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00:10At 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
00:22of interfering with personal and property rights for the protection of public health.
00:26And with good reason. The city's slums are overflowing with poor immigrants. Conditions
00:33are horrific. Infectious disease is out of control.
00:38Children were dying of intestinal diseases, of diarrheas, tuberculosis, whooping cough and
00:44diphtheria were endemic.
00:48But 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.
01:22Only within the last 20 years have health officials come to understand that disease is caused by
01:28invisible microbes or germs. This knowledge will lead them to an unsuspecting Irish immigrant,
01:37a servant named Mary Mallon. They called her, I love this phrase, she is a human culture too.
01:44You know, there's this pestilential entity that must be stopped.
01:48Get 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
01:58still face today.
01:59Keep going!
02:00It is the prime dilemma in public health. How do you protect the health of the masses of
02:08the people if it is jeopardized by an individual whose liberty you are thinking of taking away?
02:16I am an innocent human being. The contention that I am a perpetual menace in the spread of
02:22typhoid germs is not true.
02:26An innocent victim or a murderous villain? The tragic story of the most dangerous woman
02:34in America, right now on NOVA.
02:54Corporate funding for NOVA is provided by Sprint and Microsoft. Additional funding is provided by
03:04The Park Foundation, dedicated to education and quality television.
03:12This program has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities, expanding
03:17America's understanding for more than 30 years of who we were, who we are, and who we will be.
03:25And by the National Library of Medicine. Major funding for NOVA is also provided by the Corporation
03:31for Public Broadcasting and by PBS viewers like you. Thank you.
03:52August 1906. In this luxurious vacation home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, a young girl, Margaret Warren, is
04:01gravely ill with typhoid fever. She has the best care, but without a cure, all anyone can
04:09do is try to bring down her fever. This is the last thing Charles Warren, banker to the Vanderbilts,
04:17expected when 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.
04:29And this individual family, no one else in Oyster Bay, but this individual family was struck by typhoid fever
04:36and six members of the household came down with the disease.
04:44Typhoid fever is extremely contagious. First, the youngest daughter became ill, then two maids, the mother, another daughter, and finally
04:56the gardener.
04:58How could a disease of the slums strike this wealthy community?
05:03It wasn't the sort of area that one would expect to see typhoid, which is often associated with crowded, poor
05:10neighborhoods.
05:16At the turn of the 20th century, the most crowded neighborhood in the world is New York City's Lower East
05:23Side.
05:24It's even more crowded than Calcutta. With few connections to city water or sewer, the tenements lack even basic sanitation.
05:35Infectious 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,
05:51especially in the 19th century and in the early part of the 20th century.
05:56In New York City alone, there were about 4,000 new cases of typhoid fever every year.
06:04The symptoms of typhoid can be severe. Weeks of fever, headache, diarrhea, and delirium.
06:12One out of ten dies of the disease.
06:18When 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.
06:32Thirty 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 and are shed in the feces.
06:55In 1892, New York City set up the country's first bacteriology laboratory devoted to public health.
07:03The 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?
07:15What can we do to prevent this from being spread to other people?
07:21In Oyster Bay, where even President Teddy Roosevelt summers, the threat of a typhoid epidemic is terrifying.
07:30Everybody started looking around for an explanation.
07:33They started looking for the usual suspects.
07:36You know, let's find the dirty, the poor, you know, maybe some bad dairy, the lady on the beach who
07:43sells shellfish.
07:44It's got to be one of them.
07:47Experts are called in to investigate.
07:50They know typhoid fever is caused by contaminated food or drink.
07:56They suspect the plumbing in the house and put dye in the toilet to see if it contaminates the drinking
08:02water.
08:04It doesn't.
08:08They check the local shellfish to see if the bay is polluted with sewage.
08:12It isn't.
08:13They 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.
08:36The family who owned the house, the Thompsons, were afraid if they didn't get to the bottom of the house,
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 to track down the source of
08:54disease.
08:5637-year-old George Soper is confident and ambitious.
09:02By 1907, I had a great deal of experience with typhoid fever.
09:06As an undergraduate, I had the temerity to move typhoid patients and their families out of a house that had
09:12a long history of communicable diseases
09:15and, 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
09:34obsessed.
