Talk:Mary Mallon

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Number of deaths caused doesn't add up

The lead section says "three of whom died from the disease."

"Cook" section mentions two deaths in 1900-1907 "Quarantine" section claims two deaths in 1915 So the total should be four.

However this Straight Dope article claims that she caused "at least a dozen" deaths. --Hamster128 11:11, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I also noticed number of infected people does not add up. I came to this page from the infectious disease page and it mentions her with a different sum as well. DeniabilityPlausible 15:31, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

The Straight Dope article also answers the question of why the death count is not consistent: "Exactly how many people she infected or killed will never be known. She refused to cooperate with health authorities, withheld information about her past, and used different pseudonyms when she changed cities. Three deaths have been definitely attributed to her, with estimates running as high as 50." It's just hard to tell... --Jaysweet 15:35, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

All the same wikipedia should be consistent. See Infectious disease, which cites a different number of people infected. If it's not certain, as what you have all said seems to indicate, then don't give a number. I am a lemon 23:20, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Many printed articles say 3 deaths. Morgan22345 20:05, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I noticed this too...it happened 100 years ago. There's no telling how many people died after being exposed to her. They may have died before being diagnosed and just got written off as the flu or pnuemonia or something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.130.30 (talk) 20:02, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Although nobody seems to be clear on how many people she killed, an encyclopedia article cannot give different final death counts within the same article. Either the counts must be made equal, or wherever the matter comes up in the article, one must say that the final count is unknown, and give the same range of possible deaths. 2604:2000:1580:440E:41B8:86B2:CA30:B941 (talk) 08:07, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

"Typhoid Bun"

Removed from the article:

Still living in Cookstown, Northern Ireland today, are her descendants who currently run a successful catering business. Typhoid Mary's legacy lives on in the family business, with their appropriately named 'Typhoid Bun', which to this day is still a hit among the locals.

I can't verify it via the 'net, and I strongly suspect a hoax. (Did she even have children/descendants?) Needs a citation. 70.20.211.100 (talk) 22:36, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

nationality

How come she was born in Ireland but her nationality is from United States? Did she take American citizenship? -Dexter_prog (talk • contribs • count) @ 21:36, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Back in those days, the notion of citizenship was not as clearly established as it is nowadays. Any immigrant was basically granted citizenship. Anyway, most immigrants were poor and once they settled down, they would never travel out of the country again. They had no use for passports. Moreover, the notion of "passport" was not associated with citizenship. Passports were first exchanged between French and American dignitaries (through the impulse of Ben Franklin, among others). There existed a process of naturalization, but it was seldom used by the poor people. Basically, you were a citizen of the place where you lived. Citizenship was a very murky notion until rather recently. It seems almost unimaginable today, but 100 years ago, humans were almost 100% free to move around the world and settle wherever they pleased, as long as they were accepted by the locals living there. To today's standards, Typhoid Mary was an Irish citizen by birth (although she almost certainly had no legal means to demonstrate it) and she became an American citizen upon setting foot in New York. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.72.92.4 (talk) 12:13, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

If she were not a Citizen of the United States, she would surely had been deported, long ago, presumably as an "undesirable alien". 213.249.172.68 (talk) 09:29, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Mallon was born and lived in Cookstown when the whole of Ireland was still part of Great Britain (Cookstown is still part of Britain and not in the Republic of Ireland) so she would have entered America as a British citizen. The notion of a legal Irish citizenship did not exist until 1922 when the Republic of Ireland was created (a few years before Mallon's death). Vauxhall1964 (talk) 23:37, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Cookstown was, and is, in "the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and (Northern) Ireland)", but not, and never, in "(Great) Britain". In those days, before the years 1948 and 1949, with the British Nationality Act 1948, 11 & 12 Geo. 6 c. 56, there were no "British citizens", only "British subjects". Mallon could not had been an Irish subject of the old as the Kingdom of Ireland was dissolved back in the years 1800 and 1801. It was however theoretically possible that Mallon had elected to become an Irish citizen (a citizen of the then Irish Free State/Southern Ireland), even if Cookstown remained, and remains, part of the United Kingdom, as Irish law allowed, and allows, for this, in addition to her citizenship of the United States, but it was unlikely, given that Mallon was presumably prevented from leaving her island quarantine in order to register herself with the Irish Consulate or Mission in the City and State of New York, much less a return journey to her native island of Ireland. 213.249.172.68 (talk) 09:03, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Death count after first quarantaine?

