After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Typhoid Mary: Original Super-Spreader?

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

Mary Mallon aka "Typhoid Mary" is a macabre figure who spread disease and death everywhere she went. But there's a lot more depth and humanity to Mary's history than this. She's a someone who is hard to resist when you get to know her (despite all the Typhoid...). Anthony Delaney tells Maddy Pelling the story.Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hi, we're your hosts, Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling. And if you would like after dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. every week. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power.

Peloton. Visit Peloton at OnePeloton.ca. Where can I get help hiring people with disabilities? There are hundreds of thousands of Canadians with disabilities who are ready to work, and many local organizations are available to help you find qualified candidates and make your workplace more accessible and inclusive. Visit Canada.ca slash right here to connect with one near you today. A message from the Government of Canada. April 1915, North Brother Island, East River, New York.

The wind howls through the bare branches of the Sycamores, their skeletal forms casting eerie shadows on the landscape. At the island's edge stands a solitary figure. A woman, her gaze fixed on the distant Manhattan skyline, a place alive with voices she can no longer hear. A world that has forgotten her name, for now. For some time now, this woman's days have unfolded with monotonous precision. Each morning she rises early, the air chilled and damp from the river mist. Outside, a nurse in crisp white uniform checks her surroundings with mechanical regularity, clipboard in hand, before retreating back to the main building,

leaving this woman alone once more. The small cottage she inhabits is stark, its walls scrubbed clean and void of any real domestic warmth. Her routines are predictable, almost ritualistic, sweeping her porch, feeding the tabby cat, or sitting with a cup of tea as the clock ticks endlessly on. She works in the island's small laboratory, when permitted, handling vials and beakers with care.

It is work that keeps her hands busy and her mind distracted. Her companions, though, are few and far between. A dog she calls Rex, and the occasional chatter of birds that perch on the sagging wires overhead. Human contact is rarer still. Doctors visit occasionally, faces pinched with caution, their conversations clinical and cold. No one lingers longer than necessary.

To them, this woman remains an unspoken question, a mystery wrapped in loneliness and defiance. But why is this woman housed thus? And why do the doctors and nurses approach her with such caution? Well that's the history I'd like to share with you today on After Dark Myths, Misteems and the to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. And as you may have guessed, we are telling the story today of Typhoid Mary. I have to say this is not a story or history that I'd ever heard of before. If you're interested in histories of plagues, epidemics, general ill health, we have done

episodes on the Black Death and the Plague Village of Eam so do go and check those out. But today we're talking about another deadly disease and it's the story of a woman who, like an angel of death, supposedly spreads typhoid fever wherever she goes. At least that's the version that we've been handed. This is the story of a woman called Mary Mallon. But who was she exactly and why does she rise to such infamy? Anthony, why this history? How did you come across typhoid Mary? Well, if you don't like this episode, you have nobody to blame but Michelle Delaney,

my sister. She keeps saying to me, you need to do Typhoid Mary, you need to do Typhoid Mary. And not only that, literally this week she was in the back of my car and she was like, you haven't done Typhoid Mary yet. And I was like, it's coming. We're doing it. It's happening now. All right, Michelle, calm down. So there she is on her walk now listening to After Dark, getting the episode she's wanted for the last six months. But, you know, it's again, it's an Irish history to some extent, it's an American history. But there's a very interesting woman at the heart of it.

She is, yeah, she's an interesting character, all right. So give me some context. We are in the late 19th century, right? To begin with. Yeah, late 19th century into the 20th century, then it's, as you can imagine, a time of pretty rapid change, both in Ireland and America. In Ireland, we have, of course, the aftermath of the Great Famine. We've done two episodes on that before and after dark. Go back and listen to those if you haven't already. But the impact is still very much felt. I mean, this is, you know, you could argue that the impact of the famine is still being felt in Ireland today because the population has never recovered since then. There are many throws of land reform happening, home rule movement is growing, a

significant still move towards emigration. And one of the places in which those Irish people are going to is, of course, America, famously so, which is in itself in a flux of the industrial American industrial revolution. It's reshaping its cities, it's bringing wealth and innovation, but it's also bringing overcrowding and important for this story, poor sanitation conditions and plenty of disease. LW. And of course the problem is all these millions of immigrants are typically going into urban environments that are crowded, they're living on top of each other in tenements. The standards of hygiene, the architectural opportunity for waste disposal, etc., is all very limited. Public health, public disease, public crises are coming into the spotlight more and more, aren't they? There are some pretty grim diseases spreading.

