Many people have heard the story of Typhoid Mary, the healthy woman who spread disease everywhere she went. However, almost no one knows the story of Mary Mallon, a feisty woman with a carving knife, who fought hard for freedom from imprisonment from the New York City Health Department.

Of course, Mary Mallon was “Typhoid Mary.” Some people view her as a victim, others as an unrepentant killer. Certainly, her story has much to do with the lack of information about and treatments for typhoid in the 19th century. Even today, typhoid infects about 22 million people each year, with about 200,000 dying, especially in developing countries. And we have vaccinations and treatments for this deadly disease now.

So, is it any wonder that Typhoid Mary could strike such fear into 19th-century hearts?

10 Typhoid Fever Was One Of The 19th Century’s Worst Killers

In the 19th century, diseases spread rapidly in New York City where horses dropped massive amounts of manure on the streets each day. By 1894, the manure problem had reached crisis proportions in major cities across the world. According to one estimate, New York City’s horses numbered at least 100,000 (and probably considerably more) and were polluting the streets with at least 1.1 million kilograms (2.5 million lb) of excrement each day.^[1]

Dead and decaying animals also lined the streets. Families squeezed together in tenement buildings with overflowing outhouses. All these factors combined to hasten the spread of typhoid fever.

It invaded the stomach and small intestines, causing infections in the liver, gallbladder, spleen, heart, lungs, and kidneys. The deadliest damage occurred in the intestines. In severe cases, patients became delirious and developed severe diarrhea. Typhoid killed 10–30 percent of its victims, and their deaths were agonizing.

9 Dr. George Soper Became A Germ-Fighting Celebrity Hero

Dr. George Soper studied typhoid fever. He wanted to know what caused it, how it spread, and how to stop it. Soper promoted himself as a “sanitation engineer and chemist.” Soon, companies were hiring him to investigate germs and the spread of disease.

In 1903, there was a typhoid outbreak in Ithaca, New York. All over town, people were bedridden. Over a dozen patients a day were admitted to the city hospital. It was especially alarming that many of these were college students. Approximately 1,000 students, over one-third of the student body, at Cornell University evacuated the campus due to the deadly disease.^[2]

Soper went to work. He knew he had to stop sewage from polluting streams, rivers, and wells. He identified an area known as Six Mile Creek as the source of the outbreak. After insisting that all water be boiled, he recommended the use of a new filtering system for the city’s water.

He also ordered a massive disinfection of area hospitals and hired a team of 15 men to clean 1,200 outhouses. Many people credited him with restoring health to Ithaca and Cornell University.

8 Typhoid Fever Spread Wherever Mary Went

The Warrens were an affluent family renting a vacation home on Oyster Bay on Long Island. There were six family members and five servants. When six people contracted typhoid fever, no one blamed the cook—at first.

The Thompsons, the owners of the home, hired George Soper to investigate. After analyzing the water supply and the family’s food, he turned his suspicions on Mary Mallon, the family’s former cook.^[3]

Further research revealed that Mallon had worked for eight families. Seven of them faced outbreaks of typhoid fever, with 22 cases in all.

While this seemed an unlikely coincidence, Soper knew that he would need more proof. In fact, he needed help from Mary Mallon.

7 Typhoid Mary Was Violent

George Soper was on a mission. He paid Mary Mallon a surprise visit at her current employer’s home. After telling her that he represented the New York City Health Department, he explained that she was infecting people with a dangerous disease. He requested that she supply urine, stool, and blood specimens.^[4]

Mary became angry. She cursed at him, grabbed a carving knife, and lunged toward him. Soper ran from the house.

He thought Mary might respond better to a woman. So he sent Josephine Baker, one of the first female physicians, to talk to Mary. (Some sources say that Hermann Biggs at the health department sent Baker.) Either way, her visit was also disastrous. Baker reported, “She (Mary) came out fighting and swearing, both of which she could do with appalling efficiency and vigor.”

When Baker returned with police officers and an ambulance, Mary tried to stab Baker with a large kitchen fork. Then Mary kicked, screamed, and swore at the police officers. To keep Mary from escaping, Baker sat on her chest, pinning her to the floor of the ambulance.

Later, Mary wrote threatening letters to George Soper and Josephine Baker saying that she planned to take a gun and kill them.

6 Mary Mallon Was Taken By Force

Mary Mallon was taken against her will by force and held without a trial. After policemen put her into the ambulance, Mary traveled to Willard Parker Hospital where she had to give urine, stool, and blood samples to prove that she was a carrier of typhoid fever.

Throughout the examination, Mary insisted that she was healthy. She did not understand how she could spread a deadly disease. She was sure that she had never had typhoid fever.

