Typhoid Mary
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When I questioned Emma Sherman (Telephone interview, July 13, 1994) about whether Mallon felt discriminated against because she was Irish, Sherman indicated that Mallon did not. Many of the nurses and some of the doctors on the island were Irish.
60. I am grateful to Susan Lederer for alerting me to antivivisectionists’ writing on Mallon, Moersch, Barmore, and other healthy typhoid fever carriers. Antivivisectionists remained disbelievers. See, for example, The Starry Cross 37 (1928): 85, 148; 31 (1922): 93–94; 35 (1926): 44; 43 (1935): 101–3; and 46 (1938): 164. The quotation is from 45 (1937): 148.
61. New York World, July 20, 1909. Mallon did not name the family. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle quoted Mallon when she named another family for whom she had worked: “I was cook for Mr. Stebbins’ family and for other families and nobody fell sick while I was there” (June 29, 1909, p. 1).
62. See the entry for George Albert Ferguson in Who’s Who in America, vol. 1 (1897–1942), p. 392. Ferguson was the author, with Arthur Henry Elliot, of A System of Instruction in Qualitative Chemical Analysis, 3d ed. (New York: the Authors, 1899). He was professor of analytical chemistry and mathematics at the New York College of Pharmacy beginning in 1896 and chemist to the New York State Board of Pharmacy. I am grateful to Greg Higby for consulting with me about the New York College of Pharmacy and for his guidance in the history of pharmacy collection at the University of Wisconsin.
63. New York World, July 20, 1909.
64. The handwritten letter survives in 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) in the New York County Courthouse. Warren Boroson published major parts of the letter pseudonymously in Gilbert Wersan, “The Truth (For a Change) About Typhoid Mary,” MD, September, 1985, p. 109.
65. This is the same Dr. R. J. Wilson, superintendent of hospitals for the New York City Health Department, who had investigated one of the household outbreaks of typhoid fever that Soper later traced to Mallon.
66. Another interpretation of this remark might emphasize Mallon’s naiveté or foolishness in refusing to make such a statement. I see her description of it as an effort to portray herself as a woman of integrity.
67. William H. Studdiford, a gynecologist on the Bellevue Hospital staff, who consulted on female patients at Riverside Hospital. Mallon misspelled his name.
68. Soper had attributed only one death to Mallon, that of a child in the Bowen home on Park Avenue where he found Mallon in 1907.
69. In the Matter of . . . Mary Mallon (1909), Mallon’s letter.
70. Affidavit and letter from Ernest J. Lederle to Mayor Gaynor, February 26, 1910, in the New York Municipal Archives, “Welfare” Box GWJ-95, William J. Gaynor Papers. A reference to O’Neill’s letter is at the top of the letter. Mallon agreed, also, to let Lederle know her whereabouts every three months.
71. New York Times, February 21, 1910, p. 18. See also the New York Daily Tribune, February 21, 1910, p. 5. When Mallon and George Francis O’Neill began a suit to recover damages for false imprisonment in December, 1911, the health department listed her address as 147 W. 143rd Street, Manhattan, a different address from the one she shared with Briehof. It was possibly an employer’s address. I have been unable to locate Mary Mallon at this address in the City Directory for these years. See Minutes, Board of Health of the City of New York, New York Municipal Archives, Box 3933, vol. 1, December 12, 1911.
72. New York American, February 21, 1910, p. 6. See also New York Call, February 21, 1910, p. 1, and New York Herald, February 20, 1910, p. 1.
73. Two and one-half years after giving Mary Mallon her liberty, while describing her case and her release to a meeting of the International Hygiene Congress, New York City Health Department officials justified releasing her and did not indicate any problems with keeping abreast of her activities. See New York Times, September 26, 1912, p. 6.
74. New York Times, December 3, 1911, p. 9. See also New York American, December 3, 1911, sec. 4, p. 6, and New York World, December 3, 1911. Official notice of the pending suit can be found in the Minutes, Board of Health of the City of New York, Box 3933, vol. 1, December 12, 1911, p. 8.
75. By 1914 S. S. Goldwater was commissioner of health, and Lederle would not have been in a position to help.
76. Soper, “Curious Career,” p. 709. This exaggeration leads us to question Soper’s account of Mallon’s whereabouts for the years 1910–1914.
