MARY QUITE CONTRARY - Two

I am of two minds about "Typhoid Mary". The officials could not prove in court that Mary Mallon was spreading typhoid fever. The science of biology had not progressed that far. And that  made her arrest and detention unconstitutional. Thank God they locked her up, anyway - at least for awhile.

After Mary chased George Soper out of the Bowen family kitchen, it would appear that he was no longer welcomed in the house by either Mary or her employer, Mr, Bowen - which makes me wonder if George was as “diplomatic” as he claimed to be.  We know that the next time he tried to talk to Mary, George Soper approached her at the rooming house where she lived. This time he even brought along an actual medical doctor, Doctor Raymond Hobbler. But this did not strengthen his argument. Again Mary refused to hand over her urine, blood or feces. 

Defeated yet again, the Health Department decided to dispatch the assistant commissioner of health, who also managed the smallpox vaccination programs and sanitation issues for the city,  Doctor Sara Josephine Baker.  She brought with her an assistant, an ambulance with a driver and an attendant,  and five police officers.

By  the way; Mary Mallon was not a complete fool. She had consulted a chemist – what we would call a pharmacist.  He had examined her and assured Mary she was clear of the disease. Thus she felt it was the health officials who were crazy. 

So when Mary answered the knock on her rooming house door, and was confronted by Dr Baker and several police officers, she panicked. According to Dr. Baker, “As she lunged at me with the fork, I stepped back, recoiled on the policeman, and so confused matters that, by the time we got through the door, Mary had disappeared.”

They turned the tiny house upside down, and five hours later found Mary hiding in the supply closet of a neighboring house. Wrote Dr. Baker, “(Mary) came out fighting and swearing, both of which she could do with appalling efficiency and vigor…she was maniacal in her integrity…"

"The policemen lifted her into the ambulance and I literally sat on her all the way to the (Willard Parker Hospital (above))…it was like being in a cage with an angry lion.”

At last the health officials could obtain the precious samples. The blood and urine were negative. But the stool was described as “teeming” with "Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi". 

Under the city code 1169, requiring Health officials to avoid causes of disease, and code 1170 giving them the right to place any ill person in isolation, they now restricted Mary Mallon (above, foreground) to the hospital on North Brother Island, in the middle of the East River. She would remain there for almost three years. During which time she was not ill.  

But throughout that time Mary continued to fight back, writing letters and contacting lawyers. The hospital's tests showed 120 out of 163 of her stool samples tested positive for typhoid. So Mary sent her own samples to a private lab and consulted her own physicians. They reported her as free of typhoid. 

As she wrote to the courts, “I am an innocent human being. I have committed no crime, and I am treated like an outcast - - a criminal. It is unjust, outrageous, uncivilized. It seems to me incredible that in a Christian community a defenseless woman can be treated in this manner.” Clearly this was not an ignorant woman. 

A photo of patients taken from the hospital on North Brother Island is dominated by a glaring Mary Mallon (above, foreground). No wonder she is glaring because it is a staged photo. Except for her first few days there, Mary was not confined to a bed.  And in the photo she is fully dressed.

Because she was not ill, the hospital provided her a small cottage . But she was still not a woman to be ignored.

The civil engineer George Soper (above) fought back. “The state has the power to compel the ignorant, the selfish, the careless and the vicious to so regulate their lives and property so that they shall not be the source of danger to others. The welfare of the many is the supreme law…” It was an arrogant argument,  which in 1909 swayed Justice Mitchell Erlanger. “While the court deeply sympathizes with this unfortunate woman, it must protect the community.” But the public was now aware of Mary’s predicament, and public pressure began to build for her release.

In 1910 a new commissioner of the NYC Board of Health agreed to release Mary if she promised to no longer work as a cook, and checked in every three months with the board. Mary immediately agreed, and on 20 February, 1909 , she stepped off the ferry from Brothers Island and blended back into the city of New York. She reported to the Health Department a few times and then simply disappeared. She was not heard again for five years. 

