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A PBS Nova Episode about Mary Mallon, who was known more commonly as Typhoid Mary
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00:00At the dawn of the 20th century, there is no hiding from New York City's newly powerful
00:16Department of Health. There is very little that a Board of Health cannot do in the way
00:21of interfering with personal and property rights for the protection of public health.
00:26And with good reason. The city slums are overflowing with poor immigrants. Conditions
00:33are horrific. Infectious disease is out of control.
00:37Children were dying of intestinal diseases, of diarrheas, tuberculosis, whooping cough and
00:44diphtheria were endemic.
00:47But not here. Oyster Bay, Long Island is another world altogether. A place
00:55upper-crust New Yorkers go to escape the city. But suddenly this privileged enclave becomes
01:02vulnerable. A deadly disease, typhoid fever, strikes the household of a wealthy banker.
01:10How it got here is a mystery that confounds the experts.
01:14I was disappointed. Try as I would, I could not find anything wrong.
01:21Only within the last 20 years have health officials come to understand that disease is caused by invisible
01:28microbes or germs. This knowledge will lead them to an unsuspecting Irish immigrant, a servant
01:37named Mary Mallon. They called her, I love this phrase. She is a human culture too. You know,
01:44there's this pestilential entity that must be stopped. Get out of my kitchen!
01:49Miss Mallon, please. Get out of my kitchen!
01:51We call her Typhoid Mary. Her story will make history and raise challenging questions we still face today.
01:59Keep going!
02:00It is the prime dilemma in public health. How do you protect the health of the masses of the people
02:09if it is jeopardized by an individual whose liberty you are thinking of taking away?
02:14I am an innocent human being. The contention that I am a perpetual menace in the spread of typhoid
02:22germs is not true. An innocent victim or a murderous villain? The tragic story of the most dangerous woman in
02:34America right now on NOVA.
02:55Corporate funding for NOVA is provided by Sprint and Microsoft.
03:00additional funding is provided by the Park Foundation, dedicated to education and quality television.
03:12This program has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities,
03:17expanding America's understanding for more than 30 years of who we were, who we are, and who we will be.
03:24And by the National Library of Medicine. Major funding for NOVA is also provided by the
03:30Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by PBS viewers like you. Thank you.
03:45August 1906. In this luxurious vacation home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, a young girl,
03:59Margaret Warren, is gravely ill with typhoid fever. She has the best care, but without a cure,
04:08all anyone can do is try to bring down her fever.
04:13This is the last thing Charles Warren, banker to the Vanderbilts, expected
04:17when he rented a house for his family in this exclusive seaside resort.
04:23This was a family that brought servants with them and came to summer out on the island.
04:30And this individual family, no one else in Oyster Bay, but this individual family
04:34was struck by typhoid fever, and six members of the household came down with the disease.
04:44Typhoid fever is extremely contagious. First, the youngest daughter became ill,
04:50then two maids, the mother, another daughter, and finally the gardener.
04:58How could a disease of the slums strike this wealthy community?
05:02It wasn't the sort of area that one would expect to see typhoid,
05:07which is often associated with crowded, poor neighborhoods.
05:16At the turn of the 20th century, the most crowded neighborhood in the world
05:21is New York City's Lower East Side. It's even more crowded than Calcutta.
05:26With few connections to city water or sewer, the tenements lack even basic sanitation.
05:36Infectious diseases like smallpox, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and typhoid fever kill thousands each year.
05:45Typhoid fever was a fairly common visitor in New York City and in other urban areas,
05:52especially in the 19th century and in the early part of the 20th century.
05:57In New York City alone, there were about 4,000 new cases of typhoid fever every year.
06:04The symptoms of typhoid can be severe.
06:08Weeks of fever, headache, diarrhea, and delirium.
06:13One out of ten dies of the disease.
06:15When people had typhoid fever in the early 20th century and there were no antibiotics,
06:23doctors had to just treat the symptoms.
06:28But the cause of the disease is no longer a mystery.
06:33Thirty years earlier, scientist Louis Pasteur electrified the world by proving that bacteria,
06:39microbes invisible to the naked eye, cause disease.
06:45Typhoid fever comes from Salmonella typhi, bacteria that grow in the intestinal tract
06:51and are shed in the feces.
06:55In 1892, New York City set up the country's first bacteriology laboratory devoted to public health.
07:02The new science, the new bacteriology was tremendously exciting.
07:08This focused on what can we see under the microscope?
07:11What can we do once we diagnose people with specific diseases?
07:16What can we do to prevent this from being spread to other people?
07:22In Oyster Bay, where even President Teddy Roosevelt summers,
07:26the threat of a typhoid epidemic is terrifying.
07:28Everybody started looking around for an explanation.
07:34They started looking for the usual suspects.
