50. Freidman, “Chronic Fecal Typhoid Fever Carriers,” p. 28. The high number of females among carriers was noted by health officials nationwide. See, for example, sources in n. 44 in chap. 1 and Th. M. Vogelsang, Typhoid and Paratyphoid B Carriers and Their Treatment: Experiences from Western Norway (Arbok: Universitetet I Bergen, 1950), pp. 119–20. In New York City, three-quarters of the 675 chronic carriers identified between 1907 and 1936 were female. See Bolduan and Frant, “Typhoid Carrier Situation,” p. 66.
51. Charles E. Simon, Human Infection Carriers: Their Significance, Recognition and Management (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1919), p. 101.
52. NYCDH, AR, 1919, p. 81. Similar optimism about carrier policy can be seen in, for example, Stanley H. Osborn and Edith A. Beckler, “Once a Typhoid Carrier, Always a Typhoid Carrier,” Journal of Infectious Diseases 27 (1920): 145–50. See also Mark W. Richardson, “Dirty Hands and Typhoid Fever,” American Journal of Public Health 4 (1914): 140–44, which suggests that carriers be kept under “competent supervision” and not be allowed to handle food, “but a period of quarantine which might necessitate individual restraint for a period covering forty or fifty years, is, of course, not to be thought of” (p. 143). Some of the problems in getting carrier cooperation are discussed in Overlander, “Typhoid Carrier Problem,” pp. 37–40.
53. NYCDH, AR, 1922, p. 92. The department list of chronic carriers included 112 people. See also, New York Times, October 13, 1922, and January 21, 1923.
54. NYCDH, AR, 1922, p. 92.
55. The Minutes of the Board of Health of the City of New York occasionally noted the detention of a typhoid carrier (once, a month late, when sanctioning his release), but we can assume these were temporary isolations because when counts of carriers at the city hospitals were made, these carriers were not included. I located nine carriers detained in the decade of the 1920s. See, for example, Minutes, November 21, 1923, when Thomas Flood was detained at Riverside Hospital, Box 3949, vol. 45; February 11, 1924, when Walman Cardoza was isolated at Kingston Avenue Hospital, designated “temporary,” Box 3949, vol. 46; April 29, 1924, when May Josephs was taken to Riverside Hospital as a “suspected chronic typhoid carrier,” Box 3950, vol. 47; and passim through the 1920s. Philip Ebel of Brooklyn was sent to Kingston Avenue Hospital on September 24, 1929, and released on October 8, 1929, when a health department investigation revealed “that the conditions at proposed residence of the Carrier are satisfactory” Box 3956, vol. 67.
56. New York Times, March 14, 1924, p. 19; March 15, 1924, p. 13. Quotations from the March 15 article. Cotils was added officially to the city carrier list on February 11, 1924. See Minutes, Board of Health of the City of New York, Box 3949, vol. 46, February 11, 1924.
57. Beck and Hollister, Typhoid Fever: California, p. 68.
58. Ibid., p. 87.
59. See ibid. for a discussion of noncooperation.
60. “Hunting the Typhoid-Carrier,” The Literary Digest 65 (May 1, 1920): 115. See also New York State Department of Health, Annual Report, 1920, p. 68.
61. Senftner and Coughlin, “Typhoid Carriers in New York State,” p. 718. See also New York State Department of Health, Annual Report, 1931, p. 150.
62. J. W. Kerr and A. A. Moll, “Communicable Diseases: An Analysis of the Laws and Regulations for the Control Thereof in Force in the United Sates,” Public Health Bulletin no. 62 (July, 1913) (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1914), pp. 66–67.
63. No family was mentioned in the news stories about Tony Labella, and in general the health department did not record personal details about the registered carriers.
64. Rosenau, Preventive Medicine and Hygiene, p. 638.
65. See reports in the New York Times, March 14, 15, 1924, and further discussion in chap. 4.
66. Chapin, Sources and Modes (1910), p. 110; 2d ed., 1912, p. 152.
67. Ibid. (1910), p. 93.
68. Freidman, “Chronic Fecal Typhoid Fever Carriers,” p. 31.
69. Overlander, “Typhoid Carrier Problem,” p. 39.
70. Chapin concluded (even with regard to the sick) that “isolation in our prevailing contagious diseases is carried farther than is necessary; that less rigorous measures would accomplish practically as much good, and that there would be less temptation to conceal cases and to interpret doubtful symptoms in line with the patient’s desires.” See his Sources and Modes (1910), p. 110.
