Mary Mallon and Typhoid Fever

Abstract

She was born in Cookstown County Tyrone, Ireland on September 23, 1869. Neither she nor her family could have known what was to be her fate. If they had, perhaps she would never have become a cook; perhaps she would never have begun a new life in the United States. But she did. Mary Mallon journeyed to the U.S. in 1883 when she was only a teenager and soon settled with her aunt and uncle in New York City. She was by most accounts a good cook and she had no trouble finding work in the kitchens of New Y ark's well to do.¹ It was here that she would be dubbed "Typhoid Mary."