07:36You know, let's find the dirty, the poor, uh, you know, maybe some bad dairy,
07:42the lady on the beach who sells shellfish.
07:44It's got to be one of them.
07:47Experts are called in to investigate.
07:51They know typhoid fever is caused by contaminated food or drink.
07:54They suspect the plumbing in the house and put dye in the toilet to see if it contaminates the drinking water.
08:04It doesn't.
08:08They check the local shellfish to see if the bay is polluted with sewage.
08:12It isn't.
08:14They examine the milk supply in case it is contaminated.
08:17It, too, is free of bacteria.
08:22The source of the outbreak remains a mystery.
08:28Though the Oyster Bay victims recover, a cloud of disease hangs over the house.
08:33The family who owned the house, the Thompsons, were afraid if they didn't get to the bottom of this,
08:42they would never be able to rent their house again.
08:47That winter, the Thompsons learn about a freelance civil engineer known for his ability
08:53to track down the source of disease.
08:5737-year-old George Soper is confident and ambitious.
09:01By 1907, I had a great deal of experience with typhoid fever.
09:07As an undergraduate, I had the temerity to move typhoid patients and their families out of a house
09:12that had a long history of communicable diseases and, with the consent of the owner, burn it to the ground.
09:21George Soper was somebody who got his teeth into a problem and would not let go.
09:28He wanted to find the cause. He was not going to give up until he did. And so he was obsessed.
09:37Soper begins by reviewing the results of the earlier investigation.
09:42It's detective work. And Soper was excited about the ability now to trace diseases,
09:48to trace the disease outbreaks and to really understand how diseases like typhoid were being spread.
09:54The first investigators had done their work thoroughly.
09:58Try as I would, I could not find anything wrong.
10:03So I turned my attention to the people in the house.
10:06This gave the key to the situation.
10:10Finally, he asked the question of one of the members of the household,
10:14who else was in this house that I didn't yet talk to?
10:18And one of them remembered that they'd had a cook that summer that was no longer with the family.
10:23Knowing it takes up to three weeks after exposure to become sick with the disease,
10:30Soper uncovers his first clue.
10:32I found that the family had changed Cook's on August 4th, about three weeks before the epidemic broke out.
10:40All the patients were infected after the new Cook's arrival.
10:43The way that a cook who was infected with the typhoid bacillus would transmit the disease
10:50is that there would probably be some typhoid bacillus that they got onto their hands while they were in the bathroom.
10:58To prevent the transmission of typhoid, a lot of brushing and scrubbing was involved,
11:03meaning under the nails, no jewelry. I mean, we're talking a vigorous and abrasive scrubbing.
11:09Soper also knows the bacteria can survive on uncooked food only.
11:16On a certain Sunday, there was a dessert which she prepared,
11:20and of which everybody present was extremely fond.
11:24This was ice cream with fresh peaches cut up in it.
11:29I suppose no better way could be found for a cook to clean her hands of microbes and infect the family.
11:39The cook is a 37-year-old Irish immigrant who works for wealthy families in New York.
11:47Before God and in the eyes of decent men, my name is Mary Mallon,
11:52and I have lived a decent and upright life.
11:54Soper sets out to find the cook. The employment agency that placed her with the Warrens
12:03does not know where she is, but directs him to some of her previous employers.
12:09What he discovers astounds him.
12:12In 10 years, she is known to have worked for eight families, and in six of these, typhoid had occurred.
12:18How is this possible? Has Mary been spreading typhoid bacteria for years without ever appearing to be sick?
12:31Soper remembers reading a paper written four years earlier by German scientist Robert Koch.
12:38Koch had found a baker who was not ill, but who spread typhoid germs, a so-called healthy carrier of disease.
12:48Could this be the case with Mary Mallon?
12:52Soper had read that literature and thought he was on the cutting edge of, you know, medical science and history.
13:03If Soper is right, the Koch would be the first American identified as a healthy carrier of typhoid fever.
13:12It would be a major discovery and make his career.
13:15I think Soper is very excited by this possibility. He sees it as a scientific puzzle that he is the
13:22detective for, and he's going to sleuth out and win the prize.
13:31To prove his case, Soper needs specimens from the Koch.
13:35In March 1907, he learns Mary is working for a family on Park Avenue. Typhoid II is already in residence.
13:47A chambermaid has just been taken to the hospital, and the family's only child is in critical condition.
13:52Mary helps nurse the girl.
13:58Here you go, my darling.
14:01Oh, no.
14:02Just hold on in there.
14:05Just hold on.
14:06It was at this house that I had my first interview with Mary.
14:10I supposed she would be glad to know the truth.
14:14I thought I could count on her cooperation.
14:18Soper's account of their meeting is almost theatrical.
14:25Miss Mary Mallon?