77. New York Times, Editorial, November 29, 1914, sec. 3, p. 2.
78. Soper, “Typhoid Mary.” The health department believed the woman cooking in a New Jersey inn was Mary Mallon and traced five cases to that inn, but it cited “indirect channels” for the identification and provided no evidence to make the connection convincing. Also it claimed her employment began in January, 1912, but in September, 1912, Biggs confidently stated that her release was working. See M. L. Ogan, “Typhoid Fever in New York City,” Monthly Bulletin of the Department of Health 5 (April, 1915): 104–5; and New York Times, September 26, 1912, p. 6.
It is possible, even probable, that these instances involved a cook other than Mary Mallon. The term “Typhoid Mary” came to be used generally to refer to any Irish woman cook in the vicinity of a case of typhoid fever, and the name Mary Mallon itself was a common one. See, for example, Mary McLaughlin’s case of a cook in the Marblehead, Massachusetts, for which there is no independent confirmation. See also the cook fired from a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, orphan home in 1932, after an outbreak of typhoid, who was referred to as “Typhoid Mary.” I am grateful to Jack Taub, who lived in the home in those years and became sick himself, for calling my attention to this incident. Jack Taub to author, January 20, 1994 and March 4, 1994.
79. The Sloane Hospital outbreak is discussed in M. L. Ogan, “Immunization in a Typhoid Outbreak in the Sloane Hospital for Women,” New York Medical Journal 101 (1915): 610–12.
80. See accounts in New York Times, March 28, 1915, sec. 2, p. 11; New York Tribune, March 28, 1915, p. 7, and Editorial, March 29, 1915, p. 8; New York World, March 28, 1915, Classified section, p. 1; and New York American, March 28, 1915, p. 1, and March 31, 1915, p. 5. Official notification is in Minutes, Board of Health of the City of New York, Box 3939, vol. 1, March 30, 1915.
81. Soper reported, “One day her best friend, a man whose name she often went by, sent for her. He was ill with a bad heart. Mary got him into a hospital, where he died” (“Curious Career,” p. 709). Unfortunately, Soper did not say when this occurred. I have not been able to find a death notice for Briehof (or Breshof) in this period of time.
82. This conclusion would hold for other healthy carriers I have seen traced and described in the literature. As the St. Louis health officers concluded, referring to healthy carriers of typhoid fever, “As the average man is not a wilful murderer at heart, he would, undoubtedly, be anxious to follow instructions and would be glad to find himself pronounced a non-carrier.” C. W. Gould and G. L. Quails, “A Study of the Convalescent Carriers of Typhoid,” JAMA 58 (1912): 545.
83. I am indebted to Sarah Pfatteicher for this suggestion.
84. Riverside Hospital building list, 1944. See also, for example, NYCDH, AR, 1926, p. 111, describing the hospital’s capacity.
85. George Edington to author, January 18, 1944, in response to my Author’s Query, New York Times, Book Review sec, January 16, 1994, p. 16.
86. Adele E. Leadley to Surrogate’s Court of Bronx County, January 17, 1939. (Copy in the Hoffman/Marr Collection.) None of the letters Leadley referred to exist today.
87. Charles-E. A. Winslow, The Life of Hermann M. Biggs, M.D., D.Sc, LL.D.: Physician and Statesman of the Public Health (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1929), p. 199; Baker, Fighting for Life, p. 76. Unfortunately, neither Winslow nor Baker indicated the dates of these letters, and we cannot determine if Mallon wrote them during her first or second isolation (or during both). There is no evidence that Mallon actually tried to contact either Biggs or Bake
r during the years she was not isolated, 1910–1915.
88. Mallon, Last Will and Testament. I have tried to trace the Lempe family in the Census and in various city directories, but cannot locate them with certainty. A Lempe family with these names lived for a while at 33rd street and 3rd avenue, near where Briehof and Mallon lived, and Mallon’s friendship with them might have dated from the years she and Briehof shared rooms.
89. Sherman, Interview, July 16, 1993.
90. Department of Health Employment Record for Mary Mallon, in Hoffman/Marr Collection. The form provides the following information:
3/1/18 Appointed “Domestic” at a salary of $240/year
1/1/19 Continuing as Domestic $300/year
1/1/20 Continuing as Domestic $400/year
8/20/20 Continuing as Domestic $500/year
3/1/21 Continuing as Domestic $588/year
1/1/22 Continuing as Domestic $588/year
8/1/22 “Nurse” (Change of Title) $588/year
Somewhat confusing this issue, and also in the Hoffman/Marr Collection, is a typed reference to a Civil List 1926, in which Mary Mallon is said to be a “Senior Hospital Helper” beginning March 1, 1918, with a salary of $612, which increases to $630 (no date) and then to $690, also no date provided.