Walter Bensel of the New York City Health Department declared, “This woman is a great menace to health, a danger to the community, and she has been made a prisoner on that account.”^[5]

After completing their examination, hospital employees escorted Mary to a boat. The steamer carried her to North Brother Island, which belonged to Riverside Hospital. This remote island was in the middle of the East River and accessible only by boat. Escape would be impossible. The facility quarantined people with infectious diseases like typhus and smallpox.

Mary lived in a small bungalow along the riverbank. This was her home for almost three years.

5 Soper Offered To Release Mary If She Would Have Her Gallbladder Removed

While at Willard Parker Hospital, Dr. Soper visited Mary and offered her a deal. Since most of her germs were in her gallbladder, they could release her if she agreed to have this organ removed. He explained that the gallbladder was like the appendix. The body didn’t need it to survive.

Mary refused to let doctors operate. “No knife will be put on me. There is nothing the matter with my gallbladder,” she declared.^[6]

Of course, surgery always has risks. But they were even greater in the early 1900s as shown by the picture above of a surgery performed in 1900. No one even wore masks. The operating room and procedures were not hygienic, especially by today’s standards.

Mary was becoming increasingly suspicious of doctors. And who could blame her?

4 The Health Department Used Experimental Drugs On Typhoid Mary

Doctors prescribed Urotropin, a drug made from ammonia and formaldehyde.^[7] It was not effective. Mary found the side effects to be unpleasant. Doctors also experimented with other drugs, changed her diet, and gave her laxatives. Tests showed that she was still a typhoid fever carrier.

3 Mary Received A Marriage Proposal While Quarantined

Reuben Gray, a 28-year-old Michigan farmer, wrote to Health Commissioner Thomas Darlington. Gray had read about Typhoid Mary. He wanted to marry her and offer her a home on his large farm far from town. There, Mary would not put other lives in danger.

Gray knew that Mary was a good cook. That was what he wanted most in a wife. “One thing she should be made aware of before the tie is bound,” wrote Gray, “and that is that I have been insane, but it was over three years ago.”^[8]

Mary declined his offer.

2 Mary Was Sneaky

In February 1910, Ernst Lederle, the new health commissioner, offered Mary a deal. If she gave up cooking and reported to the health department every month for tests, she would be released.

For the first year, Mary observed all the rules. She reported monthly to the health department. She did not work as a cook.

But she struggled to find work and make a living. Cooks made more money than other domestic workers. When Mary stopped reporting to the health department, no one noticed at first. She changed her name to Mary Brown and took several jobs as a cook.

In 1915, five years after Mary’s release, there was a typhoid outbreak at Sloane Hospital for Women (renamed from Sloane Maternity Hospital in 1910) in Manhattan. Twenty-five people were diagnosed with the disease. Two of them died.^[9]

Once again, Dr. Soper investigated. He discovered that the hospital had hired a new cook, a Mrs. Brown, just three months before the typhoid fever cases surfaced.

Investigators tested the kitchen staff. Mrs. Brown’s test was positive. Soper became more suspicious when he learned that the cook had disappeared again. Soper examined the kitchen’s records and soon recognized Mary’s handwriting from the threatening letters he had received.

This time, the public became angry. The Board of Health sent Mary back to Riverside Hospital. She lived there for 23 years. After a stroke left her paralyzed, she was transferred from her cottage to the hospital on the island. She stayed there until her death on November 11, 1938.

1 Mary Was Neither The Only Carrier Of Typhoid Nor The Most Deadly

Mary Mallon was the first typhoid carrier to be identified. However, by 1909, the New York City Health Department had found five healthy carriers. Only Mary was quarantined. She was believed to have infected 47–51 people, causing three deaths.

However, Tony Labella, another healthy carrier of typhoid fever, had infected 122 people (over twice as many as Mallon had). Five died. He was quarantined for two weeks and then released. At age 39, he disappeared.

The Health Department also forbade typhoid carrier Alphonse Cotils, a restaurant and bakery owner, to prepare food for other people. When he violated orders, charges were filed. Yet, the judge did not arrest him because he had a wife and children to support.

At the time, up to 4,500 new cases of typhoid occurred in New York City each year. Approximately 3 percent of sufferers were believed to become carriers. As a result, as many as 135 new typhoid carriers appeared each year. Mary Mallon may have spent most of her life in isolation, but she was far from alone in becoming a carrier of typhoid fever.^[10]

Lou Hunley is a children’s librarian. She loves learning more about strange historical events. When she’s not reading or writing, she enjoys hiking, biking, and playing pickleball.

Mary I of England was the only surviving child of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine. As the Catholic queen of a country that had fallen into religious conflict and established a breakaway church, she saw it as her duty to bring her subjects back under the “true” religion. This led her to persecute hundreds of Protestants after she came to power.