14:26I'm Mary Mallon.
14:27Miss Mallon, my name is Dr. George Soper. I have been looking for you for quite a while.
14:31I was hired to track you down.
14:32To track me down?
14:33Yes, Miss Mallon.
14:34It appears that you are the unwitting cause of the typhoid fever outbreak at Oyster Bay last night.
14:39Are you mad?
14:39It is imperative that I get specimens from you of urine,
14:42feces, and blood to confirm my suspicion.
14:43I've never been sick a day in my life. I've never had typhoid.
14:47Miss Mallon, you contain within your body typhoid fever germs.
14:50When you visit the toilet, these germs get on your fingers.
14:53You then transmit these germs to the food.
14:55Are you suggesting that I don't wash my hands?
14:58Nope, Miss Mallon.
14:59Soper claims that the meeting ended badly when Mary reached down, picked up a meat fork,
15:03and threatened to, uh, well, stab him with it.
15:06Get out of my kitchen.
15:07Miss Mallon, please.
15:08Get out of my kitchen and go come back again.
15:09I'm trying to be reasonable.
15:10Keep going. I don't want to see you back here again.
15:13Keep going.
15:15I think that he makes her sound a lot more fearsome than she was,
15:19simply to explain the fact that, you know, he, well, she scared the hell out of him.
15:23He unleashed a violent temper in her by what he thought was a mild request, reasonable request,
15:31a scientific request. And she sees it as the exact opposite of that.
15:36Soper did not mention the families where I have worked where there was no typhoid.
15:42He did not see fits to mention the family I always lived with in the Bronx when I was out of work,
15:47and where I shared a room with the children without giving them typhoid.
15:50Mary Mallon had no reason to think that she could have communicated typhoid fever to anybody.
15:57The concept that if you are sick with a particular disease, you can give it to somebody else is fairly new.
16:03Why would you believe all of a sudden a group of scientists telling you that invisible germs
16:09that you can't even see, that you've never heard of before,
16:13are causing all these diseases that you've seen for decades and decades?
16:20Why would you believe all of these diseases that you've seen for decades and decades?
16:23Why would you believe all of these diseases that you've seen for decades and decades?
16:24Like most people of her time, Mary Mallon does not understand the cause of disease.
16:30In the 19th century, you had this idea about disease that somehow it came from filth.
16:36And filth was somehow a moral statement about your community.
16:40So the filthier your community, the more subject you were to having what were called miasmas arise.
16:50People thought that illness came from mysterious sewer gases, miasmas.
16:56You know, we're not far away from evil spirits.
16:58You know, we're not far away from evil spirits.
17:01Miasmas and the filth that caused them were thought to be concentrated in the tenements overflowing with immigrants.
17:10With the population doubling every decade, city services were unable to cope.
17:17It's a city that's being transversed by 150,000 to 200,000 horses.
17:21And of course, you know, basic public health fact number one is that each horse gives off about 25 pounds of manure a day.
17:32Times 200,000 horses, times 365 days in which the manure may or may not be picked up.
17:39So the city was really filthy.
17:41Uncollected garbage, animal carcasses, back alley privies, clogged sewers, and household waste made conditions unbearable.
17:56Cleaning up the city became a moral crusade.
18:00In 1895, a department of sanitation was created proclaiming cleanliness is next to godliness.
18:07It recruited an army of street cleaners, the White Wings.
18:15There were parades of these guys. These guys would march down Fifth Avenue.
18:20It's almost like a military exercise.
18:23At the same time, public health is shifting its focus from brooms to bacteriology.
18:30George Soper is part of that change.
18:32George Soper was on the cutting edge of the new science,
18:36but he's coming from an older field, an older field of sanitation,
18:39that he is in some sense trying to leave behind.
18:43Having Mary Mallon deemed a typhoid carrier would lead to a new kind of respect,
18:48a new credibility in the science of bacteriology.
18:52I discovered that Mary was spending the evenings at a rooming house on 3rd Avenue,
18:56below 33rd Street, with a disreputable-looking man named Brihoff,
19:00who had a room on the top floor and to whom she was taking food.
19:03He kept his headquarters during the day in a saloon on the corner.
19:08I got to be well acquainted with him.
19:11He took me to see the room. I should not care to see another like it.
19:16Sober describes it as a horrifyingly squalid, fetid, evil apartment with a menacing,
19:24mangy-looking, probably dangerous dog.
19:28You know, Brihoff is this degenerate, you know, alcoholic.
19:32This is class war with all its prejudices at its purest.
19:36The new generation of public health people have a kind of condescension to the poor.
19:43You have this kind of mix of belief in bacteriology, a belief that there are germs there,
19:48and embedded in that is a belief that the immigrant is kind of a source of real infection and danger.