09:37Soper begins by reviewing the results of the earlier investigation.
09:41It's detective work. And Soper was excited about the ability now to trace diseases, to trace the disease outbreaks,
09:50and to really understand how diseases like typhoid were being spread.
09:54The first investigators had done their work thoroughly. Try as I would, I could not find anything wrong.
10:03So I turned my attention to the people in the house. This 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.
10:25Knowing it takes up to three weeks after exposure to become sick with the disease, Soper uncovers his first clue.
10:33I found that the family had changed cooks on August 4th, about three weeks before the epidemic broke out.
10:40All the patients were infected after the new cook's arrival.
10:44The way that a cook who was infected with the typhoid bacillus would transmit the disease
10:49is that there would probably be some typhoid bacillus that they got onto their hands while they were in the
10:56bathroom.
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.
11:10Soper also knows the bacteria can survive on uncooked food only.
11:16On a certain Sunday, there was a dessert which she prepared,
11:19and of which everybody present was extremely fond.
11:23This 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
11:35family.
11:40The 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,
11:51and I have lived a decent and upright life.
11:57Soper sets out to find the cook.
12:00The employment agency that placed her with the Warrens does not know where she is,
12:04but directs him to some of her previous employers.
12:08What he discovers astounds him.
12:12In ten years, she is known to have worked for eight families,
12:15and in six of these, typhoid had occurred.
12:19How is this possible?
12:22Has 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,
12:43a 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,
12:58you 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.
13:10It would be a major discovery and make his career.
13:15I think Soper is very excited by this possibility.
13:19He sees it as a scientific puzzle that he is the detective for,
13:23and he's going to sleuth out and win the prize.
13:31To prove his case, Soper needs specimens from the Koch.
13:36In March 1907, he learns Mary is working for a family on Park Avenue.
13:42Typhoid II is already in residence.
13:47A chambermaid has just been taken to the hospital,
13:49and the family's only child is in critical condition.
13:55Mary helps nurse the girl.
13:58Here you go, my darling.
14:01Oh, no.
14:02Just hold on, Endler.
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.
14:29I have been looking for you for quite a while.
14:31I was hired to track you down.
14:32To track me down?
14:34Yes, Miss Mallon.
14:34It appears that you are the unwitting cause
14:36of the typhoid fever outbreak at Oyster Bay last night.
14:39Are you mad?
14:39It is imperative that I get specimens from you
14:41of urine, feces and blood to confirm my suspicion.
14:43I've never been sick a day in my life.
14:45I'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
15:01when 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 don't come back again!
15:10I'm trying, I'm trying, you're reasonable!
15:10Keep going, I don't want to see you back here again!
15:12Keep going!
15:15I think that he makes her sound a lot more fearsome than she was,
15:18simply to explain the fact that, you know, he,
15:21well, she scared the hell out of him.
15:23He unleashed a violent temper in her
15:26by what he thought was a mild request,
15:30reasonable request, a scientific request.
15:34And she sees it as the exact opposite of that.
15:37Soper did not mention the families where I have worked
15:40where there was no typhoid.
15:41He did not see fits to mention the family
15:44I always lived with in the Bronx when I was out of work,
15:46and where I shared a room with the children
15:49without giving them typhoid.
15:51Mary Mallon had no reason to think
15:53that she could have communicated typhoid fever to anybody.
15:57The concept that if you are sick with a particular disease,
15:59you can give it to somebody else is fairly new.
16:03Why would you believe all of a sudden a group of scientists telling you
16:06that invisible germs that you can't even see,
16:10that you've never heard of before,
16:12are causing all these diseases that you've seen for decades and decades?
16:24Like most people of her time,
16:26Mary Mallon does not understand the cause of disease.
16:30In the 19th century, you had this idea about disease
16:33that somehow it came from filth.
16:35And filth was somehow a moral statement about your community.
16:40So the filthier your community,
16:41the more subject you were to having what were called miasmas arise.
16:50People thought that illness came from mysterious sewer gases,
16:55miasmas, you know,
16:56we're not far away from evil spirits.
17:01Miasmas and the filth that caused them
17:03were thought to be concentrated in the tenements
17:06overflowing with immigrants.
17:09With the population doubling every decade,
17:12city services were unable to cope.
