← After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
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- [00:00]
Anthony Delaney
Hi, we're your hosts Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling, and if you would like After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal ad free and get early access.
- [00:10]
Maddy Pelling
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.
- [00:21]
Anthony Delaney
Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:27]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [00:55]
Grainger Representative
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- [01:26]
Mint Mobile Representative
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- [01:51]
Maddy Pelling
Payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only taxes and fees, Extra Speed slower above 40GB Details.
- [02:07]
Anthony Delaney
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 quite caution? Well, that's the history I'd like to share with you today on After Dark. Myths, misdeeds and the paranormal.
- [04:43]
Maddy Pelling
Hello, and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie.
- [04:46]
Anthony Delaney
And I'm Anthony.
- [04:48]
Maddy Pelling
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 a history that I'd ever heard of before. If you are interested in histories of plagues, epidemics, general ill health, we have done episodes on the Black Death and the plague village of Eyam, 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 did she rise to such infamy? Anthony, why this history? How did you come across Typhoid Mary?
- [05:36]
Anthony Delaney
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.
- [05:50]
Maddy Pelling
All right, Michelle, calm down.
- [05:53]
Anthony Delaney
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. She's a. She's an interesting character.
- [06:09]
Maddy Pelling
All right, so give me some context. We are in the late 19th century, right? To begin with, yeah.
- [06:16]
Anthony Delaney
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 population has never recovered since then. There are many throes 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.
- [07:13]
Maddy Pelling
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, et cetera is all very limited. And public health, public disease, public crises are. Are coming into the spotlight more and more, aren't they? There are some pretty grim diseases spreading.
- [07:44]
Anthony Delaney
There are. We have epidemics of cholera, we have. Tuberculosis is plaguing urban centers, 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 have seemed a little condescending or something at the time, but, God, 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.
- [08:22]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. And apparently there's people out there not doing that. Wash your bloody hands.
- [08:26]
Anthony Delaney
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.
- [08:33]
Maddy Pelling
And also, I suppose, the lack of understanding about germs and how bacteria spreads.
- [08:38]
Anthony Delaney
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 miasma. We've heard about that before, haven't we? About, like, there's bad air. We're not quite sure what's going. It's not just Victorian. We have it in Georgian times, we have it in Tudor 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. Well, I've heard typhoid an awful lot, but, like, 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, diarrhea or constipation, abdominal pain, cramping, I suppose. And there is, I suppose the characteristic thing is a rash. And so if this goes untreated, then typhoid can very much be fatal.
- [09:41]
Maddy Pelling
I don't like it.
- [09:42]
Anthony Delaney
No. Well, listen, nobody's asking you to, Maddie. Nobody's asking to run out and get yourself a little bit of typhoid.
- [09:48]
Maddy Pelling
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 really. So that's horrendous. Presumably, you're in, you know, 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.
- [10:38]
Anthony Delaney
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, that 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 blee, 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 very much still prevalent.
- [11:22]
Maddy Pelling
And so how does it spread? Is it just people living in close quarters? Is it just the lack of preventative measures? I mean, it sounds like something everyone would want to avoid getting. So what is going on here? How is it spreading?
- [11:34]
Anthony Delaney
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 that is through, 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.
- [12:57]
Maddy Pelling
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 neighbourhoods, all of that, certain communities. Tell me about Mary Mallon.
- [13:14]
Anthony Delaney
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.
- [14:11]
Maddy Pelling
And what is she going to do when she gets there? What's her plan? Because I assume most people, 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?
- [14:35]
Anthony Delaney
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 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, 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.
- [15:11]
Maddy Pelling
Why do I feel like she's a cook that doesn't wash her hands? Oh, okay, so whose household does she go into?
- [15:19]
Anthony Delaney
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.
- [15:26]
Maddy Pelling
But are they all falling ill after she's cooked for them?
- [15:29]
Anthony Delaney
They are, but the family. Yeah, but the family that I want to concentrate on today are the Warrens, because this is where things start to unravel for everybody. Okay, 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?
- [16:25]
Maddy Pelling
No, skip it, please.
- [16:26]
Anthony Delaney
Okay. And that's the end of this episode. Once more.
- [16:29]
Maddy Pelling
Go on, then, I'll listen.
- [16:31]
Anthony Delaney
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.
- [16:46]
Maddy Pelling
I would like an American accent for this.
- [16:49]
Anthony Delaney
Well, you can do it yourself. I 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 5ft 6 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.
- [17:28]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, all right, George, do what?
- [17:30]
Anthony Delaney
I'm gonna 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.
- [18:02]
Maddy Pelling
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.
- [18:19]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, right. Like I'm like. Go on. She seems Like a bit of a ball breaker and I'm here for it. Like, do it.