19:53Sober made some arrangement with Brihoff, the boyfriend. He somehow turned Brihoff.
20:04He got Brihoff to tell him when Mary was going to be visiting the apartment next.
20:18Sober made some noise.
20:24Good evening, Miss Mallon.
20:27What are you doing here?
20:28Miss Mallon, this is my assistant, Dr. Hubler.
20:31We've come with the hope that you'll cooperate and come with us.
20:33I've already told you. I'm doing nothing for you.
20:36Miss Mallon, I believe that you are making people sick.
20:39I believe that you are the cause of the typhoid outbreaks in several of the families you've worked for.
20:43Now, nobody is claiming that you have done this intentionally,
20:45but we need to have these specimens so that we can understand this illness and help you.
20:49I've nursed those people that were sick in those households,
20:52and I've never had typhoid, so how could I give it to them?
20:55Miss Mallon, please, come with us and we can be certain.
20:57I can't believe that you've followed me.
20:59You've followed me in the street.
21:01You've come to my place of work and now you've come to my home.
21:03How did you fa-
21:09His interpersonal skills were not as good as his epidemiological skills.
21:14He tracked her down. Maybe he should have left the interview portion of the case to someone else.
21:19Go! Both of you! Get out of here now! Go! Get out!
21:23She threw him out again, swearing apparently the whole way, and also protesting her innocence.
21:30Come on, let's get out!
21:31Still thinking, why is this man harassing me?
21:36I have never had typhoid fever in my life and have always been healthy.
21:40The contention that I am a perpetual menace in the spread of typhoid germs is not true.
21:49These Irish immigrant women were tough. I mean, they had lived a life of such deprivation in Ireland.
21:55They came into a society that vilified them, that associated them with every negative stereotype.
22:02Stupid, drunken, dirty, that they were unfit for participation in the American sort of mainstream.
22:12They had to be tough.
22:14Mary Mallon was born in 1869 in County Tyrone, one of the poorest regions of Ireland.
22:27Life in County Tyrone in the years Mary was growing up was really harsh.
22:32Every year there would have been times of famine.
22:38She would have grown up eating primarily potatoes.
22:41There were no plates, no forks.
22:46It was a very grim existence.
22:52She came to this country in 1883 alone as a teenager.
22:58She moved in with her aunt and uncle in New York City.
23:03Her aunt and uncle then died and she always described herself later as alone in America.
23:12She probably put in her time on the laundry, seamstress work, cleaning, hauling coal,
23:18all the usual lower echelon tasks. So it was quite a climb. She at some point had had to learn how to cook
23:25well, how to run a kitchen well, and apparently was good at what she did.
23:31She was hired again and again by very good families.
23:35Cook was the highest rung of the pecking order among servants and she was often not just Cook,
23:42but she was really the kind of manager of the entire enterprise and would have been the most trusted
23:50member of the staff.
23:56Mary's employers are unaware that their cook may have brought typhoid fever into their home.
24:03I felt a good deal of responsibility for the case.
24:07Under suitable conditions, Mary might start a great epidemic.
24:13But Soper alone does not have the authority to force Mary to cooperate.
24:19The man leading the charge against these scourges is Herman Biggs, New York City's health commissioner.
24:42Biggs is committed to wiping out disease using science and the tools of public health.
24:47In this crusade, workers have the right to march into tenements to vaccinate people,
24:55confine the infected to their houses, and use force to quarantine those who will not comply
25:00on islands in New York Harbor.
25:05This is the power needed to confront Mary Mallon.
25:08I laid the facts concerning Mary's history before Dr. Herman Biggs with the suggestion
25:15that the woman be taken into custody and her specimens examined.
25:19Dr. Soper asked to have an inspector sent to get specimens from Mary.
25:24I was the inspector assigned the seemingly simple task.
25:29Trained as a physician, Dr. S. Josephine Baker is one of the Department of Health's roving inspectors.
25:35You know, all the things that people did in the story of Mary Mallon,
25:42picking the woman seemed like a really smart, sensible, human move.
25:48Baker came from a fairly well-off family.
25:55She was very committed to the poor and to improving the health of the poor.
26:00However, she had nothing kind to say about the people that she worked among,
26:05and yet there she was committing her life to them.
26:07The heat, the smells, the squalor made Hell's Kitchen something not to be believed.
26:13It's residents were largely Irish, incredibly shiftless, wholly lacking in any ambition,
26:20and dirty to an unbelievable degree.
26:23I climbed stair after stair, knocked on door after door, met drunk after drunk,
26:28filthy mother after filthy mother, and dying baby after dying baby.
26:34In the home where Mary Mallon works, the daughter dies of typhoid fever.
26:51Mary must be taken in for testing.