The Civil List on microfilm at the Municipal Archives provides the following additional information about Mallon’s employment:
1929 Domestic $588/year
1931 Senior Hospital Helper $630/year
1932 Senior Hospital Helper $690/year
91. The board of health considered her day trips to the mainland as recorded in the Minutes, Board of Health of the City of New York, Box 3943, vol. 30, June 11, 1918, p. 20.
92. Clerk, Division of Epidemiology, to the Director of the Bureau of Preventable Diseases, January 6, 1919. See also letter from J. W. Crawford, Superintendent, to H. G. MacAdam, Chief, Division Institute of Inspection, January 3, 1919. During these years, too, George Soper tried to keep informed about Mallon’s infective state, and on May 9, 1919, the clerk of the division of epidemiology wrote the director a memo about “Information for reply to Dr. Soper’s inquiry re: Mary Mallon,” that her stools continued to test positive. Copies of these letters and memo are in the Hoffman/Marr Collection. Mallon was not alone in her refusal to submit stool samples. In 1922, for example, four carriers “refused absolutely to give stool specimens when requested, making it necessary for us to resort to the exercise of police power to procure compliance.” NYCDH, AR, 1922, p. 92.
93. Sherman, Interview, July 16, 1993.
94. Soper reported that Mallon visited a family on Long Island on some of her day trips off of North Brother Island, although he thought that “they were not particularly glad to see her.” This family was probably the Lempes, the only family mentioned in her will with a Long Island address. “Curious Career,” p. 712.
95. According to the 1925 AMA Physician Directory, Plavska was born in Russia in 1895, attended medical school at the University of Moscow, later called the Moscow Medical Institute, graduating in 1917. Sometime between then and 1925, when she is listed in the city and AMA directories as being at Riverside Hospital, Plavska came to this country and may have pursued further medical training. For most of her career, she practiced on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. Her daughter provided John Marr with the information that she had a private practice of gynecology. Plavska is mentioned two times in Minutes, Board of Health of the City of New York: on February 11, 1924 (Box 3949, vol. 46), when she was temporarily assigned to Willard Parker Hospital as an Interne, and on June 11, 1926 (Box 3952, vol. 55), when she received her diploma and certificate of service following her internship at Riverside Hospital. In the former instance, her name was spelled “Alexandra Plavskaja,” and in the later instance, her name was given as “Alexander [sic] Plavska.”
96. Sherman, Interview, July 16, 1993.
97. John Marr and Ida Peters Hoffman spoke to Mrs. Efros, Plavska’s daughter, November 25, 1976. Their notes are in the Hoffman/Marr Collection. Sherman confirmed Mallon’s visits to Plavska. Sherman, Interview, July 16, 1993.
98. Sherman’s official title was “laboratory technician,” but she performed all the bacteriological work on the island during her years there. She was first employed on October 17, 1929. See the Civil Lists, 1929–1935, microfilm, New York Municipal Archives. At the time she began work on North Brother Island, her name was Emma Rose Goldberg, which changed to Emma Rose Sherman on her marriage. Her family prefers that her married name be used in this book. (Telephone conversation with niece, Bubbles Yadow, October 25, 1995.)
99. Sherman, Interview, July 16, 1993. See also follow-up telephone interview, June 26, 1994.
100. Soper, “Curious Career,” p. 711.
101. Sherman, Interview, July 16, 1993.
102. See, for example, Milicent L. Hathaway and Elsie D. Foard, Heights and Weights of Adults in the United States, Home Economics Research Report No. 10 (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, 1960), p. 4. Weight—like height, age-dependent—ranged from 127.9 pounds to 145 pounds.
103. C. E. Banker, Chief, Division of Epidemiology, to Kenneth Mitchell of Elyria, Ohio, February 15, 1932. See also John L. Rice, Commissioner of Health, to Paul A. Teschner, American Medical Association, September 20, 1938, in which he describes Mallon: “She continues to have positive stools; is bedridden, but is otherwise cheerful and resigned to her lot.” Copies in the Hoffman/Marr Collection.