In January 1915 there was another outbreak of typhoid fever at the Sloan Maternity Hospital (above). Twenty-five nurses and workers fell sick, two of whom died. In fact, that year some 300,000 cases of Typhoid Fever were identified in the entire city. Eventually the investigation narrowed to a new cook, at the Maternity Hospital named Mrs. Brown. And upon being arrested by the police Mrs. Brown confessed. She was actually Mary Mallon.  And the entire 1915 out break could be traced back to her.

Mr. Soper observed, “Here she was, dispensing germs daily with the food…” The press wanted her tried for murder and the public, which had supported her plea for freedom five years before, were now universal in their condemnation. But Mary herself was unrepentant, telling a reporter, “As there is a God in heaven, I will get justice, somehow, sometime.” She still refused to believe she was the source of infection. She told Life magazine, “I am doomed to be a prisoner for life!” 

And so she was. She was returned to her cottage on North Brother Island (above), and eventually was given a job helping out in the laboratory. 

Years later, there is Mary (above, right) wearing glasses now, standing next to bacteriologist Emma Sherman. Seeing her you can understand how the police and Doctor Baker had such trouble taking her into custody that first time.  

Mary must have been lonely. She had few visitors, usually only staff members. She never admitted she might be responsible for any illness or deaths, but for twenty-three years she was identified to all as “Typhoid Mary”.  

Then, in December of 1932 she suffered a massive stroke. Now, she was a patient again, and bed ridden. And in 1938 she died. She claimed to have never suffered from typhoid fever.  

But her  autopsy revealed her liver was heavily infected with the Typhoid bacteria, which it had been  periodically releasing her entire adult life. 

"Typhoid" Mary Mallon is buried in St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx.

Her nemesis,  George Soper (above), was the director of the American Cancer Society from 1923 to 1928. He died on relative obscurity 17 June, 1948, in at the age of 78. 

He must have known that his subject, Mary Mallon (above, left), would be better remembered than he was; which was odd. She just wanted a normal life, while he hungered for fame.

Doctor Sara Josephine Baker (above) was appointed the director of New York City's Bureau of Child Hygiene in 1908. 

And when she (above, foreground, washing a baby), retired in 1923, New York City had the lowest childhood mortality rate of any major city in the United States. 

During the remainder of her life, Dr. Baker (above) resided in New Jersey with her life partner, novelist Ida Wylie. Between the 50 articles she wrote for profession journals, her 200 magazine articles on children's health and her five books, it is probable Dr. Baker saved hundred's of thousands of children's lives by the time she died in 1945. 

A vaccine, available since 1921, can prevent most Typhoid infections, but it has side effects. Since 1946 the standard treatment has been a course of the antibiotic streptomycin, invented by graduate student, Albert Israel Schatz, and stolen by his advisor at Rutgers, Professor Selman Waksman (above), This can cure an infected patient. Still prevention of infections through public health programs remains the most cost effective method to prevent its spread. And nothing developed over the past century would have made life any easier for  "Typhoid" Mary Mallon,   

                                                    - 30 - 

MARY QUITE CONTRARY - ONE

 

I doubt you have ever heard of George Soper, but he is the perfect example of the ways that new technology provides an opportunity for an individual to achieve wealth and fame. George was born in 1870 in New York City, just as the population was exploding, and people began noticing that it was not a very healthy place to live. 

Each year one out of every 36 people in New York City died of disease or accident. In Boston and Philadelphia the rate was one out of every 44. The rate for London and Paris was one out of every 40. The natural question was why the death rate varied at all. No one had ever asked that before, scientifically.  So George did.

George A. Soper (above) graduated from Columbia University in 1899 with a doctorate in the new field of "civil engineering". He was described as a man of “average build, high wide forehead and hooded eyes that seem foreboding,” which I suppose came from staring down disaster day after day.

On 8 September, 1900 , when a category 4 Hurricane leveled Galveston Island, Texas and killed one third of the human population, one of the unsung heroes was 30 year old Dr. George Soper. He saved thousands of lives in Galveston by quickly redesigning and installing a new municipal water system and preventing the predicted typhoid epidemic which normally followed natural disasters. 