There are. We have epidemics of cholera, we have tuberculosis is plaguing urban centres, specifically, as you said, and of course, relevant to this history, Typhoid is making the rounds as well. Now, in response, there are sanitation campaigns and public health efforts that are gaining momentum at this time, but they're really trying to tell people, come on, you have to wash your hands. I mean, we know what that's like, isn't it? I've just realized again, we've been through this ourselves

somewhat recently with COVID. I was just thinking as I was saying that, telling people to wash their hands, I was like, gosh, that might've seemed a little condescending or something at the time, but we were told it for two or three years. It was like, wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands. So we know what it's like. Yeah. And apparently there's people out there not doing that. Wash your bloody hands. Well, certainly there is at this time in the 19th century because of the, you know, lack of flowing

water is a real thing at times, you know. And also, I suppose the lack of understanding about germs and how bacteria spreads. Yes, there is a definite mass misunderstanding or lack of understanding about that. However, there is a rise in germ theory at this point. So scientists like Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch are proving the existence of microorganisms that cause disease, and they are now replacing ideas that kind of Victorian idea of a my asthma we've heard about that before have we about like there's bad air we're not quite sure. What's going on just Victorian we have it in georgian times in tutor times whatever but basically there's bad air but we're not sure what it is but if like me you didn't necessarily know what typhoid. I've heard typhoid an awful lot, but I was like, what actually is it? So basically it's a bacterial infection caused by salmonella and salmonella typhi. And its symptoms include high fever, diarrhoea, constipation, abdominal pain,

cramping, I suppose. And there is, I suppose, the characteristic thing is a rash. And so if this And there is, I suppose the characteristic thing is a rash. And so if this goes untreated, then typhoid can very much be fatal. I don't like it. No, well, listen, nobody's asking you to run out and get yourself a little bit of typhoid. So you make the journey across the Atlantic. I mean, immediately, no, for me, the second I get on a boat, my head's over the side, vomiting, like, does not for me. So that's horrendous. Presumably you're in crappy quarters in an ocean liner. It's cramped. It's unhygienic. Everyone's getting sick. I'm in the corner

vomiting. And then you get to America to your new life. And you've been told to expect all these things and all these hopes. And you have to go and live in a tenement building. And it's dangerous. There's prejudice against you. It's hard to find work because you're one of millions of immigrants who's arrived in a city like New York, say. And then you start to get these symptoms. It's not great. CB No. And it's very much like, think as being maybe the worst food poisoning that you have ever,

ever had, basically. And as I said, it's when this goes untreated. And in the 19th century, the treatments were very rudimentary, but that's when the complications start to develop in the sort of third or fourth week of illness, because the bacteria begins to invade the bloodstream and that's how it spreads. So this then causes intestinal bleeding, abscesses on the liver, maybe the spleen, and even in some cases, an infection of the heart. It's still a huge global health problem today, of course, and it affects some people estimate up to 33 million people per year. So, you know, don't think this is just a thing of the past. This is this is very much still prevalent.

And so how does it spread? Is it just people living in close quarters? Is it just the lack of preventative measures? This I mean, it sounds like something everyone would want to avoid getting. So so what is going on here? How is it spreading? Food and water. Think of those as your most common sources. It is food and water that has been contaminated specifically with feces. And this is happening in the late 19th century because of poor sanitation, the overcrowding living conditions that you were describing earlier. This is an ideal

environment for disease, but not only disease, disease to spread. But there is one way in which it is also spread, which is really relevant to this history. And it's carried through asymptomatic carriers. And this is relevant to Mary Mallon because she is one of these asymptomatic carriers. And we'll talk about this in more detail specific to her case in a minute. But that means the bacteria are present in that person, but they are showing no symptoms in that person. But they therefore go on to unknowingly spread the disease. And they didn't really know what was happening in the 19th century with this. They didn't understand how this was happening. And it just did mean that outbreaks were more widespread, fear and stigma started to really be attached to that disease in particular.