17:16It's a city that's being transversed by 150,000 to 200,000 horses.
17:22And of course, you know, basic public health fact number one
17:25is that each horse gives off about 25 pounds of manure a day.
17:31Times 200,000 horses,
17:34times 365 days in which the manure may or may not be picked up.
17:38So the city was really filthy.
17:44Uncollected garbage, animal carcasses,
17:48back alley privies, clogged sewers,
17:50and household waste made conditions unbearable.
17:55Cleaning up the city became a moral crusade.
18:00In 1895, a department of sanitation was created proclaiming,
18:05cleanliness is next to godliness.
18:08It recruited an army of street cleaners, the White Wings.
18:14There were parades of these guys.
18:16These guys would march down Fifth Avenue.
18:20It's almost like a military exercise.
18:23At the same time,
18:25public health is shifting its focus from brooms to bacteriology.
18:30George Soper is part of that change.
18:33George Soper was on the cutting edge of the new science,
18:36but he's coming from an older field,
18:38an older field of sanitation,
18:39that he is in some sense trying to leave behind.
18:43Having Mary Mallon deemed a typhoid carrier
18:45would 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
18:54at a rooming house on 3rd Avenue below 33rd Street
18:57with a disreputable-looking man named Breihoff
18:59who had a room on the top floor
19:02and to whom she was taking food.
19:04He kept his headquarters during the day
19:06in a saloon on the corner.
19:08I got to be well acquainted with him.
19:11He took me to see the room.
19:14I should not care to see another like it.
19:18Soper describes it as a horrifyingly squalid,
19:21fetid, evil apartment with a, you know,
19:24menacing, mangy-looking, probably dangerous dog.
19:27You know, Breihoff is this degenerate, you know, alcoholic.
19:32This is class war with all its prejudices at its purest.
19:37The new generation of public health people
19:40have a kind of condescension to the poor.
19:43You have this kind of mix of belief in bacteriology,
19:46a belief that there are germs there,
19:48and embedded in that is a belief that the immigrant
19:51is kind of a source of real infection and danger.
19:55Soper made some arrangement with Breihoff, the boyfriend.
20:00He somehow turned Breihoff.
20:04He got Breihoff to tell him
20:06when Mary was going to be visiting the apartment next.
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
20:41in several of the families you've worked for.
20:44Now, nobody is claiming that you have done this intentionally,
20:46but we need to have these specimens
20:47so 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 followed me.
20:59You 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.
21:16Maybe he should have left the interview portion of the case to someone else.
21:20Go! Both of you! Get out of here now!
21:22Go! Get out!
21:24She threw him out again, swearing, apparently, the whole way,
21:27and also protesting her innocence.
21:30Get 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.
21:41The contention that I am a perpetual menace in the spread of typhoid germs is not true.
21:49These Irish immigrant women were tough.
21:51I 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.
22:03Stupid, drunken, dirty, that they were unfit for participation in the American sort of mainstream.
22:13They had to be tough.
22:18Mary 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.
22:45It 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, all the usual lower echelon tasks.
23:21So it was quite a climb.
23:23She at some point had had to learn how to cook well, how to run a kitchen well, and apparently
23:29was good at what she did.
23:31She was hired again and again by very good families.
23:34Cook was the highest rung of the pecking order among servants.
23:39And she was often not just cook, but she was really the kind of manager of the entire enterprise
23:46and would have been the most trusted member of the staff.
23:55Mary'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.
24:24Typhoid fever, smallpox, influenza, diphtheria, tuberculosis.
24:35The 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.
24:49In 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 on islands in New
25:01York Harbor.
25:05This is the power needed to confront Mary Mallon.
25:10I laid the facts concerning Mary's history before Dr. Herman Biggs with the suggestion that the woman be taken into
25:16custody and her specimens examined.
25:19Dr. Soper asked to have an inspector sent to get specimens from Mary.
25:23I 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.
25:37You 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.
25:50Baker came from a fairly well-off family.
25:54She 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.
26:08The heat, the smells, the squalor made Hell's Kitchen something not to be believed.
26:13Its residents were largely Irish, incredibly shiftless, wholly lacking in any ambition, and dirty to an unbelievable degree.