In 1903 he helped stop a typhoid epidemic in Ithaca that had killed 82 in just two months, and then stopped another typhoid outbreak in Watertown, New York. In 1904 he turned his attention to the death rate in New York City.

George was hired by the Department of Health, and tasked with answering a basic question; what happens to all that human waste dumped into the Hudson and East Rivers? Conventional wisdom was that it all floated out to the ocean. But by releasing floats into the rivers and tracking their journeys over three years, George stunning proved that because of their width and the tides, neither the Hudson or the East River actually flows very much out to sea.  

The floats meandered back and forth for weeks before eventually escaping into the bay.  Since the river did not flush itself, it was not a very good toilet. As George explained to the New York Times, “…immense quantities of poisonous sewage floats for days in the river and bays close to public baths, bathing beaches and the oyster beds of Jamaica Bay, from which 1 million bushels are brought to New York markets every year.” (p. 20, NYT March 14, 1911 Sports) George was obviously preparing the public for the expense of building a new sewage system.

George knew there would be resistance.  “No new taxes!” is not a new battle cry. And he knew opponents to the expense would be nit-picking every word he said. And if you listened carefully you could hear Dr. Soper soften his absolutes, even in that same interview with the Times. 

He continued, “Only recently there was an outbreak of typhoid at the Rockaway Peninsula…In one case we traced the oysters to a dealer who was to have put them into fresh water before selling them. We could not assertion whether or not he kept his promise…”  In other words, George knew the sewage was killing people but he did not yet have the individual case histories or the laboratory work that would establish it to a scientific certainty.  He was inventing on the fly a new science - epidemiology.

Typhoid Fever only strikes humans. By the middle of the 19th Century it was proven it was caused when humans consumed food or water contaminated by human wastes. The blood of every patient is filled with rod shaped Salmonella Serotype Typhi bacteria (above),  The disease begins as mild fever that increases in temperature over several days and is later accompanied by debilitating abdominal pain, constipation, headaches and vomiting. The symptoms continue for months, and even kill the young and the old. 

And that was why, when landlord George Thompson asked Dr. Soper to investigate a single outbreak of typhoid in a house he was renting in Oyster Bay, Long Island, Dr. Soper jumped at the chance.  

Banker Charles Warren and his family had rented a guest house (above) for the summer from the George Thompson.  On Sunday, 27 August, 1911, one of the Warren daughters had suddenly developed a fever of 105 degrees F, a headache, diarrhea, nausea and a heavy cough.  When she also developed a skin rash a local doctor diagnosed her with typhoid fever.  Quickly Mrs. Warren, a second daughter, two maids and the gardener also came down with the fever.  A Board of Health investigator quickly ascribed the source to a contaminated water supply, but the Thompson family drank from the same well, and they were all fine. Mr. Thompson was convinced the cause could not be the water, in part because, if it was, he would have a very hard time renting that house again.

Dr. Soper agreed with Mr. Thompson, and at first thought it must have been caused by those bad oysters. But, when he moved his investigation to the island of Manhattan,  and intensively interviewed the Warren family in their own home, he found they had eaten no oysters. George did note that there were eleven people in the Warren household that summer, but only six had developed typhoid. What was different about those six people? What had they done that the five other occupants had not done? Eventually, after hours of interviews, the family remembered a special treat they had eaten for desert one night; peaches. George realized now he had to locate the cook who had washed those peaches, even though everyone was certain, she had not developed typhoid fever.

All the family knew about her was that she was Irish, was middle aged, had dark hair, and was named Mary. She had been provided by an employment agency, which had checked her letters of reference but had not kept them. So George found himself tracking “Mary” the cook through other Irish immigrant servants used by the same agency.

