch while you read it...
May 9, 2021
傷寒瑪麗, 一位健康帶原者, 外表看起來完全健康, 但還繼續散播疾病. 通常他們也不知自己正在散播病菌.
這是一本透過事實調查, 寫出當時瑪麗.馬龍的故事, 透過故事讓讀者去思考病患自主權、自由、隱私, 以及公共安全健康的威脅之衝突. 但也許是我讀的時機不對, 在covid-19疫情嚴峻的當下, 讀著這本書, 雖然也是明白瑪麗受到不公平的對待, 但她也有很多行為的確讓人同情不下去...
這是一本透過事實調查, 寫出當時瑪麗.馬龍的故事, 透過故事讓讀者去思考病患自主權、自由、隱私, 以及公共安全健康的威脅之衝突. 但也許是我讀的時機不對, 在covid-19疫情嚴峻的當下, 讀著這本書, 雖然也是明白瑪麗受到不公平的對待, 但她也有很多行為的確讓人同情不下去...
July 17, 2025
This was a random pick I found at the library while browsing with my kids - technically a juvenile nonfiction but it was fascinating to read as I listen to Everything is Tuberculosis. I had heard the name Typhoid Mary but didn’t know much about the actual person and it was a decreasingly sad story about the lack of knowledge everyone had at the time. It makes me so thankful for scientists who help to move humanity further and hope for the future that policies will continue to be made to help those who suffer.
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