26:53I stationed one policeman in the front of the house, another on the nearest side street,
27:00had an ambulance waiting around the corner, and with a third policeman at my elbow,
27:05I knocked at the servant's entrance.
27:10Miss Mallon, the health department has sent me to take you with us.
27:13I'm going nowhere!
27:17Officer!
27:18Mary sees her brandishes a fork again, supposedly.
27:24Mary goes on the lam, tries to get away, with police searching everywhere.
27:35Has Mary Mallon come through here?
27:39The rest of the servants denied knowing anything about her or where she was.
27:44Even in my distress, I liked that loyalty.
27:48She's not cute.
27:51We went through every nook and cranny.
27:54It was utter defeat.
27:56Then one of the policemen with me caught sight of a tiny scrap of blue calico,
28:01caught in a door in a back hallway.
28:04Several ash cans were heaped up in front of it.
28:11Mary, I am under instructions to bring you in to take samples from you.
28:15I am going nowhere!
28:16Now, Mary, you have typhoid germs in your body.
28:18No, I've got no germs!
28:19We will not hurt you.
28:21No, Mary!
28:21They pull Mary Mallon out, scratching and screaming and yelling.
28:26No!
28:27Let me go!
28:27I'm not going nowhere!
28:28I'm not going nowhere!
28:28It takes the five police officers to get her into the ambulance.
28:31And Josephine Baker sits on her in the ambulance the whole way to Willard Parker Hospital,
28:39where they're going to take her.
28:40It was like being in a cage with an angry lion.
28:50Mary is taken to Willard Parker Hospital, an infectious disease facility for the poor.
28:55There's a photograph of Mary Mallon in bed at Willard Parker Hospital.
29:02And she is in a room with a lot of other people.
29:06Who knows if they have typhoid fever or something else,
29:09or why she's in bed since she's not sick.
29:11Being brought to Willard Parker was, in some sense, a statement about
29:16Mary's worth that she would have understood very clearly.
29:19She would have said, oh my God, you know, how dare they?
29:22I mean, this was a real kind of insult to her.
29:25I have committed no crime, and I am treated like an outcast, a criminal.
29:31It is unjust, outrageous, uncivilized.
29:36And it is incredible that in a Christian community,
29:39a defenseless woman can be treated in this manner.
29:46At New York City's pioneering bacteriology laboratory,
29:50scientists test Mary's specimens using the most advanced tools and techniques.
29:59Samples are placed in an incubator to see if bacteria grow.
30:06The results are unambiguous.
30:09The hospital's laboratory speedily proved that Mary was as dangerous as Dr. Soper had suspected.
30:16Her stools were a living culture of typhoid bacilli.
30:23George Soper knew all along from his work that she could carry typhoid fever.
30:30This was proof that she did carry typhoid fever.
30:34Soper has made a major breakthrough in the battle against disease,
30:38proving that Mary harbors the bacteria, even though she insists she has never had typhoid fever.
30:44Mary Mellon did have typhoid fever, but she had a very, very mild case of the disease.
30:52And she never knew she had typhoid fever or was that sick at all.
30:56In fact, she probably just thought she had a cold to the flu.
30:59In most cases of typhoid fever, the body is host to a microbial battle where there is a clear winner.
31:08If the bacteria win, the patient dies.
31:12If the immune system wins, the typhoid bacteria die.
31:16But in the case of a healthy carrier, there is no clear winner.
31:22The immune system protects the body from infection, but the bacteria continue to live.
31:28Mary, with no symptoms at all, is as contagious as someone sick with the disease.
31:42The press gets a hold of the story immediately in 1907,
31:45but they don't get very much of it.
31:47The health department is clearly trying to keep a lid on the fact
31:51that they are holding against her will a healthy 37-year-old woman.
31:56Still, the story makes front page news.
32:01To protect Mary's identity, the Department of Health gives the newspaper a false name.
32:10But Mary cannot escape a visit from George Soper.
32:14He is anxious to learn when she was exposed to typhoid and how often she has passed it on.
32:20She, of course, immediately sees him as he's red.
32:23She doesn't want him there, and she's not talking to him.
32:26But he's talking to her, and he has learned a little bit, presumably, from their first encounters,
32:32and he's trying to be reasonable.
32:33Mary, I said, I've come to talk with you and see if, between us, we cannot get you out of here.
32:41You would not be where you are now if you had not been so obstinate.
32:44So throw off your wrongheaded idea and be reasonable.
32:48Answer my questions, and I will do everything I can to get you out.
32:51I will write a book about your case.
32:52I will guarantee that you get all the profits.
32:56This is fairly forward thinking.
32:57I mean, these days, you walk out of a burning building, and there's somebody offering you a
33:01book deal right away, and a film deal.
33:04You know, maybe he was ahead of his time here.
33:05And he even offered her 100 percent, which is quite reasonable.