And public health officials then as a result with asymptomatic carriers, they struggled to contain the disease. Because how do you contain something that you can't necessarily identify because that person doesn't have any symptoms? And they wanted to make sure they were balancing the rights of individuals against the need of community safety as well, which again, we're somewhat familiar with. And of course this is presumably going to bring in stigma attached to it and certain groups or certain people are going to be identified as carriers, even if they aren't, and certain areas, certain neighborhoods, all of that, certain communities. Tell me about Mary Mallon.

So Mary is a character, I'll say that for her. She was born in Ireland, we think around 1869 in Cookstown, County Tyrone. And so this is probably 20 odd years after the worst of the great Irish famine. But remember, 20 years later, we're still feeling the impact. She grew up in a poor farming family in a rural community and this poverty, famine-induced poverty is still very, very much with them. As a result, of course, like so many other Irish people at the time, she turns 15 and she decides Ireland's no longer viable, so I'm going to emigrate. And she heads to the Mecca of emigration at this point, I suppose, and that's 1880s New York. And

that's where she decides to try and make a life for herself. She joins this huge wave, of course, of Irish immigrants. And yes, there's opportunity there for her, but there's prejudice as well. Lots of anti-Irish sentiment is still very prevalent at this time. LW and what is she going to do when she gets there? What's her plan? Because I assume most people heading from Ireland to America already had maybe relatives there, or someone from their parish, from their community who could find them a job, put in a good word somewhere, find them a landlady or a landlord, something like that. Does she have a plan or does she just turn up in New York, age 15, and have to build her life from the ground up?

She will have used that network that you're talking about, that kind of immigration network, the Irish immigration network. And initially she was working maids jobs, kind of menial tasks, but she soon discovers, we don't know how, it would be interesting to find out, but we soon discovered that she has a talent for cooking. And this skill then offers her the potential of better wages, a greater place in society, a greater place in a household rather than just an everyday maid. It gives her a sense of pride, I suppose, and it allows her, key to this story, to start working in a number of prestigious households. Why do I feel like she's a cook that doesn't wash her hands? Okay, so whose household does she go into? Well, she's in and out of a few, which of course is part of the problem.

And we'll talk about some of her journeys in a bit. Are they all falling ill after she's cooked for them? They are. Spoilers. But the family that I want to concentrate on today are the Warrens, because this is where things start to unravel for everybody. OK, so fast forward a little bit now. Mary's very much established as a cook. It's 1906.

She is employed by the Warren family in a house that they've rented for the summer and then into the winter as well, actually, of 1906 at Oyster Bay on Long Island. She is paid $45 a month, decent wage. And in the household we have Charles Henry Warren. He was a banker, his wife and their five children, of course several servants as well. So this is a wealthy household. The Warrens have money. They are well-to-do. And Mary, good old Mary from County Tyrone is slapped bang in the middle of them and she is providing food and sustenance for them. I do have a description of Mary from around that time. Would you like to hear it? No, skip it please.

Okay, no. And that's the end of this episode once more. Go on then, I'll listen. So this is taken by somebody who investigates Mary later, a guy called George Soper, we'll come back to him. It's not an unbiased source, of course, but just to give you an image of what the woman looked like, so we can place her in this kind of polite, upper middle class American household. I would like an American accent for this. Well, you can do it yourself. I charge more for American accents. Charge more for American accents. So Soper says, I first saw Mary Mallon 32 years ago.

That is in 1907. So the year after, we're talking about the Warren household. She was then about 40 years of age and at the height of her physical and mental faculties. I love that. At 40, she's at the height of her physical and mental faculties. She was five feet six inches tall,

a blonde with clear blue eyes, a healthy color and a somewhat determined mouth and jaw. Mary had a good figure and might have been called athletic, had she not been a little too heavy. All right, George, calm down. Yeah. All right, George, do one. I'm going to call her athletic. She prided herself on her strength and endurance, and at the time and for many years thereafter, never spared herself in the exercise of it. Go on, Mary. Nothing was so distinctive about her as her walk, unless it was her mind. The two had a peculiarity in common. Those who knew her best in the long years of her custody

said Mary walked more like a man than a woman, and that her mind had a distinctly masculine character also. Doesn't that endear you to her? I like Mary. Well, first of all, George can get in the absolute bin immediately. But that aside, yeah, she's a sporty 40 year old, tall, elegant woman. She's blonde. She's got whatever a determined mouth and jaw is. She's obviously clever. Yeah, I like her. Yeah, right. Like, I'm like, go on. She seems like a bit of a ball breaker. And I'm here for it. Like, yeah. Anyway, despite that, six of the 11 members of the Warren household

