Terrible Typhoid Mary: Chapter 12–Afterword

In Mary’s letter to the editor of the New York American she revealed her resentment for the way she was treated: “I have been in fact a peep show for everybody. Even the interns had to come to see me and ask about the facts already known to the whole wide world. The tuberculosis men would say, ‘There she is, the kidnapped woman.’”

Hearst was known as an advocate for the workingman and the underdog. His sensational newspaper often railed against social injustice.

Hearst was known as an advocate for the workingman and the underdog. His sensational newspaper often railed against social injustice.

George Francis O’Neill intended to give Mary Mallon her day in court, a right protected by the Sixth Amendment. She had the right to an attorney. She had the right to a speedy trial and an impartial jury.

He headed to the New York State Supreme Court and filed a legal complaint known as a writ of habeas corpus, which requires a prison official to show why a prisoner is held.

He headed to the New York State Supreme Court and filed a legal complaint known as a writ of habeas corpus, which requires a prison official to show why a prisoner is held.

“No stranger who saw Mary yesterday would have suspected the danger the Health Board alleges it finds in this young woman,” wrote a New York American reporter. “She has a clear, healthy complexion, regular features, bright eyes and white teeth. She looks to be in robust health.”

He remarked on her strength, saying that she looked “as though she could make as valid resistance as she did then [when she was arrested].”
Reporters also used language that connoted a witch or a sorceress. They described Mary as a woman who had “strange power” and who “possessed the power” to infect others.

If other healthy carriers were loose in the city, if the law couldn’t be applied equally and without bias—another protection under the Fourteenth Amendment—then why single out Mary Mallon?

After the court adjourned, Mary returned to her bungalow on North Brother Island to await the judges’ decision.

But there was a caveat. “One thing she should be made aware of before the tie is bound and that is that I have been insane,” said Gray. “But it was over three years ago, and I was pronounced cured then and never had a return of the disease.”

“She could write an excellent letter, so far as composition and spelling were concerned,” was all George Soper said. “She wrote in a clear, bold hand, and with remarkable uniformity.”

Mary agreed, and Lederle handed her an affidavit to sign. He wanted her to put her promise in writing.

The New York State Department of Health said, “There is no state law by which a human carrier of typhoid bacilli can be kept from spreading contagion and disease.”

“It is quite a problem,” said O’Neill, “if a municipality can, without legal warrant, or due process of law, clap someone in jail upon the word of some medical man.”

Throughout the conference, the words “Typhoid Mary” were evoked again and again.

Typhoid fever was racing through Sloane Hospital for Women in Manhattan. The hospital had 8 physicians, 73 nurses, 75 employees, and 123 patients, all women, and a nursery of squalling newborn babies.

The hospital officials were stymied. How could such an epidemic happen? Sloane Hospital had an outstanding reputation.

Her temerity galled Soper. “She has had the assurance to go to a hospital, and of all places, a maternity hospital, to cook and possibly pollute the food of some 300 people.”

This time, few people felt sorry for Mary Mallon. “The chance was given to her five years ago to live in freedom,” scolded the New York Tribune on March 29, 1915. “It is impossible to feel much commiseration for her.”

The Tacoma Times in Washington State claimed that the New York authorities had captured a modern witch who “uses far more scientific and more fateful magic.”

At that time, the health department treated Moersch leniently, determining that he warranted special treatment because he had four children and a wife in poor health.

Moersch left North Brother Island in 1944, but his years on the island garnered much less attention.

Mary bequeathed the remainder of her estate—$4,172.05 after her debts were paid—to her good friend Adelaide Jane Offspring.

Mary’s death was reported widely in newspapers, medical periodicals, and bulletins of public health departments.

He blamed the misfortune on a “flippant” article written by a “free-lance journalist” and published in an “allegedly smart periodical.”

Soper’s main objection may have been that the five-page New Yorker article devotes a scant two paragraphs to him and his investigative work and that the article didn’t give him sole credit as Mary’s “discoverer.”

Was George Soper a bad guy? Despite his vainglorious tendencies, he seems to have had a genuine interest in improving the lives of others and making the world a safer and more sanitary place.

He devised comprehensive plans for the ventilation system for New York City’s subway system and for the city’s sewage disposal.

The “S” stood for Sara, but Baker preferred her middle name, Josephine. She was a feminist, a suffragist, a lecturer, and the author of fifty journal articles, two hundred articles for popular magazines, and five books: Healthy Babies (1920), Healthy Mothers (1920), Healthy Children (1920), The Growing Child (1923), and Child Hygiene (1925).

We are left to learn about her from what others say about her; from the way contemporaneous newspapers such as the New York American portrayed her and reported what she said and did; from how people such as George Soper and Josephine Baker related their encounters with her; and from what outstanding scholars such as Judith Walzer Leavitt and Priscilla Wald have determined about her and her world.

There’s a danger in writing a person’s life from a historical vantage point, for hindsight can be smug.

There’s a danger in writing a person’s life from a historical vantage point, for hindsight can be smug.

I stood across the street, where Soper might have skulked as he watched and waited for Mary.

New houses obscure the bay, but seagulls wheel overhead and complain, and the smell of the ocean is strong.