The German article about her says there were two deaths, the English says it's one. I don't know which is correct. -- RichiH (talk) 15:56, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Article Title

This article should be moved to Typhoid Mary, and Mary Mallon should be redirected there. Typhoid Mary is a far more recognized name, and should be the title, according to wikipedia guidelines. After all, the article on John Wayne is titled John Wayne, not Marion Robert Morrison.The Onion 22:26, 19 March 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pisharov (talk • contribs)

I agree, Wikipedia has a policy on naming articles based on most known name, not on particular cases or "official" names, if I'm not mistaken. --Anime Addict AA (talk) 15:35, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I actually came here to suggest moving the article to Mary Mallon. Unlike most of the reasons we change people's names for article titles - there is a more recognizable common form (e.g. Bill Clinton rather than William Jefferson Clinton), or they use a stage or performance name (e.g. John Wayne rather than Marion Morrison), this woman has a biographical article that isn't even titled with a person's name, just a common press label, one that the subject would object very strongly to, were she alive. With a read-through of WP:TITLE, I can find no convincing reason that this shouldn't be shifted back to Mary Mallon, with a redirect from Typhoid Mary. To compare with a more recent example, the article about the woman famous for having octuplets is found under Nadya Suleman, not Octomom. Ford MF (talk) 12:00, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree. This article is a biography about Mary Mallon and should be titled as such. We should also have an article about the expression "Typhoid Mary", its definition, its origins, and its use in speech. Rklawton (talk) 15:52, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. Titling this article "Typhoid Mary" instead of her given name is also disrespectful as a biography. --71.55.123.56 (talk) 04:38, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

However, Wikipedia policy generally favors the most commonly-used name over a theoretically "more correct" one. The Grandma Moses article is not at "Anna Mary Robertson Moses", the Johnny Appleseed article is not at "John Chapman", etc... AnonMoos (talk) 19:03, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi AnonMoos. I think there's a pretty huge distinction between a self-assigned or embraced nickname and a press/media-assigned potentially offensive nickname. Adele and Mark Twain are fine where they are. Typhoid Mary and Jihadi John should be redirects, much like Unabomber, Son of Sam, and Octomom are redirects. As I noted at Talk:Jihadi John, the "common name" argument only goes so far and we make exceptions, such as "heart attack" being a redirect to myocardial infarction. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:26, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

What do you mean "only goes so far"? She's most commonly known as Typhoid Mary, whether that was by her choosing or not, whether it's a "positive" connotation or not. It's POV to suggest the article CANNOT be called Typhoid Mary due to some personal sensibility of your own. Since the name Typhoid Mary is still commonly used, and Mary Mallon virtually unkown, I think the name of the article should be of the best known moniker. Move it to Typhoid Mary. 73.194.85.220 (talk) 15:28, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Bill Clinton and John Wayne are names, even if they are not the official names of those individuals. No-one ever would consider Typhoid Mary to be a name; it is an offensive nickname, and that is obvious to everyone. So the most common name is Mary Mallon, event though she is more frequently referred to by the nickname.--Nø (talk) 07:32, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

"I couldn't agree more. Titling this article 'Typhoid Mary' instead of her given name is also disrespectful as a biography. --71.55.123.56 (talk) 04:38, 24 January 2015 (UTC)"

I was unaware that there was a WP rule, whereby we must show the greatest sensitivity to the theoretical hurt feelings of serial killers. And yes, Typhoid Mary was most indubitably a serial killer. At first, she would not have known what havoc she was wreaking, but at some point her behavior betrayed her awareness: Fleeing each family's employment, once people started falling desperately ill; leaving no forwarding address; adopting phony names; and greedily, secretly, going back to work as a cook, after agreeing never again to do that. The demand for "sensitivity" has become one of those unwitting code phrases for the embrace of madness and evil. 2604:2000:1580:440E:41B8:86B2:CA30:B941 (talk) 08:23, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

We do not know to what extent Mary Mallon knew, believed and understood that she posed a mortal danger to her surroundings. Her case is tragic - not only for those she infected, but for her as well. I find it hard to imagine being in her position; I find it easy to imagine she was severely mentally disturbed by the whole thing. Scientific understanding of infectious diseases was young; the concept of an asymptomatic carrier was probably not well known to laymen. Calling her a most indubitable serial killer ignores this doubt.--Nø (talk) 11:16, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Background

The background section reports about typhoid fever and precautions and does not have any details on Mary's life. This needs to be changed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.143.195.138 (talk) 07:46, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Inconsistent numbers

The introductory paragraph says, "She was presumed to have infected some 51 people."