soon developed typhoid fever. Okay, so she was spending a little bit too much time doing her exercise and a little bit, not too much time, washing her hands and preparing food in a hygienic way. You got it. Yeah, so I suppose we shouldn't be laughing at people getting typhoid, but you know, they're all dead now, it's fine. But as we said, those symptoms, those symptoms included high fever, severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, and that distinctive rash is coming out in some of these cases. So I suppose as well you would see the rash and you would you would know what that was in this period, right? You would. But can I also tell you who would have known what this was? Because she would have seen it a million times. Not quite. Is Mary. Mary must have been like,

again, here, lads, these lot have got the rash now as well. Do you know what I mean? This isn't the first household that this has happened in. I'm just giving you this example. She's like everywhere I go, people get this weird rash and then the diarrhea. And I'm grand. I'm fine. Not so weird. Anyway, off I go to go for a jog. ["The Last Post-Credit Scene"] Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you.

From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at OnePeloton.ca. Palaton at OnePalaton.ca. Where can I get help hiring people with disabilities? There are hundreds of thousands of Canadians with disabilities who are ready to work, and many local organizations are available to help you find qualified candidates

and make your workplace more accessible and inclusive. Visit Canada.ca slash right here to connect with one near you today. A message from the Government of Canada. Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you, live. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on

and what that means for you and for Canada. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. Download the free CBC News app or visit cbcnews.ca So shall I give you a little bit more detail about what's happening in that Warren household and what they do? Summer, 1906. Oyster Bay, Long Island. The heat clings like a second skin, the air heavy with the scent of the sea and the quiet hum of crickets. Inside the Warren family summer

home chaos brews beneath a facade of coastal tranquillity. It begins innocuously. A fever here, a stomach ache there. Within days, the symptoms escalate. The youngest daughter, pale and weak, lies motionless in her bed. The cook, Mary Mallon, watches from the kitchen door, her sharp eyes scanning the room before she turns back to knead bread, her hands deft and steady.

Typhoid fever lingers in whispers across the city, but in this quiet seaside retreat, such an outbreak is unthinkable. Six months after the outbreak was over, George Soper was summoned by the Warrens. Now, Soper is a sanitarian by trade. He begins by suspecting an old woman who lived on the beach and brought shellfish to the house.

Then he investigates the well, the overhead tank, the cesspool, the privy, the manure on the lawn, the food supplies, the bathing and sanitary conditions of the neighboring property. Soper examined every faucet, every plate, every drain, but the source of infection continued to elude him until he moved to his next consideration. If something in the house had not spread the disease, perhaps someone had. After examining all possible iterations of infection,

Soper's attention was drawn to one Mary Mallon. The cook who had, in the face of this dramatic outbreak, already left the Warrens employ. So Soper hunts Mary down, tracing her movements

from family to family, outbreak to outbreak. At first, the details are maddeningly ordinary. Mary is a hard worker, a skilled cook, moving from wealthy household to household with glowing references. But in her wake, sickness follows like a shadow. In one home, two children were lost. In another, a young maid confined to a hospital bed for months. Soper's mind races, the puzzle piece is finally clicking into place.

Finding Mary Mallon is not easy. She leaves little behind but her recipes and the occasional handwritten letter and, of course, Typhoid. But Soper is relentless. One morning he finally corners the Irish woman at her then-current employer's house, his expression urgent as he laid out the facts. Mary listened. Her face a mask of disbelief and indignation. Well, she denied everything, of course. Her voice rising in anger. Typhoid. Her. Impossible. She has never been sick a day in her life. Soper presses on, his words sharp and unyielding. He speaks of samples, tests and laboratories, but Mary will not relent. In a sudden burst of fury, she grabs a carving fork and waves it in his direction. Soper retreats,

but he is still undeterred. He vows to return, and when he does, he will not be alone. Mary, Mary. Okay, I mean, it's suddenly very unfunny, isn't it? The spread of the disease and these children dying in some cases and everyone becoming so gravely ill. It's so fascinating as well because of course this disease doesn't distinguish between the social classes and so when a household is stricken, the servants are ill, the master and mistress of the house are ill, everyone in that property gets sick with these symptoms. And I suppose Mary is an interesting and anxiety inducing figure then because she is moving from household to household, dismantling these hierarchies and the way that these middle-class American homes operate, the spaces where everyone is assigned to and the routines and the behaviours that they are expected to perform all fall apart

