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[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoid_Mary"]Mary Mallon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
Typhoid Mary has become a generic term for a healthy carrier of a dangerous disease, but the name originated with a woman born in Cookstown, County Tyrone.
Mary Mallon emigrated to New York at the age of 14, and 10 years later began work as a domestic cook for wealthy families.
In August 1906, she was employed in the Long Island summer residence of a New York banker when six members of the household fell ill with typhoid fever.
At that time the disease afflicted several thousand New Yorkers annually and had a 10% fatality rate.
A doctor who was treating the family pursued the idea that a healthy person carrying the disease might have infected the victims.
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney paid tribute to the scholarship involved in creating the dictionary
He worked out that typhoid fever had affected seven households in which Mary had worked from 1900, infecting 22 people and claiming one life.
After rebuffing subsequent approaches by the doctor, and chasing him with a carving knife on one occasion, she was forcibly apprehended by police and detained in hospital, where tests confirmed she was a carrier of the disease.
She was taken to an isolation hospital on North Brother island in the East River where she lived in a one-room cottage while undergoing a series of ineffective treatments.
In June 1909, she came dramatically to public attention through a feature story in William Randolph Hearst's New York American.
Journalists, led by the initial American story, came up with the nickname 'Typhoid Mary'.
In February 1910 she was released from quarantine after agreeing by affidavit to change occupation and take "consistent hygienic precautions".
She was given work in a New York laundry, but resented the lower wages and status of the job and returned to work as a cook in September 1912.
In 1915 she was discovered working under an alias as a cook at Sloane maternity hospital, location of a recent outbreak of 25 typhoid cases among staff, including two deaths.
Amid huge public indignation, fuelled by a universally hostile press accusing her of a deliberate and callous violation of trust while endangering innocents, Mallon was returned to hospital for the remaining 23 years of her life.
Typhoid Mary has become a generic term for a healthy carrier of a dangerous disease, but the name originated with a woman born in Cookstown, County Tyrone.
Mary Mallon emigrated to New York at the age of 14, and 10 years later began work as a domestic cook for wealthy families.
In August 1906, she was employed in the Long Island summer residence of a New York banker when six members of the household fell ill with typhoid fever.
At that time the disease afflicted several thousand New Yorkers annually and had a 10% fatality rate.
A doctor who was treating the family pursued the idea that a healthy person carrying the disease might have infected the victims.
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney paid tribute to the scholarship involved in creating the dictionary
He worked out that typhoid fever had affected seven households in which Mary had worked from 1900, infecting 22 people and claiming one life.
After rebuffing subsequent approaches by the doctor, and chasing him with a carving knife on one occasion, she was forcibly apprehended by police and detained in hospital, where tests confirmed she was a carrier of the disease.
She was taken to an isolation hospital on North Brother island in the East River where she lived in a one-room cottage while undergoing a series of ineffective treatments.
In June 1909, she came dramatically to public attention through a feature story in William Randolph Hearst's New York American.
Journalists, led by the initial American story, came up with the nickname 'Typhoid Mary'.
In February 1910 she was released from quarantine after agreeing by affidavit to change occupation and take "consistent hygienic precautions".
She was given work in a New York laundry, but resented the lower wages and status of the job and returned to work as a cook in September 1912.
In 1915 she was discovered working under an alias as a cook at Sloane maternity hospital, location of a recent outbreak of 25 typhoid cases among staff, including two deaths.
Amid huge public indignation, fuelled by a universally hostile press accusing her of a deliberate and callous violation of trust while endangering innocents, Mallon was returned to hospital for the remaining 23 years of her life.