Typhoid Mary

From 1900 to 1907 Mary Mallon worked as a cook in the New York City area. In 1900, Mary worked in Mamaroneck, New York, where, within two weeks of her employment, residents developed typhoid fever. 

In 1901 she moved to Manhattan, where members of the family for whom she worked developed fevers and diarrhea, and the laundress died. 

Mallon then went to work for a lawyer, until seven of the eight household members developed typhoid.

In 1906, she took a position in Oyster Bay, Long Island, and within two weeks ten of eleven family members were hospitalized with typhoid. 

She changed jobs again, and similar occurrences happened in three more households.

She worked as a cook for the family of a wealthy New York banker, Charles Henry Warren. When the Warrens rented a house in Oyster Bay for the summer of 1906, Mallon came along. From August 27 to September 3, six of the eleven people in the family came down with typhoid fever. The disease at that time was "unusual" in Oyster Bay, according to three medical doctors who practiced there.

Mary was subsequently hired by other families, and outbreaks followed her.

Mary Mallon was the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with typhoid fever. She was presumed to have infected some 50 people, three of whom died, over the course of her career as a cook. 

She was forcibly isolated twice by public health authorities and died after a total of nearly three decades in isolation.

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