33:11On the other hand, I can certainly understand why she turned down the deal.
33:13She gets up, marches into the toilet, slams the door, and doesn't come out until he's gone.
33:23The door slammed. There was no need of my waiting.
33:32What should health officials do?
33:36They can't let Mary return to cooking, but how can they stop her?
33:39Typically, poor people with infectious diseases are sent to a quarantine island.
33:47And that's what they do with Mary.
33:51Without trial, without representation, without any kind of due process, the law allowed you to be
33:58plucked off the street and deposited on a plague island for as long as they felt like keeping you there.
34:05Civil liberties have to sometimes be bent for the public good.
34:11And I think that, while it may be perceived as a conflict, most serious people in public health,
34:19and I think in the country, would understand that depriving an individual of freedom for
34:24hopefully a brief period of time, that's a legitimate step to take.
34:28North Brother Island sits in the East River, a few hundred yards offshore from the South Bronx.
34:40This is the site of the city's largest quarantine facility, Riverside Hospital.
34:46Most of the patients are sick with tuberculosis.
34:49They must stay here until they recover or die.
34:53North Brother Island was a scary place to go to.
34:58Here are hundreds of patients very sick with infectious diseases.
35:06And then Mary Mallon, who everybody admits is perfectly healthy, is sent out there.
35:12Mary is confined to a small cottage on the island.
35:25She was being cut off from everyone and everything she was familiar with.
35:30So it was really imprisonment.
35:32I don't think she would have seen it as anything other than a form of imprisonment.
35:35When I came here, I was so nervous. I was almost prostrated with grief and trouble.
35:45My eyes began to twitch. My left eye became paralyzed, would not move.
35:51It remained in this condition for six months.
35:59Not everyone in public health believes Mary's quarantine is justified.
36:03Dr. Milton Rossenow, director of the National Hygienic Laboratory in Washington,
36:10and other prominent scientists object to her incarceration.
36:15They understood her dangers. They accepted that she was a healthy carrier.
36:19And yet they said, all you have to do is retrain her for another job where she's not cooking.
36:25And then she won't be a danger to anybody.
36:27But the Department of Health is determined not to let Mary go.
36:34Instead, doctors try to cure her with experimental drugs and procedures.
36:39I took Eurotropin for about three months, all told.
36:43If I should have continued it, it would have killed me, for it was very severe.
36:48At first, I would not take it, for I am a little afraid of these people, and I have good right.
36:54She never listened to reason.
36:56When they suggested removing her gallbladder, the probable focus of infection,
37:01she was convinced afresh that this was a pretext for killing her.
37:07Mary's doctors have a hunch, incorrect as it turns out, that removing the gallbladder will cure her.
37:13They said they'd have the best surgeon in town to do the cutting, but I said no.
37:20No knife will be put on me. I have nothing the matter with my gallbladder.
37:24I think Mary Mellon may have made a very good choice there.
37:27If she had had surgery, she probably would have survived, but the rates of infection and other
37:32problems were higher, and there is a chance she might have died from routine gallbladder surgery.
37:36Mary is kept on North Brother Island, but wages a steady battle.
37:45She writes letter after letter to Biggs, Sopler and Baker, pleading for her freedom.
37:51Why should I be banished like a leper, and compelled to live in solitary confinement?
37:56A few years of this life, and I will be insane.
38:10Two years go by. Mary is even more desperate to regain her freedom.
38:17Will I submit quietly to staying here a prisoner all my life?
38:20No. As there is a God in heaven, I will get justice somehow, sometime.
38:31In June 1909, Mary and a young Irish lawyer, George O'Neill,
38:36file suit in the New York Supreme Court, demanding her release.
38:42Her argument was very simple.
38:44I've never been sick, therefore I can't transmit sickness to anybody else.
38:50And I've never gotten my day in court. There has been no due process.
38:58A few days later, publisher William Randolph Hearst tells Mary's story in his New York American.
39:05He may even be financing her legal case to sell newspapers.
39:11This time, her identity is revealed.
39:14But Typhoid Mary is the name that sticks.
39:19The story includes an article by William Park, head of the city's bacteriological lab.
39:25He writes that new screening procedures have uncovered at least 50 healthy carriers of typhoid fever.
39:32Only Mary is in quarantine.
39:35The health department knows, and the reason they haven't isolated the other 49,
39:40is because walking around the city streets mingling with people in New York was not at all dangerous.
39:46Mary Mallon only transmitted typhoid fever when she cooked for people.
39:54July 1909, Mary Mallon leaves North Brother Island for the first time in two years
40:00to plead her case before the New York Supreme Court.
40:06The Department of Health defends its position.
40:08The health department argued very strongly that there was proof in the laboratory that she
40:21was a carrier and therefore dangerous to the public health, a menace to the public health.