- [18:24]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah.
- [18:25]
Anthony Delaney
Anyway, despite that, six of the 11 members of the Warren household soon developed typhoid fever.
- [18:33]
Maddy Pelling
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.
- [18:41]
Anthony Delaney
You got it? Yeah. 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.
- [18:58]
Maddy Pelling
So I suppose that's why you would see the rash and you would, you would know what that was in this period, right?
- [19:05]
Anthony Delaney
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, ah, here lads, these lot. I've got the rash now as well. Do you know what I mean? Like, this isn't the first household that this has happened in. I'm just giving you this example.
- [19:23]
Maddy Pelling
She's like, everywhere I go, people get this weird rash and then the diarrhea.
- [19:28]
Anthony Delaney
And I'm grand, I'm fine.
- [19:29]
Maddy Pelling
Not so weird. Anyway, off I go to go for a jog.
- [19:45]
Ryan Reynolds
It's Jumpstart January at Whole Foods Market. Fine sales on supplements, no antibiotics ever. Grass fed ground beef, sustainable wild caught sockeye salmon and more. Feel good favorites like their prepared foods. Rotisserie chicken, a great choice for busy weeknights. And with Whole Foods Market's strict sourcing standards, you can feel good about what you're buying. Boost your wellness routine with Jumpstart January savings at Whole Foods Market. Terms apply.
- [20:15]
Grainger Representative
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- [20:46]
Anthony Delaney
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Maddy Pelling
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- [21:05]
Anthony Delaney
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- [21:16]
Mint Mobile Representative
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- [21:40]
Maddy Pelling
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- [21:44]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [21:54]
Anthony Delaney
So shall I Shall I give you a little bit more Please 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 tranquility. It begins innocuously a fever here, a stomach ache there. But 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 neighbouring 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 employed. 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 pieces 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. He's a 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. Sopera retreats, but he is still undeterred. He vows to return, and when he does, he will not be alone.
- [25:40]
Maddy Pelling
Oh, Mary, Mary, Mary. Okay. I mean, it's suddenly very unfunny, isn't it, the, 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 behaviors 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?
- [26:56]
Anthony Delaney
Oh yeah, no, she, 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.
- [27:12]
Maddy Pelling
Do you think she knows that she's spreading the disease?
- [27:14]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, I do.
- [27:15]
Maddy Pelling
Do you?
- [27:16]
Anthony Delaney
I do, yeah. Because the pattern is she leaves abruptly after outbreaks begin. So there is a pattern. Listen, that's. 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.
- [27:57]
Maddy Pelling
Tell me about Soper 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. Was it a carving knife? I think that's what he said.
- [28:12]
Anthony Delaney
Forks? Yeah.
- [28:13]
Maddy Pelling
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.
- [28:24]
Anthony Delaney
So he's a sanitarian, essentially. So this is his bread and butter. 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 spread of disease. He's not necessarily, I will, you know, to give him his dues. 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. And he's, you know, if she's strong willed and defiant, so is he in his own way. He basically tracks her down through a man she's been seeing, 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.
- [29:21]
Maddy Pelling
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.
- [29:45]
Anthony Delaney
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's able to trace outbreaks in these later positions as well. So he really knows he's on her heels. And 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.
- [30:24]
Maddy Pelling
She's been preparing for this her 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.
- [30:32]
Anthony Delaney
But Kabir, she climbs out of the basement window and it's 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 imperial 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 they 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? Yeah.
- [31:09]
Maddy Pelling
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. I've come to this country, I'm working really hard. Everyone of my employers likes me. Yes, they keep getting in and 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. 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 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.
- [31:55]
Anthony Delaney
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 gonna keep going.
- [32:05]
Maddy Pelling
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.
- [32:14]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, I know, I know. There's something, isn't there?
- [32:17]
Maddy Pelling
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?
- [32:25]
Anthony Delaney
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.
- [32:57]
Maddy Pelling
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 pinpointable vector of disease is quite fascinating.
- [33:29]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, well, a vector of disease she is. And as a result she has to be moved from Willard Parker Hospital because they, 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 1880s. And she's taken to the Riverside Hospital, which is a quarantine hospital specifically for New Yorkers with smallpox, tuberculosis and other diseases. She is 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 ostracized. 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.
- [34:18]
Maddy Pelling
Three years. So she's in prison essentially.
- [34:21]
Anthony Delaney
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, 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.
- [35:01]
Maddy Pelling
She's also pretty fighty in her letters. Right? That's quite a sort of put down. It's interesting, yes. She's, 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 every, you know, she talks there about. She's, she's, it's a fact already known to the world, the whole 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.