He ran into suspicion and secrecy, and had to travel to Boston and back, but eventually he discovered that her full name was Mary Mallon, and she had cooked for seven families over the last seven years. In those families 22 people had developed typhoid fever, and one young girl had died of it. Soper was now certain he had found a carrier for typhoid, something that been only a theory up to then; Which explains why Dr. Soper was so excited when he found Mary, working as a cook for Mr. Walter Bowen and his family, on Park Avenue.

Soper appeared before Mary (above) in the Bowen kitchen and, according to himself,  "I was as diplomatic as possible, but I had to say I suspected her of making people sick and I wanted specimens of her urine, feces and blood.”  Sounds very diplomatic to me.  Mary would later claim that Soper also told her he was going to write a book about her and offered to split the royalties with her. But whether such a deal was offered or not, Mary’s reaction was swift and definitive. According to Soper, “She seized a carving fork and advanced in my direction.” Soper says he ran from the house, feeling lucky to have escaped.

And to be honest, I do not blame Mary Malone. A strange man has approached her and asked for a sample of her bodily fluids. And worse, he had then accused her of being the original Typhoid Mary. Which she was.

- 30 –

MARY QUITE CONTRARY - Two

 

I am of two minds about "Typhoid Mary". The officials could not prove in court that Mary Mallon was spreading typhoid fever. The science of biology had not progressed that far. And that  made her arrest and detention unconstitutional. Thank God they locked her up, anyway - at least for awhile.

After Mary chased George Soper out of the Bowen family kitchen, it would appear that he was no longer welcomed in the house by either Mary or her employer, Mr, Bowen - which makes me wonder if George was as “diplomatic” as he claimed to be.  We know that the next time he tried to talk to Mary, George Soper approached her at the rooming house where she lived. This time he even brought along an actual medical doctor, Doctor Raymond Hobbler. But this did not strengthen his argument. Again Mary refused to hand over her urine, blood or feces. 

Defeated yet again, the Health Department decided to dispatch the assistant commissioner of health, who also managed the smallpox vaccination programs and sanitation issues for the city,  Doctor Sara Josephine Baker.  She brought with her an assistant, an ambulance with a driver and an attendant,  and five police officers.

By  the way; Mary Mallon was not a complete fool. She had consulted a chemist – what we would call a pharmacist.  He had examined her and assured Mary she was clear of the disease. Thus she felt it was the health officials who were crazy. 

So when Mary answered the knock on her rooming house door, and was confronted by Dr Baker and several police officers, she panicked. According to Dr. Baker, “As she lunged at me with the fork, I stepped back, recoiled on the policeman, and so confused matters that, by the time we got through the door, Mary had disappeared.”

They turned the tiny house upside down, and five hours later found Mary hiding in the supply closet of a neighboring house. Wrote Dr. Baker, “(Mary) came out fighting and swearing, both of which she could do with appalling efficiency and vigor…she was maniacal in her integrity…"

"The policemen lifted her into the ambulance and I literally sat on her all the way to the (Willard Parker Hospital (above))…it was like being in a cage with an angry lion.”

At last the health officials could obtain the precious samples. The blood and urine were negative. But the stool was described as “teeming” with "Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi". 

Under the city code 1169, requiring Health officials to avoid causes of disease, and code 1170 giving them the right to place any ill person in isolation, they now restricted Mary Mallon (above, foreground) to the hospital on North Brother Island, in the middle of the East River. She would remain there for almost three years. During which time she was not ill.  

But throughout that time Mary continued to fight back, writing letters and contacting lawyers. The hospital's tests showed 120 out of 163 of her stool samples tested positive for typhoid. So Mary sent her own samples to a private lab and consulted her own physicians. They reported her as free of typhoid. 

As she wrote to the courts, “I am an innocent human being. I have committed no crime, and I am treated like an outcast - - a criminal. It is unjust, outrageous, uncivilized. It seems to me incredible that in a Christian community a defenseless woman can be treated in this manner.” Clearly this was not an ignorant woman. 

A photo of patients taken from the hospital on North Brother Island is dominated by a glaring Mary Mallon (above, foreground). No wonder she is glaring because it is a staged photo. Except for her first few days there, Mary was not confined to a bed.  And in the photo she is fully dressed.

