Typhoid Mary

Anthony Bourdain is the perfect example of a person who seemed to have it all, but obviously was troubled. Rich, famous, having a life of adventure, and with a beautiful woman, Bourdain nevertheless saw fit to end his life this past summer.

In choosing to read something by him, I passed on Kitchen Confidential, the book that made him famous (I did read the original article in The New Yorker that grew into the book). He also wrote two mystery novels, but I was interested in the book he wrote about Mary Mallon, who is known to history as Typhoid Mary. Bourdain's approach is that of a history of cooks.

"Historically, to be a cook, to prepare food for others, was always to identify oneself with the degraded and the debauched. As far back as ancient Rome, and as recently as pre-Civil War America, cooks were slaves." The story of Mallon, an Irish immigrant who cooked for rich families, became one of the saddest you'll find. The facts are little known about her early life, but when she moved from family to family and cases of typhoid followed, it was determined that she was a carrier of the typhoid virus. "Typhoid is an infectious disease caused by a bacillus called salmonella typhi. Simply put, typhoid fever is transmitted by food and water that has been contaminated with human feces or urine."

Noticing that Mallon was the cook at a number of households that had typhoid outbreaks, she was apprehended by the health department. Though she was never arrested, tried, or convicted, she was nonetheless interred at a former tuberculosis hospital on North Brother Island, in the East River of New York. She maintained that she was not sick, and did not go willingly (she climbed over a face to escape police and, a large woman, took on four cops before being apprehended).

Mallon was eventually released and took a job as a laundress, but found the work demeaning, and disappeared. She ended up at hospital for mothers and babies. "It’s a measure of how little she cared about herself or anybody else that she would risk infecting pregnant women and newborn children with typhoid. It was . . . well . . . indefensible." Mallon was eventually caught again and spent the rest of her life on North Brother Island. She also became famous, and her nickname has been used for anyone who spreads disease.

This is a slim volume, but instructive. Bourdain not only presents the facts of the case, but goes off on a few tangents, such as how Irish women became relied upon as domestics: "Middle-class women were, to a great extent, abandoning the day-to-day tasks of running a household, turning instead into another kind of ‘new woman’, an entire population of females for whom home, marriage, and children had long since been discarded as the only reason to be."

He also writes in a very casual style, as if he were talking instead of writing. One chapter is titled "Typhoid Sucks." He is sympathetic to Mallon, but wishes she had cooperated and embraced better hygiene. During her time, sanitary conditions were observed, but she refused to accept them. In a touching epilogue, he visits her grave, which only gives her name, death date, and the words "Jesus Mercy."