40:25And they argued that point alone.
40:30Mary goes into court with some ammunition of her own.
40:34Using her boyfriend, Breihoff, as a courier,
40:37she has been sending specimens for months to the Ferguson Laboratory in Manhattan.
40:42The results contradict the health departments.
40:48The health department report always comes back stating that
40:52typhus bacilli have been found.
40:54But May's specialist, who is the head of his profession, reports that he has found none.
41:02Occasionally, the specimens of a healthy carrier do not contain bacteria,
41:07which may explain Mary's results.
41:09In any event, the court rules against her.
41:14Historically, courts have almost always sided with public health departments.
41:20Be it typhoid fever, be it tuberculosis, be it other infectious diseases,
41:24because the fear of the spread of infectious disease is so dramatic.
41:30I absolutely think that the public health authorities were justified in quarantine.
41:34it. The public has the right to be protected from people who can destroy their lives and end up killing them.
41:45We see it today, certainly, with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, with HIV, AIDS,
41:52now with SARS. You see where individuals are being quarantined, isolated,
41:58whose liberty is taken away in the name of protecting the public health.
42:04Well, Mary Mallon gives us an example of that at an extreme level, because she was healthy.
42:09She wasn't even sick.
42:11There are two kinds of justice in America. And all the water in the ocean wouldn't clear me of this
42:21charge in the eyes of the health department. They want to make a showing. They want to get credit
42:27for protecting the rich. And I am the victim. Several leading public health officials are outraged at
42:35Mary's continued incarceration. Charles Chapin in Rhode Island declares it a discredit on public health
42:42work. In New York, the Department of Health is feeling the pressure. There were numerous attempts
42:50to find a way to let all involved weasel out. There were a number of approaches to Mary where,
42:57don't you want to go stay with your sister in Connecticut? And she would say, but I don't have
43:02a sister in Connecticut. I think the idea there was, you know, if we can just, you know, unload her on
43:07another state. Well, I have been told that all I have to do is to leave the state and live under another
43:14name and I can have my freedom. But I will not do this. I will either be cleared or I will
43:20die where I am now.
43:27In 1910, Mary's fortune changes.
43:32New York City hires a new health commissioner, Ernst Lederle.
43:37Lederle strikes me as a sympathetic character. I think he was uncomfortable with the civil liberties
43:43implications, the political implications, the humanitarian implications, the medical
43:47implications. He was uncomfortable with the situation.
43:52Lederle releases Mary. She must report in regularly and can never again work as a cook.
44:00He even finds her a job at the bottom of the domestic ladder.
44:04Laundresses were just about the worst paid members of the female working class.
44:16It was a horrendous work and paid close to nothing.
44:21Mary's boyfriend, Breyhoff, dies soon after her release. She is on her own, barely able to make a living.
44:33The health department has her on file and knows where she's living and knows when she moves.
44:44In 1910, in 1911, in 1912, in 1913. In 1914, they admit they've lost track of her.
45:01By that time, health officials have a bigger problem on their hands.
45:11They have come to realize that at least three percent of people who get typhoid fever
45:16become carriers after they recover.
45:19That was an enormous number of people. It would range in the thousands and thousands
45:23in a city like New York. You basically have to go
45:26to everyone who had typhoid fever and check their stools after they got better.
45:33That's impossible. So the Department of Health focuses on those who pose the greatest risk,
45:38food handlers.
45:40The health department passed a resolution and it became a law of the land
45:44that anybody who handled food in New York City had to be tested and had to be tested regularly.
45:52They were given cards so they were known to the health department and then they were given
45:56instructions about what they should and shouldn't do. And they were supposed to report back
46:00periodically to the health department to get checked on.
46:03They caught very few healthy carriers that way and it was a very expensive
46:10program as you can imagine, all the food handlers there are in New York City.
46:18Most healthy carriers escape detection unless they cause an outbreak.
46:22In March 1915, typhoid fever strikes the city's prestigious Sloan Maternity Hospital.
46:35Twenty-five doctors, nurses and staff come down with the disease. Two die.
46:42The hospital calls in George Sober.
46:44George Sober.
46:44Dr. Cragen telephoned me asking that I come at once to Sloan Hospital.
46:48When I arrived he told me he had a typhoid epidemic on his hands.
46:53The other servants had jokingly nicknamed the cook Typhoid Mary.
46:58She called herself Mrs. Brown.
47:01She was out at the moment but would I recognize her handwriting.
47:05He handed me a letter from which I saw at once that it was indeed Mary Mallon.
47:15I went up there and went into the kitchen.
47:17Sure enough, there was Mary earning her living in the hospital kitchen, spreading typhoid
47:24germs among mothers and babies and doctors and nurses like a destroying angel.