71. “Chronic Typhoid Fever Producer,” Science n.s. 25 (1907): 864.
72. Chapin, Sources and Modes (1910), p. 57. For more criticism of the New York City health department’s treatment of Mary Mallon, see W. H. Hamer, “Typhoid Carriers and Contact Infection. Some Difficulties Suggested by Study of Recent Investigations Carried out on ‘Living Lines.’ ” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 4(1911): 105–46.
73. The work of epidemiology itself precluded narrow approaches to disease control. A science that emerged in the pre-bacteriological 1840s, it searched all aspects of communicable diseases in its efforts to determine the reasons for the occurrence of epidemics. Epidemiologists, such as George Soper, added germ theory to their list of factors to be considered at the turn of the twentieth century. Although historian William Coleman concluded that bacteriology “greatly reduced” the scope of epidemiological investigations, the Mary Mallon case indicates the reduction was not so great. See William Coleman, Yellow Fever in the North: The Methods of Early Epidemiology (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987). Quotation from p. 173.
74. Lederle is quoted in the New York Times, February 21, 1910, p. 18.
75. New York American, February 21, 1910, p. 6.
76. Ernst J. Lederle, Ph.D., Commissioner of Health, to Mayor Gaynor, February 26, 1910. In the William L. Gaynor subject files, “welfare” box, GWJ-95, New York Municipal Archives.
77. Lederle is quoted in “ ‘Typhoid Mary’ is Free; Wants Work,” New York American, February 21, 1910, p. 6. Mallon’s release agreement is also noted in the Hoffman/Marr Collection, which contains a copy of a memo from the Clerk of the Division of Epidemiology to the Director of the Health Department, which itself cited the Minutes, Board of Health of the City of New York, February 9, 1910.
78. Baker is quoted in Isabelle Keating, “Dr. Baker Tells How She Got Her Woman,” The Brooklyn Eagle, May 8, 1932.
79. Soper, “Curious Career,” p. 710.
80. “Hospital Epidemic From Typhoid Mary,” New York Times, March 28, 1915, sec. 2, p. 11. Media descriptions of Mallon’s recapture are examined in chap. 5.
81. An account of the hospital outbreak, without naming Mary Mallon, is M. L. Ogan, “Immunization in a Typhoid Outbreak in the Sloane Hospital for Women,” New York Medical Journal 101 (March 27, 1915): 610–12. See the stories in the New York Times, March 28, 1915, sec. 2, p. 1; and March 31, 1915, p. 8; the New York American, March 28, 1915, p. 1; and the New York Tribune, March 28, 1915, p. 7. The official remanding of Mary Mallon, “who had broken her parole and violated her agreement,” back to North Brother Island can be found in Minutes, Board of Health of the City of New York, Box 3939, vol. 1 in the box, March 30, 1915.
82. Soper, “Typhoid Mary,” p. 13. The New York Tribune editorialized similarly, “The sympathy which would naturally be granted Mary Mallon is largely modified for this reason: The chance was given to her five years ago to live in freedom, and . . . she deliberately elected to throw it away. . . . It is impossible to feel much commiseration for her” (March 29, 1915, p. 8).
83. Baker, Fighting for Life, pp. 76, 75.
84. In the Matter of . . . Mary Mallon (1909), Return to Writ.
CHAPTER THREE: “A Menace to the Community”
1. NYCDH, AR, 1907, p. 299.
2. William H. Park, “Typhoid Bacilli Carriers,” JAMA 51 (1908): 981.
3. “Woman Cook a Walking Typhoid Fever Factory,” The World, April 1, 1907, p. 1.
4. New York American, April 2, 1907, p. 2.
5. In the Matter of the Application for a Writ of Habeas
Corpus for the Production of Mary Mallon, New York Supreme Court (June 28—July 22, 1909), Memorandum. Available in the New York County Courthouse.
6. New York American, April 2, 1907, p. 2.
7. A New York American reporter claimed she was moved to the island after one month (June 30, 1909). This cannot be verified in extant health department records.
8. George A. Soper, “The Work of a Chronic Typhoid Germ Distributor,” JAMA 48 (1907): 2019–22. He read the paper before the Biological Society of Washington, D.C., on April 6, 1907. The discussion following it was printed in Science, n.s. 25 (1907): 863–65 and is also available in the Smithsonian Archives, Record Unit 7185. Approximately fifty people attended the meeting. Park, “Typhoid Bacilli Carriers,” pp. 981–82. Park first presented his paper at the Joint Meeting of the Section on Practice of Medicine and the Section on Pathology and Physiology of the American Medical Association, 59th Annual Session, Chicago, June, 1908. It was during the discussion of Park’s paper that M. J. Rosenau used the term typhoid Mary, the first published instance.
