Irish America

Mary Mallon

What You Didn’t Know
About Typhoid Mary

By Rosemary Rogers, Contributor

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She was the original Patient Zero, a healthy and asymptomatic carrier of a deadly plague. Baptized in Ireland in 1869 as Mary Mallon, she was re-baptized in America as Typhoid Mary, a name conjuring evil and purposeful contagion, a name that carries a peculiar legacy – the notice in restrooms demanding, “Employees must wash their hands before returning to work.”  Orphaned as a … [Read more...] about What You Didn’t Know
About Typhoid Mary

Remembering Typhoid Mary

By Dr. John Froude, Contributor
October / November 2004

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Pity poor Mary Mallon. Born in Cookstown, County Tyrone in 1870, she came to New York looking for a new life in 1883, but the life she found, from 1909 until her death in 1938, was confinement on North Brother Island, a spit of land between the Bronx and Riker's Island. What was her crime? Mary was the first recognized healthy carrier of the bacteria that causes typhoid fever. … [Read more...] about Remembering Typhoid Mary

The Unfortunate Legacy of Mary Mallon

By Michele Barber-Perry, Contributor
October / November 2004

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Death and disease. Mystery and suspense. A lover's betrayal with controversial human rights issues in the mix. Nova's new documentary The Most Dangerous Woman in America has it all. The superbly directed film explores the difficult, painful journey from teenage Irish immigrant to respectable private cook to public enemy number one of Mary Mallon, a.k.a. Typhoid Mary. Through … [Read more...] about The Unfortunate Legacy of Mary Mallon

Typhoid Mary Under
the Microscope

By Michele Barber-Perry, Contributor
October / November 2004

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NOVA's new film about Mary Mallon, The Most Dangerous Woman in America, is based on the book Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health by Judith Walzer Leavitt, a professor of medical history and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin's Medical School. Her book has been heralded as "an indelible pleasure of early 20th-century New York, when modern knowledge and … [Read more...] about Typhoid Mary Under
the Microscope