47:30My sympathy begins to erode a bit for her and I think what is going through her mind?
47:42How can she go back and start cooking?
47:44How can she go back and start cooking?
47:44Is she either so dense that she didn't get it or is she so spiteful that she's going to show the
47:52Americans or she's going to show the employer class that they can't keep her down?
47:57I don't think she was ever an evil person. She didn't intentionally go out to hurt people.
48:08She just was incapable of understanding that her carrier state was the cause of
48:16the deaths of people and the illness of people.
48:22Department of Health officers trace Mary to a house in Queens.
48:29She doesn't answer the doorbell so they use a stepladder to get up to the second floor.
48:34There are dogs barking. They bring up meat to give to the dogs and quiet them down and they break into the house.
48:47This time she goes without a struggle.
48:50I think she understood the jigs up. You know, this was basically my last shot. I'm not getting out of this.
49:02There is no sympathy now for the woman whose name is synonymous with disease.
49:08The second time that Mary Malin is quarantined, the arguments for doing so have become much more
49:13compelling. She sort of failed the test of working with the public health officials and she's sent
49:20back to the island, this time with more justification.
49:26By the time she hit North Brother the second time, there was no fight left in her.
49:31Everything that she'd had was gone.
49:43One of the women here, the second from the left, is thought to be Mary Malin.
49:49Adjusting to life on North Brother Island, Mary even makes friends with some of the doctors and nurses.
49:56My father was the medical director of the Riverside Hospital there and he knew Mary Malin very well.
50:02He was one of the few people that Mary got along with.
50:05He was a first generation Irish person. I think he could identify maybe more than Herman Biggs or George
50:13Soper with what makes an Irish immigrant tick.
50:18Three years after her return, the Department of Health occasionally allows Mary to take the ferry into
50:24New York. They would let her leave, take day trips to visit friends and she would always return on time.
50:31I don't think there was anything else for her out there.
50:38While Mary is in quarantine, the Department of Health develops a more flexible approach to
50:43healthy carriers. Food handlers are sometimes retrained or paid to stop working.
50:51Even uncooperative carriers are not punished the way Mary Malin is.
50:56Mary Malin got singled out, I think.
50:58The public health department, in the face of her resisting this new authority of science,
51:05I think got vengeful in their desire to show, to teach her lesson.
51:12On the island, Mary is tested regularly for typhoid. She is still a carrier.
51:18Eventually, she is given a job as a lab technician at Riverside Hospital.
51:22In 1932, her supervisor poses with Mary at age 62.
51:29The photograph that we have of Mary Malin from late in her life shows a woman who has gained weight,
51:35who has suffered some minor strokes. You can see one of her hand is in a fist.
51:39She does not look very attractive in that picture. She doesn't look very happy.
51:46After 26 years on North Brother Island, Mary Malin died in 1938.
51:52She was 69 years old. She had given 47 people typhoid fever. Three of them died.
52:02Mary never accepted she was the cause.
52:05By that time, typhoid fever was on the wane, the result of better sanitation.
52:16It would be another 10 years before antibiotics would be used to treat the disease
52:21and cure healthy carriers like Mary.
52:24But new and even more deadly diseases continue to arise, confronting us with the issues that Mary
52:32Malin first raised a century ago.
52:35Today, it might be Ebola virus, HIV, and most recently SARS, but we always have to, as a society,
52:43be very careful about how we will use public health powers and not trample on the rights of the
52:49individuals who are sick. Though Mary Malin is long forgotten, typhoid Mary is not.
52:59She remains a potent symbol of our fear of disease and of the dilemma over how far we should go
53:06to protect ourselves. We now assume that typhoid Mary is actually a perpetrator of evil,
53:13and I think that's probably a pretty sad legacy for her.
53:15I lived a decent and upright life until I was seized, locked up, and rechristened typhoid Mary.
53:26Before God and in the eyes of decent men, my name is Mary Malin.
53:40Quarantine is as important now as it was in Mary Malin's day.
53:44On NOVA's website, trace the history of quarantine from ancient to modern times,
53:49including the power states have today to isolate you. Find it on pbs.org.
54:05To order this program on VHS or DVD, or the book Typhoid Mary, Captive to the Public's Health,
54:20please call 1-800-255-9424.
54:24www. microorganism.co.edu.
54:46Nova is a production of WGBH Boston.
54:57Corporate funding for Nova is provided by Sprint and Microsoft.
55:04Additional funding is provided by the Park Foundation,
55:08dedicated to education and quality television.
55:11This program has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities,
55:19expanding America's understanding for more than 30 years
55:22of who we were, who we are, and who we will be.
55:27And by the National Library of Medicine.
55:30Major funding for Nova is also provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
55:35and by PBS viewers like you.
55:41We are PBS.
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