because of the illness. And then Mary herself walks away apparently scot-free. So she's going from household to household and I suppose her employment is terminated at these places because everyone's too sick for her to cook the food for and therefore she's not needed or, and she's still getting these glowing references. People are still pleased with her work. Oh, yeah, no, she's never dismissed. She walks away. And this is what lets me down about her a little bit. This is where she starts to become an interesting, more complex figure, I think, than just this kind of athletic, robust, intelligent, masculine woman. L. Do you think she knows that she's spreading the disease?

B. Yeah, I do. L. Do you? B. I do. Yeah, because the pattern is she leaves abruptly after outbreaks begin. So there is a pattern. Listen, that's not really provable, but the, that she knew, I mean, but the pattern to me suggests that she knew because she disappears from the Warrens very quickly after the outbreak begins. You know, she's not affected, other people are affected, and then she just takes herself. And there is this pattern, as I say, of leaving once an outbreak occurs with other families and it becomes a hallmark of her work history. So I do think by the time we get to the Warrens, she's aware that this is somehow,

somehow linked to her. I'm not sure she probably has a concept of how, but I think she might know. LW. Tell me about Sopa then and then that interaction when he catches up with her and puts it to her that she's caused all this carnage and sickness and she gets a carving knife out right? And attacks him with a carving knife? I think that's what you said. Forks, yeah. Oh, okay. Still potentially a dangerous weapon. So who is this person? Why is he so determined to catch her? And it's a fascinating response that she has where she gets so angry. So he's a sanitarian essentially. So this is his bread and butter.

He he's remember I talked about some of these public health campaigns that were being run at the time. So this is very much Soper's daily business. He is trying to curb a spread of disease. He's not necessarily I will get, you know, to give him his Jews. It never feels like he's after Mary. He's after the typhoid. It just so happens to be being spread by Mary. Does that make sense? Like, and he will pursue that relentlessly nonetheless and therefore her relentlessly.

He's you know if she's strong willed and defined so is he in his in his own way he basically tracks her down through a man she's been seeing actually at one point. actually at one point. Interestingly enough, the rooms that Soper finds him in, this particular man, are dirty and squalid. So, you know, Mary's living in these houses, but we do get an impression that it's not necessarily always the most hygienic places that she's been, or practices that she's been engaging in, as you've kind of been hinting. And that because she belongs to a different social class and an immigrant community, yes, she's living in these spaces of relative comfort and luxury and sanitation in these newly built homes, but then she is also interacting with a community that's living in decidedly less salubrious and healthy conditions through no fault of their own, just the circumstances that they find themselves in, I guess. And she has access to these communities again after she leaves the Warrens, because she goes back to New York City, and that's where she starts resuming work. And of course, Soper is able to trace outbreaks in these later positions as well. So he really knows he's on her heels. And he when he does catch up with her, we know what happened, because I said that in the second narrative there. He says he's coming back and he does days later.

And this is the first time she's arrested. But this time he brings health officials and policemen. And there's a court order. Now, Mary has no choice here, but still she resists arrest, despite all of this formality. So she goes into hiding for hours. She's been preparing for this a whole life. That's what the press ups and the running's been for.

It's what the carving fork is for. Like she is ready to go on the run. But Kabir, she climbs out of the basement window and escapes. I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised. And they have to search for her in the snow for hours. So, you know, this is, and it's, oh God, it's a piece of her skirt that eventually gives her, well, a piece of cloth, actually, a piece of gingham peeking out from a closet door that that gives her away.