9. NYCDH, AR, 1907, p. 321.
10. George Edington to author, January 18, 1994, quoting his mother who worked in the Riverside Hospital doctors’ dining room, in response to Author’s Query, New York Times, Book Review sec, January 16, 1994; Emma Rose Sherman, telephone interview with author, from her home in New York City, June 14, 1993: the cottage on the outside was “darling” but on the inside was like a “pig sty and had a bad stench;” and (New York) Sun, March 28, 1915.
11. The term is from the Latin, habeas, from habere, which means to have and corpus, or body, and literally requires the restrainer to bring the body of the restrained person to court. As legal expert James Tobey explains, “When a person has been arrested or deprived of his liberty by quarantine, isolation, or commitment to a hospital, jail, or institution, he is entitled to have the legality of his detention passed upon by a court of record. This he may do by means of a writ of habeas corpus, a command by the court to produce or ‘have the body’ of the person in court at a specified time.” James A. Tobey, Public Health Law (New York: The Commonwealth Fund, 1947), p. 355.
12. “ ‘Typoid [sic] Mary’ Never Ill, Begs Freedom,” New York American, June 30, 1909, p. 3.
13. Hearst’s biographers do not provide any information that would verify his possible participation in the Mallon case. See, for example, John K. Winkler, William Randolph Hearst: A New Appraisal (New York: Hastings House, 1955), and W. A. Swanberg, Citizen Hearst (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1961). Swanberg notes other occasions when Hearst got financially involved with the people whose cases his newspaper covered. In 1897, the New York Morning Journal (previous name of the New York American) editorially defended Elizabeth Sommers, who had been jailed for accosting a police officer while drunk. Hearst hired an attorney who secured a writ of habeas corpus for Sommers, and she was ultimately released (p. 120).
14. George Ferguson to Mary Mallon, April 30, 1909, In the Matter of . . . Mary Mallon (1909), laboratory reports.
15. All the Ferguson laboratory reports are included in In the Matter of . . . Mary Mallon (1909) at the New York County Courthouse. It is also possible that Mallon had already planned the court appearance when the New York American learned of her plans and advertised them. There is no evidence that O’Neill took this as a pro bono case.
16. “ ‘Typhoid Mary’ The Extraordinary Predicament of Mary Mallon, a Prisoner on New York’s Quarantine Hospital Island, Not Because She is Sick, But Because She Breeds Typhoid Fever Germs and Scatters Them Wherever She Goes,” New York American, June 20, 1909, American Magazine sec., pp. 6–7. The depiction of the victims was slightly out of line with information provided by Soper. (See discussion of the count in chap. 1.) I am grateful to Dawn Corley for locating this issue for me.
17. N. TV. Ayer & Sons American Newspaper Annual (Philadelphia: N. W. Ayer & Son, 1907), p. 605, gives the circulation figure as 778,205, and here I estimate 1909 figures. The daily New York American garnered only 300,000 in 1907.
18. New York American, June 20, 1909. There are some errors in Park’s statement which leads one to think he was not directly quoted. First, he twice refers to Mallon as a “typhus” carrier—a different disease, even though once thought to be the same: Park certainly knew the difference and would not have made this mistake. Second, he claimed that Mallon was “of course, segregated with the typhoid patients,” when he knew she was the only person with typhoid isolated on North Brother Island, where almost every inmate was a tuberculosis sufferer. Third, he wrote that “examination is made each day,” when it was made at the most three times a week and often not more than once a week. Fourth, he intimated that Mallon was unique among the small numbers of carriers, when the literature already posited that 3 percent of recovered cases became life-long carriers. See chap. 1 for the state of medical knowledge.