26:23I climbed stair after stair, knocked on door after door, met drunk after drunk, filthy mother after filthy mother, and
26:31dying baby after dying baby.
26:42In the home where Mary Mallon works, the daughter dies of typhoid fever.
26:51Mary must be taken in for testing.
26:55I stationed one policeman in the front of the house, another on the nearest side street, had an ambulance waiting
27:02around the corner,
27:03and with a third policeman at my elbow, I 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!
27:16Gee! Officer!
27:18Mary sees her brandishes a fork again, supposedly.
27:23Mary goes on the lam, tries to get away, with police searching everywhere.
27:34Has Mary Mallon come through here?
27:39The rest of the servants denied knowing anything about her or where she was.
27:43Even in my distress, I liked that loyalty.
27:51We went through every nook and cranny. It was utter defeat.
27:56Then one of the policemen with me caught sight of a tiny scrap of blue calico caught in a door
28:02in 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.
28:16I am going nowhere with you!
28:16Now, Mary, you have typhoid germs in your body.
28:19No, I've got no germs!
28:19We will not hurt you!
28:21Sure!
28:21They pull Mary Mallon out, scratching and screaming and yelling.
28:26No! Let me go!
28:28Mary takes the five police officers to get her into the ambulance.
28:33And Josephine Baker sits on her, in the ambulance, the whole way to Willard Parker Hospital, where they're going to
28:40take 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.
28:57There'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, who knows if they have typhoid fever or
29:08something else,
29:08or why she's in bed since she's not sick.
29:12Being brought to Willard Parker was, in some sense, a statement about Mary's worth that she would have understood very
29:18clearly.
29:19She would have said, oh my God, you know, how dare they?
29:23I mean, this was a real kind of insult to her.
29:26I have committed no crime, and I am treated like an outcast, a criminal.
29:31It is unjust, outrageous, uncivilized.
29:35And it is incredible that in a Christian community, a defenseless woman can be treated in this manner.
29:46At New York City's pioneering bacteriology laboratory, scientists test Mary's specimens using the most advanced tools and techniques.
29:58Samples are placed in an incubator to see if bacteria grow.
30:05The 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.
30:29This was proof that she did carry typhoid fever.
30:34Soper has made a major breakthrough in the battle against disease, proving that Mary harbors the bacteria,
30:41even though she insists she has never had typhoid fever.
30:47Mary 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 or the flu.
31:01In 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.
31:11If the immune system wins, the typhoid bacteria die.
31:17But 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 this story immediately in 1907, but they don't get very much of it.
31:47The health department is clearly trying to keep a lid on the fact that they are holding against her will
31:53a healthy 37-year-old woman.
31:55Still, the story makes front page news.
32:01To protect Mary's identity, the Department of Health gives the newspaper a false name.
32:09But Mary cannot escape a visit from George Soper.
32:13He 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.
32:28And he has learned a little bit, presumably, from their first encounters, and he's trying to be reasonable.
32:34Mary, I said, I've come to talk with you and see if between us we cannot get you out of
32:40here.
32:41You would not be where you are now if you had not been so obstinate.
32:44So, throw off your wrong-headed 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 you to get all the profits.
32:56And this is fairly forward thinking.
32:57I mean, these days, you walk out of a burning building and there's somebody offering you a book deal right
33:01away,
33:02and a film deal.
33:04You know, maybe he was ahead of his time here, and he even offered her 100%, which is quite reasonable.
33:10I, on the other hand, I can certainly understand why she turned down the deal.
33:16She gets up, marches into the toilet, slams the door, and doesn't come out until he's gone.
33:24The door slammed.
33:26There was no need of my waiting.
33:32What should health officials do?
33:35They can't let Mary return to cooking, but how can they stop her?
33:41Typically, 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,
33:56the law allowed you to be plucked off the street and deposited on a plague island for as long as
34:04they felt like keeping you there.
34:06Civil 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 and I
34:19think in the country would understand
34:21that depriving an individual of freedom for hopefully a brief period of time, that's a legitimate step to take.
34:32North Brother Island sits in the East River, a few hundred yards offshore from the South Bronx.
34:39This is the site of the city's largest quarantine facility, Riverside Hospital.
34:45Most of the patients are sick with tuberculosis.
34:49They must stay here until they recover or die.