But she fights them. She physically fights them then even then. No. And I have to use force to subdue her and to get her into this ambulance. So she I also think like, yes, it makes her very likable, but it also speaks. I think the fact that she fights speaks to this idea that she may have known. I don't know why. Do you think? LR. Yes. Or that she's just, she's probably witnessed all of this prejudice around her towards Irish immigrants. And she's probably thinking, how dare you come for me? I've come

to this country, I'm working really hard. Everyone of my employers likes me. Yes, they keep getting in on some of them are dying, but I'm taking care of myself. I'm doing my work. Everything is fine. How dare you target me in this way? But yeah, I mean, it's too much of a pattern. And as you say, she presumably would have witnessed the effects of typhoid possibly in Ireland and certainly by the time she gets to New York, she and maybe on the boat on the way over, you know, she would have known this disease was terrible. And if she's the common factor, I wonder if she is starting to feel some guilt. But the fact that she fights them is... It doesn't seem like she is, does it? It's kind of a bit like she's going, guys, I need to earn money, you know? Like, it does very much speak to that, right? Like, I can't not earn money. I need to earn money, so I'm going to keep going. Yeah, she's determined. And she's, I mean, she's sort of a terrible person for spreading the disease,

but yeah, you can't help but kind of, she is a little bit enjoyable. Yeah, I know, I know, there's something, isn't there? So she is arrested for some kind of offence against sanitary law, which in and of itself is really interesting. What happens next to her? Well, she's moved around a little bit between different hospitals and she's, you know, examined and all of these kind of things. Initially, she's at Willard Parker Hospital, at which point George Soper says to her, listen, I'm going to write

a book about you. And I'm going to give you half of the prophets. Now, we don't know what the response was. He never did. But we don't know what Mary's response to that was. But it's just interesting that, you know, early part of the 20th century, the land of hopes and dreams, America, here he is going, I see profit in this, you know what I mean? So he's looking to sell the story, I guess. And also that the threat of disease and the perceived threat of immigrants can be boiled down and distilled into this one woman and this one narrative that the public will then buy and consume. It's sort of fascinating that she, I suppose he sees that he will make money, but also that he will make her into a scapegoat.

That she is single-handedly spreading typhoid around the East Coast of America, right? That she is a sort of pin-pointable vector of disease is quite fascinating. Yeah. Well, a vector of disease she is, and as a result she has to be moved from Willard Parker Hospital because they think it's too dangerous to have her there. So that's when they move her to North Brother Island, which I was speaking about at the start of this episode, in the 1880ss and she's taken to the Riverside Hospital, which is a quarantine hospital specifically for New Yorkers with smallpox, tuberculosis, and other diseases. She's given a one-room cottage though, and she's kept under quarantine in that one-room cottage. They test her for typhoid bacteria and that's where they discover that she's an asymptomatic carrier. But she writes letters protesting her treatment.

She feels unjustly blamed, she says, and ostracised. And you can hear in some of those letters, which I'll read you one now. And by the way, she's confined for about three years, 1907 to 1910. Three years. So she's in prison, essentially. It feels like that, doesn't it? So this is one of the things she said in a letter in 1909. So kind of in the middle of that quarantine. She says, I have been in fact a peep show for everybody. Even the interns had to come to see me and ask about the facts already

known to the whole wide world. The tuberculosis men would say, there she is, the kidnapped woman. Dr. Park has had me illustrated in Chicago. I wonder how the said Dr. William H. Park would like to be insulted and put in the journal and call him or his wife typhoid William Park. So even even in this first arrest, she's already become known as typhoid Mary. She's also pretty fighty in her letters, right? That's quite a sort of put down.

It's interesting. Yes, she feels that she's become this fighty in her letters, right? That's quite a sort of put down. It's interesting, yeah, she feels that she's become this voyeuristic attraction and one who has become nationally infamous. She's been illustrated in the newspapers, she's been written about everything. She talks there about it's a fact already known to the whole wide wide world she says, that she has spread this disease, must have been a very lonely and strange platform to occupy. And the whole time being a prisoner, being kept in this way, it certainly wouldn't have been the life she'd imagined when she set off age 15 or whatever she was from Ireland. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you.

From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push, find your power.

