Mary Mallon Cooked Under Aliases

In 1906, an epidemic investigator named George Soper traced an Oyster Bay typhoid outbreak in NYC to a healthy cook named Mary Mallon, who carried the disease without symptoms. Soper connected her employment to seven households in New York and Maine that had suffered outbreaks since 1900, then explained how better handwashing could prevent her from contaminating food. Officials released Mallon from quarantine in 1910 after she promised to stop cooking, but she returned to kitchen work under aliases. A 1915 outbreak at Sloane Hospital for Women sickened more than 20 people and led officials to confine her again. Authorities officially linked her to 53 infections and three deaths.

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