34:55North 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.
35:19Mary 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.
35:31I don't think she would have seen it as anything other than a form of imprisonment.
35:38When I came here, I was so nervous.
35:40I was almost prostrated with grief and trouble.
35:45My eyes began to twitch.
35:47My left eye became paralyzed, would not move.
35:51It remained in this condition for six months.
35:58Not everyone in public health believes Mary's quarantine is justified.
36:04Dr. Milton Rossenow, director of the National Hygienic Laboratory in Washington,
36:10and other prominent scientists object to her incarceration.
36:15They understood her dangers.
36:17They accepted that she was a healthy carrier.
36:18And 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.
36:29But 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
36:53right.
36:54She never listened to reason.
36:56When they suggested removing her gallbladder, the probable focus of infection,
37:00she 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.
37:14They said they'd have the best surgeon in town to do the cutting.
37:18But I said no.
37:19No knife will be put on me.
37:21I 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 problems were higher,
37:33and there is a chance she might have died from routine gallbladder surgery.
37:39Mary is kept on North Brother Island, but wages a steady battle.
37:44She writes letter after letter to Biggs, Soper, and Baker, pleading for her freedom.
37:51Why should I be banished like a leper, and compelled to live in solitary confinement?
37:57A few years of this life, and I will be insane.
38:10Two years go by.
38:12Mary is even more desperate to regain her freedom.
38:17Will I submit quietly to staying here a prisoner all my life?
38:21No.
38:23As 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, filed suit in the New York Supreme Court,
38:39demanding her release.
38:41Her argument was very simple.
38:44I've never been sick, therefore I can't transmit sickness to anybody else.
38:49And 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, but Typhoid Mary is the name that sticks.
39:18The story includes an article by William Park, head of the city's bacteriological lab.
39:24He writes that new screening procedures have uncovered at least 50 healthy carriers of typhoid fever.
39:32Only Mary is in quarantine.
39:36The 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.
39:56Mary Mallon leaves North Brother Island for the first time in two years
40:01to plead her case before the New York Supreme Court.
40:06The Department of Health defends its position.
40:14The health department argued very strongly that there was proof in the laboratory that she was a carrier
40:21and 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, Brihoff, as a courier, she has been sending specimens for months
40:39to the Ferguson Laboratory in Manhattan.
40:44The results contradict the health departments.
40:48The health department report always comes back stating that typhus 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.
41:15Historically, courts have almost always sided with public health departments,
41:19be it typhoid fever, be it tuberculosis, be it other infectious diseases,
41:23because the fear of the spread of infectious disease is so dramatic.
41:29I absolutely think that the public health authorities were justified in quarantining it.
41:34The 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, now with SARS.
41:53You see where individuals are being quarantined, isolated, whose liberty is taken away in the name of protecting the public
42:02health.
42:04Well, Mary Mallon gives us an example of that at an extreme level, because she was healthy. She wasn't even
42:10sick.
42:14There 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.
42:23They want to make a showing. They want to get credit for protecting the rich, and I am the victim.
42:32Several leading public health officials are outraged at Mary's continued incarceration.
42:38Charles Chapin in Rhode Island declares it a discredit on public health work.
42:44In New York, the Department of Health is feeling the pressure.
42:49There were numerous attempts to find a way to let all involved weasel out.
42:55There were a number of approaches to Mary where, don't you want to go stay with your sister in Connecticut?
43:01And she would say, but I don't have a sister in Connecticut.
43:03I think the idea there was, you know, if we can just, you know, unload her on another state.
43:08Well, 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.
43:16But I will not do this.
43:18I will either be cleared or I will die 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.
43:40I think he was uncomfortable with the civil liberties implications, the political implications, the humanitarian implications, the medical implications.
43:48He was uncomfortable with the situation.
43:52Lederle releases Mary.
43:54She 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.
44:09Laundresses were just about the worst paid members of the female working class.
44:15It was a horrendous work and paid close to nothing.
44:26Mary's boyfriend, Breyhoff, dies soon after her release.
44:30She is on her own, barely able to make a living.
44:38The health department has her on file and knows where she's living and knows when she moves.
44:43In 1910, in 1911, in 1912, in 1913.
44:49In 1914, they admit they've lost track of her.