Overshadowed by her sister and successor, the Protestant Elizabeth I, Mary has largely been pushed aside in the public’s imagination. Today, most people associate her reign only with the Marian persecutions, and her chilling moniker, “Bloody Mary,” is probably more famous than she is. But as with most historical figures, there’s more to her story.

Here are ten reasons Mary wasn’t as evil as we’ve been taught.

10 Born into a Divided Family

Mary’s mother was Catherine of Aragon, a Spanish princess who’d been betrothed from a young age to young Arthur of the House of Tudor, then heir to the English throne. Shortly after the marriage, Arthur, in typical medieval fashion, succumbed to an untimely death, leaving the teenaged Catherine a widow in a foreign land. Arthur’s father, Henry VII, was also widowed and considered marrying Catherine himself but eventually proposed she wed his younger son and new heir, the future Henry VIII.

Negotiations over the marriage took so long that by the time it happened, Henry had already succeeded his father, and Catherine was in her twenties. It was into this tangled mess that Mary arrived in 1516 after several failed pregnancies. Her birth came at a time when royal parents were not exactly on the up and up regarding daughters being equal to sons. Altogether, Catherine gave birth to six children, including three sons, but none survived except Mary. The absence of a male heir eventually completely pulled Henry VIII away from his family.^[1]

9 Traumatized as a Teenager by Her Father

With no male heir, Henry VIII grew increasingly obsessed with the topic, seeking desperately to find an explanation for his lack of sons. Renaissance enlightenment principles aside, he concluded that by taking his brother’s widow as his wife, he’d broken the laws of God and been cursed with no heirs, even though the marriage had been sanctioned by the Vatican. Whether he legitimately believed this or simply found it a convenient pretext to remarry, only he knew.

Although Mary was already being educated as heiress presumptive, Henry remained vehemently opposed to a female successor. First, he appealed to the Pope to dissolve his marriage to Catherine. When that failed, he enlisted allies to continue with annulment proceedings domestically, undertook a secret marriage to his mistress, Anne Boleyn, and appointed himself Supreme Head of the Church in England. To uphold the claim that his marriage to Catherine had never been valid to begin with, he delegitimized the teenage Mary and removed her from the line of succession, all before Anne’s first child had even been born.^[2]

8 Humiliated and Forced to Wait on Her Baby Sister

In 1533, Anne gave birth to Elizabeth, her first and only child with Henry. Having been stripped of her royal titles, Mary was further humiliated by being made an attendant to her infant sister, who had replaced her in the line of succession. To make matters worse, Mary’s mother, Catherine, by this point, had been banished from court, and mother and daughter were officially forbidden from communicating.

For years, Mary refused to cave to pressure to accept her illegitimacy and recognize her father as head of the church, a testament to her strength of character in the face of what must have seemed insurmountable odds. Eventually, she did make those pronouncements but sent a secret message to the Pope explaining she’d done so under duress. Despite what Elizabeth’s birth and position represented for her, Mary loved her sister and was influential in getting her back on good terms with their father after he executed Elizabeth’s mother, Anne, for treason.^[3]

7 Spared the Life of Her Usurper

After Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, gave birth to a son named Edward, Mary assumed she’d never be queen. If all went according to Henry’s plan, Edward would succeed him and have sons of his own. And Mary would live the life of any ordinary princess. Edward did become king but lived only a few years after that, dying in his teens of a respiratory illness, having neither married nor had children. Although their father had reinstated Mary to the line of succession, Edward again removed her as he lay dying, not because he didn’t want a female heir but because he didn’t want her to undo the work of the Reformation, in which he’d been brought up.

Edward and Mary’s sister Elizabeth had also been raised Protestant, like Edward, but legally it would’ve been inadvisable to exclude only Mary, who held the stronger claim as the eldest. To this end, he also bypassed Elizabeth and instead designated his Protestant cousin, Jane Grey, as heir. After Edward’s death, Jane’s reign lasted a matter of days, with Mary rallying supporters and marching on London. Knowing Jane had only followed orders, Mary spared her life. Tragically, Jane remained a pawn in the conspirators’ dealings and eventually was put to death to thwart further attempts to unseat Mary.^[4]

6 Courageous and Trailblazing for the Time

Although feminism wasn’t exactly a hot topic in Mary’s time, her life was as close an example to it as we might expect for a sixteenth-century queen. In one of her most daring moments, Mary fled to a loyalist outpost as soon as she heard that her brother, Edward VI, was near death. If she’d remained nearby, she’d have been imprisoned and prevented from ascending the throne by Edward’s supporters, spelling the end of the Tudor dynasty. She was bold, decisive, and politically astute in an era when women were chiefly praised for modesty and obedience.