Peloton, visit Peloton at OnePeloton.ca I'm hiring, but where can I find potential candidates? Hundreds of thousands of Canadians with disabilities are ready and eager to work. Help create an inclusive workplace that benefits everyone. Find the tools and resources to help you hire persons with disabilities at Canada.ca slash right here. It's interesting then, though, that in 1910 they decide to release her and I'm wondering what's behind that whether it's because they don't think she's still not carrying they know she's still a carrier but what they have they put a condition on her release and that is that she should never ever ever work as a cook again. So that's the that's the condition of a race. I mean, I think that's fair. And surely no one would hire her as one, even if she tried. No, I mean, if you're going to show up and your name is Mary Mallon,

they'll be like, not not you, Typhoid. Get out. Thanks very much. Absolutely not. We've seen your picture in the paper. We're not that hungry. OK, so what other job can she possibly do that isn't going to be a risk? So initially she takes a job as a laundress, but again, would you wear the clothes laundered by a carrier of typhoid? Well, I guess you're not ingesting them. Do you know what I mean? Like,

in terms of the gastro implications of typhoid. Yeah, I don't tend to lick my clothes. No, but like the pay and status aren't good enough for her. I can. That's very it's very appealing about Mary, whether she knows or she doesn't know this kind of going, no, I want my place in the world. And I know what I'm capable of. I know I'm worth. But as a result of that, she is determined once again to regain that independence that she has as a cook. So she starts calling herself a different name. Yeah. Yeah. So she becomes Marie Breshoff, sometimes Mrs. Brown, and now she's cooking in hotels and restaurants and sanitoria, would you imagine. So for much bigger crowds. Yes. Oh, my God. Mary, no. Okay. Now she is fully

to blame. Like that is shocking. Yeah. Now she, but you see, this is also one of the reasons why I think she was doing it before as well. I think she knew, do you know what I mean? Yeah. She doesn't care. No, certainly not the second time around. Probably not the first time, right? But in a way, that's quite in line with the American dream of the early 20th century, right? Like you pursue the career and the ambition that you want, you can trample whoever you like. If you're an immigrant to that country, you can make a life for yourself, do it whatever it takes, even if it is transmitting a deadly disease to at this point, presumably hundreds of people. Like, she's living her American dream. It's not great, but she it's dark. She's living it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I mean, needless to say, like, obviously typhoid spreads then again, like hugely. And the next time we encounter her is in 1915. So she's had a good five years of the old outbreaks. And she is this time, oh God, we find her in a hospital in Manhattan. As a cook. Hospital. Yes, yes. And 25 people are infected with typhoid. And guess who

happens to be called in to investigate? Her old nemesis. Her old nemesis George Sober is called in and guess who he immediately, can you imagine Mary's face when he comes through that because she won't have known he was- She's reaching for the carving fork as he comes in the kitchen. Yeah, as he pushes through those doors and she's like, oh, God, here we go again. And so she's arrested. This time she doesn't resist.

And she goes back to the island. Oh, wow. She's like Napoleon going to Santolina. Just she needs, she's the enemy of the island. Oh wow. She's like Napoleon going to Sathelena. She's the enemy of the world. She needs to be put in an isolation unit. Okay, so she goes back to North Brother Island. Is that it for her? Because I mean, she's really proved herself. She can't be trusted. She is, I mean, she's a bloody nightmare. We're not on her side anymore. So we're not poor old Mary. Mary could have been so much more apart from a disease spreading vector.

But anyway, look, this is it for her essentially. But she lives on the island then for over two decades. So she's kept there working in the laboratory. She occasionally is allowed to cook for herself. Nobody's coming around for dinner. Absolutely. No, no, no, no. She has a dog, Rex, as I said, I think at the beginning. And she has a few cats.

Hey, do dogs not get typhoid then? Oh. She's there then until 19... Well, in 1932, she's still there. And this is where it all starts to kind of take a turn for her worse. And then she suffers a stroke and she's partially paralysed as a result.

Six years later then in 1938 on November the 11th she dies of pneumonia. She's 69. And the autopsy reveals of course that the typhoid bacteria was actually in her gallbladder. So that was where it was coming from and that again again, once more confirmed her role as a, as a carrier. It's a really sad story. It is, isn't it? Yeah. It's really sad. You know, I mean, her behaviors, it's not brilliant, but she had all this ambition and this hope, age 15, leaving her home, traveling across a vast ocean, starting afresh, learning a skill, finding employment, finding her

place in the world, resisting it when people tried to pull her down from that. She obviously was an impressively intelligent person, a very physical presence, a very memorable human being. very memorable human being. And surely as well, there were thousands of other anonymous carriers walking around in life free to do as they pleased, unaware that they were spreading the disease. So in some way she's unlucky that she was caught out and that she then had to live under these conditions in this enforced isolation. It's, I do feel sorry for her. It's tragic. Yeah, I do as well. I just love her defiance. But I hate her reluctance to admit or to take responsibility for the fact that at a certain point, certainly we know she knows she's spreading