Because she was not ill, the hospital provided her a small cottage . But she was still not a woman to be ignored.

The civil engineer George Soper (above) fought back. “The state has the power to compel the ignorant, the selfish, the careless and the vicious to so regulate their lives and property so that they shall not be the source of danger to others. The welfare of the many is the supreme law…” It was an arrogant argument,  which in 1909 swayed Justice Mitchell Erlanger. “While the court deeply sympathizes with this unfortunate woman, it must protect the community.” But the public was now aware of Mary’s predicament, and public pressure began to build for her release.

In 1910 a new commissioner of the NYC Board of Health agreed to release Mary if she promised to no longer work as a cook, and checked in every three months with the board. Mary immediately agreed, and on 20 February, 1909 , she stepped off the ferry from Brothers Island and blended back into the city of New York. She reported to the Health Department a few times and then simply disappeared. She was not heard again for five years. 

In January 1915 there was another outbreak of typhoid fever at the Sloan Maternity Hospital (above). Twenty-five nurses and workers fell sick, two of whom died. In fact, that year some 300,000 cases of Typhoid Fever were identified in the entire city. Eventually the investigation narrowed to a new cook, at the Maternity Hospital named Mrs. Brown. And upon being arrested by the police Mrs. Brown confessed. She was actually Mary Mallon.  And the entire 1915 out break could be traced back to her.

Mr. Soper observed, “Here she was, dispensing germs daily with the food…” The press wanted her tried for murder and the public, which had supported her plea for freedom five years before, were now universal in their condemnation. But Mary herself was unrepentant, telling a reporter, “As there is a God in heaven, I will get justice, somehow, sometime.” She still refused to believe she was the source of infection. She told Life magazine, “I am doomed to be a prisoner for life!” 

And so she was. She was returned to her cottage on North Brother Island (above), and eventually was given a job helping out in the laboratory. 

Years later, there is Mary (above, right) wearing glasses now, standing next to bacteriologist Emma Sherman. Seeing her you can understand how the police and Doctor Baker had such trouble taking her into custody that first time.  

Mary must have been lonely. She had few visitors, usually only staff members. She never admitted she might be responsible for any illness or deaths, but for twenty-three years she was identified to all as “Typhoid Mary”.  

Then, in December of 1932 she suffered a massive stroke. Now, she was a patient again, and bed ridden. And in 1938 she died. She claimed to have never suffered from typhoid fever.  

But her  autopsy revealed her liver was heavily infected with the Typhoid bacteria, which it had been  periodically releasing her entire adult life. 

"Typhoid" Mary Mallon is buried in St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx.

Her nemesis,  George Soper (above), was the director of the American Cancer Society from 1923 to 1928. He died on relative obscurity 17 June, 1948, in at the age of 78. 

He must have known that his subject, Mary Mallon (above, left), would be better remembered than he was; which was odd. She just wanted a normal life, while he hungered for fame.

Doctor Sara Josephine Baker (above) was appointed the director of New York City's Bureau of Child Hygiene in 1908. 

And when she (above, foreground, washing a baby), retired in 1923, New York City had the lowest childhood mortality rate of any major city in the United States. 

During the remainder of her life, Dr. Baker (above) resided in New Jersey with her life partner, novelist Ida Wylie. Between the 50 articles she wrote for profession journals, her 200 magazine articles on children's health and her five books, it is probable Dr. Baker saved hundred's of thousands of children's lives by the time she died in 1945. 

A vaccine, available since 1921, can prevent most Typhoid infections, but it has side effects. Since 1946 the standard treatment has been a course of the antibiotic streptomycin, invented by graduate student, Albert Israel Schatz, and stolen by his advisor at Rutgers, Professor Selman Waksman (above), This can cure an infected patient. Still prevention of infections through public health programs remains the most cost effective method to prevent its spread. And nothing developed over the past century would have made life any easier for  "Typhoid" Mary Mallon,   

- 30 -