104. One indication of Mallon’s resignation to her life on North Brother Island, and continuing employment there, was that she volunteered to join the New York City employees retirement system and have proper deductions made from her salary. See Minutes, Board of Health of the City of New York, Box 3946, vol. 35, November 23, 1920.
105. Walker, “Typhoid Carrier,” p. 24.
106. Sherman, Interview, July 16, 1993.
107. See, for example, John A. Cahill, Medical Superintendent of Riverside Hospital, to Samuel Frant, Director of the Bureau of Preventable Diseases, November 12, 1938, which repeats the December 24, 1932, date that Soper claimed. Copy in the Hoffman/Marr Collection. Emma Sherman remembered the day, but not the date. The October, 1933, date was suggested in “I Wonder What’s Become of—’Typhoid Mary,’ ” Daily Mirror, Sunday Magazine sec, December 17, 1933, p. 19. Mary Mallon’s death certificate says she was admitted to the hospital (following the stroke) on December 4, 1932, a date I am most inclined to trust. (The Hoffman/Marr Collection contains a copy of Mallon’s death certificate.)
108. Quotations from Mallon’s Last Will and Testament, and from the attorney’s statement, filed with the will at the Bronx Surrogate’s Court. Sherman thought the choice was made to put Mallon with the children because they were hospitalized with all sorts of illnesses, rather than place her with only tuberculosis patients. Interview, July 16, 1993.
109. Offspring, “Petition.”
110. Ibid. The Catholic Charities received $250; Michael Lucy, $200; Alexandra Plavska, $200; Willie Lempe, $200; Mary Lempe, “clothing and personal effects”; Adelaide Jane Offspring, residuary estate, $4,172.05.
111. Sherman, Interview, July 16, 1993.
CHAPTER SEVEN: “Misbegotten Mary”
I am extremely grateful to the writers whose generosity in sharing published and unpublished material and joining into the spirit of my endeavor made this chapter possible. I wish to thank especially Tanya Contos, Barry Drogin, Joan Schenkar, Marc Sherman, and Mark St. Germain.
1. Roueché’s writings won him the Raven Award by the Mystery Writers of America for the best book in a mystery field outside the regular category of crime novels and reporting. His obituary can be found in the New York Times, April 29, 1994, p. B8.
2. Berton Roueché, “A Game of Wild Indians,” New Yorker 28 (April 5, 1952): 84–95, quotation from p. 84. Roueché used the widely accepted figure of fifty-three cases traced to Mary Mallon. See chap. 1 for the corrected figure of forty-seven. His title referred t
o a children’s game that led to a pipe stoppage, which fomented the epidemic.
3. Roueché, like many medical writers who published accounts of Mallon in the period following her death, described her case in the context of the high incidence of disease and large numbers of typhoid carriers at the same time that he separated Mallon from the pack and referred to her by the objectifying phrase Typhoid Mary. See, for example, Bayard S. Tynes and John P. Utz, “Factors Influencing the Cure of Salmonella Carriers,” Annals of Internal Medicine 57 (1962): 871–82, an article that begins with “Typhoid Mary” and studies the treatment of twenty-seven adult chronic carriers, but also maps the 3,637 chronic carriers then known to state health departments. (Map is p. 873.)
Medical writers, too, often repeated the story of Mrs. X, first traced by Wilbur A. Sawyer in 1914. She was implicated in transmitting typhoid fever to ninety-three people who ate the food she prepared for a church supper in Han-ford, California. See Wilbur A. Sawyer, “Ninety-Three Persons Infected by a Typhoid Carrier at a Public Dinner,” JAMA 63 (1914): 1537–42. See also Sawyer’s account of his most famous case, H. O.: “A Typhoid Carrier on Shipboard,” JAMA 58 (1912): 1336–38; and his “Late History of a Typhoid Carrier,” JAMA 64 (1915): 205–53. For a similar case in Washington, D.C., see James G. Cumming, “Should the Barriers Against Typhoid be Continued?” JAMA 98 (1932): 93–95. Mrs. X’s story is retold in Paul F. Clark, Pioneer Microbiologists of America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961), pp. 298–300. See also, Burnet MacFarlane and David O. White, Natural History of Infectious Disease, 4th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 126: “The most famous (or notorious) carrier was an American cook, ‘Typhoid Mary.’ ”