- [35:59]
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- [36:27]
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- [36:52]
Maddy Pelling
$45 up front payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only taxes and fees, extra speed slower above 40gb.
- [36:57]
Anthony Delaney
Details. 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 her release.
- [37:29]
Maddy Pelling
I mean, I think that's fair. And surely no one would hire her as one even if she tried, right?
- [37:34]
Anthony Delaney
No, I mean, if you're going to show up and your name is Mary Mallon, they'll be like, not you, typhoid. Get out. Thanks very much.
- [37:41]
Maddy Pelling
Absolutely not. We've seen your picture in the paper. We're not that hungry. Okay, so what other job can she possibly do that isn't going to be a risk?
- [37:49]
Anthony Delaney
So initially she takes a job as a laundress.
- [37:51]
Maddy Pelling
But again, would you wear the clothes laundered by a carrier of typhoid?
- [37:58]
Anthony Delaney
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 guess it's safer. No, but like the pay and status aren't good enough for her. Again, 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 what 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, she becomes Marie Breschoff, sometimes Mrs. Brown. And now she's cooking in hotels and restaurants and sanatoria.
- [38:40]
Maddy Pelling
Would you imagine so for much bigger crowds.
- [38:43]
Anthony Delaney
Yes. Oh my God.
- [38:45]
Maddy Pelling
Mary. No. Okay, now she is fully to blame. Like, that is shocking.
- [38:49]
Anthony Delaney
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?
- [38:54]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. She doesn't care.
- [38:56]
Anthony Delaney
No, certainly not the second time around. Probably not the first time. Right.
- [39:00]
Maddy Pelling
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's dark. It's dark.
- [39:28]
Anthony Delaney
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.
- [39:43]
Maddy Pelling
Oh, God.
- [39:44]
Anthony Delaney
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 this old nemesis, her old nemesis, George Soper 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 coming.
- [40:10]
Maddy Pelling
He's reaching for the carving fork as.
- [40:12]
Anthony Delaney
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.
- [40:24]
Maddy Pelling
Oh, wow. She's like Napoleon going to St. Helena. Just, she needs. 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.
- [40:48]
Anthony Delaney
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.
- [41:05]
Maddy Pelling
Nobody's coming around for dinner. Absolutely.
- [41:06]
Anthony Delaney
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, she's 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 paralyzed as a result. Six years later, then in. In 1938, on November 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, once more confirmed her role as a. As a carrier.
- [41:49]
Maddy Pelling
It's a really sad story.
- [41:51]
Anthony Delaney
It is, isn't it?
- [41:52]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, it's really sad. You know, I mean, her behavior's. 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. And, you know, she obviously was an impressively intelligent person, a very sort of physical presence, a 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 ways, she's unlucky that she was caught out and that she then was, you know, had to live under these conditions in this enforced isolation. I do feel sorry for her. It's tragic.
- [42:52]
Anthony Delaney
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 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?
- [43:52]
Maddy Pelling
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. And 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 vapours, the smell, the scent from the cooking is sort of 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 sort of idealized. She's got very neat, beautiful hair and these most gorgeous Edwardian roles. 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. She looks, her face is kind of slightly uplit. She looks quite villainous if you start to really sort of contemplate her, but innocuous at first glance. And 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, you know, sort of elevated in terms of hyperbole. Everything's extraordinary, everything' you know, sort of 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.
- [46:07]
Anthony Delaney
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 is. 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.
- [46:43]
Maddy Pelling
I'm surprised it's not more, honestly. I mean that's obviously any number is terrible, but.
- [46:48]
Anthony Delaney
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's 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 1,400 victims there. So, yeah, I said we tried to end on an upbeat note and we didn't. The death of 1,400 people. So that's as upbeat as Mary Mallon's history is getting.
- [47:31]
Maddy Pelling
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.
- [47:47]
Anthony Delaney
Nobody's a winner. No, you're right. Nobody's a winner. Yeah, it's an interesting one. So there you go now, Michelle, there's your episode on Typhoid Mary.
- [47:55]
Maddy Pelling
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, 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 Eyam and we are very open to further suggestions. So let us know. You can get in touch by emailing after dark historyhit.com you can find our other episodes wherever you get your podcasts. And please, please, please recommend us to your friends and family. But also leave us a five star review. It helps other people to discover.
- [48:46]
Ryan Reynolds
It's Jumpstart January at Whole Foods Market. Find sales on supplements, no antibiotics ever, grass fed ground beef, sustainable wild caught sockeye salmon and more. Feel good favorites like their prepared foods rotisserie chicken, a great choice for busy weeknights. And with Whole Foods Market's strict sourcing standards, you can feel good about what you're buying. Boost your wellness routine with Jumpstart Jam January savings at Whole Foods Market. Terms apply.
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