45:05By that time, health officials have a bigger problem on their hands.
45:10They have come to realize that at least 3% of people who get typhoid fever become carriers after they
45:17recover.
45:18That was an enormous number of people.
45:20It would range in the thousands and thousands in a city like New York.
45:24You basically have to go to everyone who had typhoid fever and check their stools after they got better.
45:32That's impossible.
45:34So the Department of Health focuses on those who pose the greatest risk, food handlers.
45:40The health department passed a resolution, and it became a law of the land, that anybody who handled food in
45:46New 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 instructions about what
45:57they should and shouldn't do.
45:59And they were supposed to report back periodically to the health department to get checked on.
46:05They caught very few healthy carriers that way, and it was a very expensive program, as you can imagine, all
46:11the food handlers there are in New York City.
46:18Most healthy carriers escape detection unless they cause an outbreak.
46:26In March 1915, typhoid fever strikes the city's prestigious Sloan Maternity Hospital.
46:34Twenty-five doctors, nurses, and staff come down with the disease.
46:39Two die.
46:41The hospital calls in George Soper.
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.
47:14I went up there and went into the kitchen.
47:18Sure enough, there was Mary, earning her living in the hospital kitchen, spreading typhoid germs among mothers and babies and
47:27doctors and nurses like a destroying angel.
47:35My sympathy begins to erode a bit for her, and I think, what is going through her mind?
47:41How 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
47:52the Americans or she's going to show the employer class that they can't keep her down?
48:00I don't think she was ever an evil person.
48:04She didn't intentionally go out to hurt people.
48:08She just was incapable of understanding that her carrier state was the cause of deaths of people and the illness
48:17of people.
48:22Department of Health officers trace Mary to a house in Queens.
48:29She doesn't answer the doorbells, 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
48:41into the house.
48:46This 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
48:56this.
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 compelling.
49:14She sort of failed the test of working with the public health officials, and she's sent back to the island,
49:21this time with more justification.
49:26By the time she hit North Brother the second time, there was no fight left in her. Everything that she
49:32had 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.
50:06He was a first-generation Irish person. I think he could identify maybe more than Herman Biggs or George Soper
50:13with what makes an Irish immigrant tick.
50:18Three years after her return, the Department of Health occasionally allows Mary to take the ferry into New York.
50:25They would let her leave, take day trips to visit friends, and she would always return on time.
50:30I 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 healthy carriers.
50:45Food handlers are sometimes retrained or paid to stop working.
50:50Even uncooperative carriers are not punished the way Mary Malin is.
50:56Mary Malin got singled out, I think.
50:59The Public Health Department, in the face of her resisting this new authority of science, I think got vengeful in
51:06their desire to show, to teach her a lesson.
51:11On the island, Mary is tested regularly for typhoid.
51:15She is still a carrier.
51:18Eventually, she is given a job as a lab technician at Riverside Hospital.
51:24In 1932, her supervisor poses with Mary at age 62.
51:30The 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.
51:37You can see one of her hand is in a fist.
51:39She does not look very attractive in that picture.
51:43She doesn't look very happy.
51:46After 26 years on North Brother Island, Mary Malin died in 1938.
51:52She was 69 years old.
51:55She had given 47 people typhoid fever.
51:59Three of them died.
52:01Mary never accepted she was the cause.
52:08By 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 and cure healthy carriers like
52:23Mary.
52:26But new and even more deadly diseases continue to arise, confronting us with the issues that Mary Malin first raised,
52:34a century ago.
52:36Today, it might be Ebola virus, HIV, and most recently, SARS.
52:41But we always have to, as a society, be very careful about how we will use public health powers
52:47and not trample on the rights of the individuals who are sick.
52:53Though 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
53:05to protect ourselves.
53:08We now assume that typhoid Mary is actually a perpetrator of evil, and I think that's probably a pretty sad
53:15legacy for her.
53:18I 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.
53:39Quarantine 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.
53:52Find it on PBS.org.
54:13To 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.
54:241-800-255-9424
54:54NOVA is a production of WGBH Boston.
54:57Corporate funding for NOVA is provided by Sprint and Microsoft.
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55:14This program has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities,
55:19expanding America's understanding for more than 30 years of who we were,
55:24who 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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