this disease and she just won't take that or can't financially or whatever, whatever the case may be. But can you imagine? I mean, I've heard the name Typhoid Mary before we did this episode, but I'd never heard of Mary Mallon. And this is really deliberate because it's in 1909, as Mary says herself in that letter I read earlier, that's when she starts to be depicted. And that's her legacy forever. You know, like that really has stuck with her and just kind of as a parting thought I've given you a picture because we love an old picture here on after dark and it's an article that is detailing typhoid mary from 1909 june the 20th this image first appeared in the new york american so maddie she's called in the article most dangerous woman in America, but can you give us a brief description of what is portrayed here?

Okay, so it's a newspaper article and the columns of the article are sort of stepped going down across the page to make room for this illustration of Mary herself. Mary herself. She's quite an imposing physical presence. She is stood in profile over a hob and she's got a skillet and she's breaking what are supposed to be eggs into the pan, but they're actually miniature skulls. She's dropping in skulls and the vapors, the smell, the scent from the cooking is wafting up towards her and her mouth, but also I suppose could be interpreted as going the other way, that she's breathing all of her germs and disease onto the cooking. I will say she's not blonde in this image, so they've got that wrong. And it's interesting the way her body is portrayed, given that earlier description of her, that she's depicted as quite feminine here. She's got a very

small waist. She's a very idealized, very neat, beautiful hair and these gorgeous Edwardian rolls. And I suppose that is one of the fascinations with her in the media, that there is a cook like her in every middle class home in America in this period. She is silent and deadly. She is one of the masses of immigrants coming to the country and for a lot of wealthy people probably indistinguishable from the crowd of other women working in that profession in their homes. It's really grim. Her face is slightly uplit. She looks quite villainous if you start to really contemplate her, but innocuous at first glance. The headline says Typhoid Mary and underneath there's a subheading, the extraordinary predicament of Mary Mallon, a prisoner of New York's quarantine hospital. So there's a real, everything's sort of

elevated in terms of hyperbole, everything's extraordinary, everything's miraculous and terrifying. And she's already passed into legend. And you say this is in the paper in 1909, at this point, she's already gained this infamy. Yeah, fascinating. I mean, if you were to look for, if you're trying to end on a positive, right, let's, well, it's not quite that positive, but I'll start with a positive, that this case, Mary's case, helps to establish a real and critical understanding of healthy characters of typhoid, and therefore this moment in time is a critical breakthrough in epidemiological understanding. However, Mary is formally held responsible for infecting 53 people, right, with typhoid, and three of them are fatal infections, so potentially responsible for the death of three

people. I'm surprised it's not more, honestly. I mean, obviously any number is terrible. But well, there is a theory that says her casualty list is most likely far, far larger than this. And then some speculation that it was Mary. Oh, gosh, that caused a 1903 epidemic in Ithaca, New York, and that this had 1400 victims. So she was she was patient zero. No, no, no, not that she was there speculation that she was just to be really clear about that. It's definitely been linked to her, though. So we don't know for sure, but that could be one thousand four hundred victims there. So, yeah, I said we tried to end on an upbeat note and we didn't.

The death of one thousand four400 people. So that's as upbeat as Mary Mallon's history is getting. Yeah, I don't, I mean, I can't think of anything positive to say. I suppose the positive takeaway from the story is, as you mentioned, the advancement of medical science and understanding in terms of how this disease spread. Nobody's a winner here, though. Nobody's a winner. No, you're right. Nobody's a winner here though. Nobody's a winner. No, you're right. Nobody's a winner. Yeah, it's a, it's an interesting one. So there you go. Now, Michelle, there's your episode on Typhoid Mary.

Yeah. You can stop asking for it now, Michelle. We will take your other suggestions though. Right. Well, I don't know about you, Anthony, but I'm off to thoroughly wash my hands. Thank you for listening to After Dark. If you enjoyed this story, I don't think I did, but if you enjoyed it and you want to hear more about the dark history of disease, then as previously mentioned, we have episodes on the Black Death and the Plague Village of Eam, and we are very open to further suggestions. So let us know. You can get in touch by emailing afterdarkhistoryhit.com. You can find our other episodes wherever you get your podcasts. And please, please, please

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