As Henry VIII’s eldest surviving heir, Mary based her claim to the throne on legitimacy, sidelining the topic of religion. This gained her support from both Catholics and Protestants. Both the common people and gentry came to her side, and Jane Grey’s government fell apart within days. Not long after Mary’s proclamation, Parliament passed an act enshrining the full and absolute power of the crown irrespective of gender, establishing equal rights between kings and queens regnant.^[5]

5 Guided by the Religious Conventions of Her Time

Today, we’d be horrified at the idea of burning someone at the stake for any reason, let alone their religious beliefs. But Mary grew up in a time when the importance of practicing the true religion was a matter of salvation. She believed her brother’s death proved God wanted a Catholic on the throne. Seeing the Pope as God’s representative on earth, she rejected the title of Supreme Head of the Church.

For Mary, finding herself on a throne she thought she’d never ascend was a vindication of her beliefs. To allow England to continue its course of separation from the Vatican would’ve been an affront to her duties as sovereign. Protestants who refused to convert back to Catholicism paid with their lives in a gruesome manner, but everything Mary had been taught told her it was her obligation to root out heresy in her dominions.^[6]

4 No Different from Other Monarchs of the Age

Giving someone the title “Bloody Mary” conjures up images of a cold, ruthless killer. And though you might argue the shoe fits, the truth is Mary was no different from other monarchs of the time when it came to eliminating disobedient subjects. In pursuit of his ambition to leave his marriage and father sons with other women, Henry VIII, who never quite reconciled his Catholic upbringing with his zeal for reform, put both Catholics and reformers to death, including death by burning.

Mary’s successor, Elizabeth I, not only executed many of her own subjects but even put to death a fellow queen. While it’s true that Mary’s infamous burnings reached almost 300 in a short period, Elizabeth once ordered over twice as many executions after quashing a Catholic rebellion early on in her rule. Of course, neither sister ever reached the dizzying heights of their father. By the end of his 36-year reign, Henry VIII had executed an estimated 57,000 people, a bone-chilling average of 1,500 death sentences a year. Among the victims were two of his own wives. And these numbers leave out what was happening in other parts of the world whose leaders were often even more brutal.^[7]

3 Counter-Reformation Was Popular During Her Reign

Since it was ultimately unsuccessful, it’s easy to imagine Mary’s attempt to re-Catholicize England as unpopular, but the truth is it wasn’t. Of course, those who subscribed to the principles of the Reformation were opposed, but Mary came to the throne less than a quarter-century after her father’s break with Rome. At that time, the question of religion in England was far from resolved, with Catholics still outnumbering Protestants.

Before Mary even set out her religious policy, news of her accession brought the revival of Catholic Mass in churches across the realm. She was no tyrant either—Parliament largely supported Mary’s policies and repealed most of her brother’s and father’s reforms. Eighteen months into her reign, England was fully realigned with the Catholic Church. Had Mary produced an heir, the child would’ve been raised Catholic, the Reformation may have fizzled out, and the restoration would’ve gone down in history as a cornerstone of her reign.^[8]

2 Laid the Groundwork for Some of Her Successor’s Achievements

Mary’s reign has largely been characterized by historians as ineffective and backward-looking, but these are oversimplifications. The two biggest “failures” of Mary’s reign—attempting to re-Catholicize England and the loss of the historically English territory of Calais in France—are often judged out of context (as we’ve already seen concerning the restoration). Future English monarchs presided over the loss of territories much more extensive than Calais, but it didn’t define their reigns, nor was it seen as evidence of their unsuitability.

In fact, Mary was a conscientious monarch who worked tremendously hard. Although her marriage to a foreigner was initially unpopular, she ensured her rights as queen were not ceded to her husband. During her reign, she undertook reforms in the navy as well as in coinage and the militia, reendowed several hospitals, and established a groundbreaking trading company with Russia. A revised customs book increased crown revenue and remained in effect through the reign of her successor. She also had plans drawn up for currency reform, which were carried out after her death.^[9]

1 Died Too Soon to Consolidate Her Policies

Despite having suffered from ailments of the reproductive system for years, Mary was eager to birth an heir and secure the succession. In 1554, she married the future Philip II of Spain, but the union produced no children. Although Mary was genuinely in love with her husband, by the time it was apparent she wouldn’t become pregnant, he’d retreated to his own dominions abroad. His absence affected her greatly, perhaps eliciting bitter memories of abandonment from her youth.

Only five years into her reign, Mary died during a flu epidemic at 42, having spent the last months of her life suffering from the same chronic disorders that had plagued her since adolescence. With no heir of her own, she had no one to carry on her legacy, and her reign proved much too short for her policies to take effect. Although considered illegitimate by Catholics, her sister Elizabeth was crowned in 1559 and soon reestablished the Protestant church. Her reign has largely gone down in history as a golden age, in sharp contrast with Mary’s.

It’s often said that history is written by the victors. Mary I of England, whose motto as queen was “Truth, the daughter of time,” would probably agree.^[10]