19. George Francis O’Neill’s biography was pieced together from various newspaper notes about him and from the city directories; his admission to the bar was verified in a letter from Joe Murphy, Senior Assistant Appellate Court Clerk, to Sarah Pfatteicher, my research assistant, December 29, 1993. See his obituary in the New York Times, December 24, 1914. On his expertise, see, for example, the New York Times, December 3, 1911: “The lawyer who will prosecute Mary’s case against the city is the same one who appeared for her before the Supreme Court in 1909, when her freedom was denied. He is George Francis O’Neill of 5 Beekman Street, and he is a specialist in medico-legal questions.” The address given for Mallon’s lawyer, 5 Beekman Street, corresponded to the office address of the specific O’Neill who died in 1914 and whose home address was 502 E. 89th Street. When he defended Albert Patrick, O’Neill’s office moved to 291 Broadway, but his home address remained the same. On the Patrick case, see, for example, the New York Times, December 18, 1910; May 4, 1911; November 28, 1912. No papers of O’Neill’s have been located. I have not been able to verify his standing for state senate. I would like to thank the New York Bar Association for their help in my efforts to learn more about this attorney.
20. Fred S. Westmoreland, the resident physician at Riverside Hospital, admitted that the health department received from Soper a report “similar” to his printed one, “with the exception that in the [printed] report the names are eliminated.” O’Neill probably would not have seen this until after filing his petition. See In the Matter of . . . Mary Mallon (1909), Return to the Writ. I cannot absolutely verify that the notes quoted were written by O’Neill, but the context strongly suggests it.
21. The notes were written on the back of one of the pages of Mary Mallon’s undated letter and are part of In the Matter of . . . Mary Mallon (1909).
22. In the Matter of . . . Mary Mallon (1909), Petition for Habeas Corpus.
23. On habeas corpus proceedings in public health matters, see Tobey, Public Health Law, pp. 354–56.
24. In the Matter of . . . Mary Mallon (1909), Memorandum.
25. See any of the newspapers cited above during June and July, 1909. For example, the New York Times reporter wrote on July 17, 1909: “Mary Mallon, known to fame as ‘Typhoid Mary,’ and once the cook in the family of J. Coleman Drayton of 56 East Seventy-ninth Street.” Or the (New York) Sun of June 30, 1909: “She is Mary Mallon and in her day cooked in the homes of J. Coleman Drayton, Henry Gilsey, and others in New York.”
26. Larry Gostin, “Traditional Public Health Strategies,” in AIDS and the Law: A Guide for the Public, ed. Harlon L. Dalton, Scott Burris, and the Yale AIDS Law Project (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 47–65, quotations from p. 50.
27. Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), 197 U.S. 11. The decision is reproduced in its entirety in Tobey, Public Health Law, pp. 238–40, and the quotations here are from that printing.
28. Tobey, Public Health Law, p. 240.
29. Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), 9 Wheat. 1, 6 L. Ed. 23, quoted in Tobey, Public Health Law, p. 42.
30. In the Matter of . . . Mary Mallon (
1909), Memorandum.
31. NYCDH, AR, 1919, p. 81. The department of health traced sixty-seven typhoid carriers in 1919, of which Copeland described four as “refractory, requir[ing] special care in order to make them comply with our requirements,” two sentences after he states the laws on the books did not apply to healthy carriers.
32. NYCDH, AR, 1921, p. 52.
33. There is some confusion in the record about when New York law actually allowed health officials to consider carriers as sick in terms of health policy. According to one report of New York’s regulations, on March 30, 1915, section 86 of the health code was revised to allow for carriers to be “subject to the regulations governing clinical cases” of typhoid fever and other infectious diseases. Similarly, a revision of regulation 3 was recognized by the Board of Health Minutes on June 30, 1915, to the effect that “any person who is a ‘carrier’ of disease germs of Asiatic cholera, bacillary dysentery, epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis, poliomyelitis, diphtheria or typhoid fever, shall be subject to the regulations governing clinical cases of these respective diseases.” Minutes, Board of Health of the City of New York, New York Municipal Archives, Box 3939, vol. 2 in the box. But Commissioner Copeland and other New York officials before 1921 did not see this as helpful in their own attempts to control carrier behavior (since they were not attempting to hospitalize or isolate every carrier they found), and their response is most critical for understanding events. See Charles E. Simon, Human Infection Carriers: Their Significance, Recognition and Management (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1919), pp. 238–39.
34. In the Matter of . . . Mary Mallon (1909), Traverse to the Return to the Writ.
35. George Soper, “Typhoid Mary,” Military Surgeon 45 (1919): 10.
36. Despite the sound of the name of the court, this is a first-level city court that heard the case. See Randolph E. Bergstrom, Courting Danger: Injury and Law in New York City 1870–1910 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 13: “In New York City the Supreme Court was the primary court of initial jurisdiction, while the highest State Court was the Court of Appeals.”
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