The body of the article says:

• the residents developed typhoid fever. (at least two)
• members of the family for whom she worked developed fevers and diarrhea and the laundress died. (at least three, assuming that the laundress was not one of the "members of the family")
• seven of the eight household members developed typhoid. (seven)
• ten of eleven family members were hospitalized with typhoid. (ten)
• similar occurrences happened in three more households. (at least three)
• six of the eleven people in the house came down with typhoid fever. (six)
• Mary was subsequently hired by other families, and outbreaks followed her. (at least two)
• and in 1915 was believed to have infected 25 people, resulting in one death (25)

If all the claims (and some are unsourced) are true, then the smallest number of infected people possible would be 58. And that's assuming that "three more households" means just one person in each household, and that "outbreaks followed her" means just two outbreaks with just one person (which kind of contradicts the meaning of "outbreak") in each. Girlwithgreeneyes (talk) 08:47, 25 July 2012 (UTC) (post modified slightly 09:59, 29 July 2012 (UTC) )

Quarantine vs Isolation

There is a difference in the two, Quarantine isolates healthy people to see if they get sick, Isolation isolates sick people to prevent them from infecting healthy people. When I get a chance later today hopefully I will correct references to the two in the article.

Fjf1085 (talk) 16:05, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Right, and she appeared healthy, so it seems "quarantine" would be appropriate in the earlier periods of detainment. Once it was realized she was a carrier, she was "isolated" until the end of life. Everything seems to be in order. - Boneyard90 (talk) 17:06, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Typhoid Mary's Birth Place is incorrectly displayed on the search result page by Google

Typhoid Mary's Birth Place is incorrectly displayed on the search result page by Google. I searched for Typhoid Mary and Google's result page shows a wiki entry on the up-right side showing her picture and the following text:

Mary Mallon

Cook

Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary, was the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with typhoid fever.

Wikipedia

Born: September 23, 1869, New York <-------------- This is incorrect.

Died: November 11, 1938, New York

Hope someone can fix it. Thanks!

Kevin Y. 10-29-2014

Our article is correct (Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland) You'll have to take that up with Google. Rklawton (talk) 16:44, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Math

She was born in 1869, if she came to USA in 1883, she would have been at most 14, and prior to her birthday in September, only 13. If she was indeed 15 when she immigrated, it would have had to been in 1884 or 1885. Wschart (talk) 00:57, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Redlinks

Someone created a redlink to an actress' name, and we've had a back-and-forth on whether this should remain. There are mutually contradictory policies on this; redlinks make the article harder to read but remind us that Wikipedia is incomplete. In this particular case, the redlink was created by someone who evidently has no intention of creating the corresponding article (IPs cannot create articles, and if they had any intent of doing so, they'd have created an account). Creating redlinks for names is not necessarily correct even if the article does eventually get created - the person named might not be the one who becomes notable enough to justify the article. Regards, Tarl.Neustaedter (talk) 06:38, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Dead link to NYT

I flagged a citation in the lede which is currently dead. archive.org does return the article (if you go back to 2011), here, but it's just a summary. Anyone know how to untangle this, or get an archive bot to untangle it? Tarl N. (discuss) 17:12, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

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"Caused"

When I first read that "Typhoid Mary", who I learned was ironically from New York, "caused" this article 50 deaths, I wondered if germs were contagious prior to "Typhoid Mary"'s existence.

Perhaps, before "Typhoid Mary" existed, germs were not contagious. Or, perhaps, she did intentionally set out to kill these families.

I wonder while she was in solitary confinement for some 30-odd years, which could be maddening and surely cause one to go stir crazy or catch cabin fever, if people elsewhere, such as, New York, continued to die from diseases, such as, say, Typhoid, for instance, i.e.

Also, should it be found upon her death that she did not actually have Typhoid that could look rather bad or discrediting, so surely it would definitely be the case that she did indeed have Typhoid and cause all of those deaths and that Typhoid is a very different disease that a disease that requires the removal of the gallbladder, as the disease, Hepatitis A, which is a temporary disease that affects the liver and results in a week of diarrhea with precautionary measures.

I hear that every so often the World Health Organization gets together to eradicate non-fatal diseases that no longer exist. I am so exhausted that I can not even think of the right words. I do not know how eradication of these non-fatal and potential non-treatable or mutating diseases transpires. Perhaps, I am about to find out firsthand. Rip Van Winkle, Humpty Dumpty and Frankenstein's Monster (talk) 10:45, 14 December 2016 (UTC) (My handle is supposed to be Monster's spare parts!)

Anyone feel up to responding to this one? Inspiration fails me. Tarl N. (discuss) 00:02, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, nobody else has stepped up, so:

• • • I'm not sure what's ironic about Typhoid Mary having wreaked havoc in New York. Would it have been less ironic in Baltimore?
    • As for germs not being contagious, there is ample evidence of infectious disease going back to the beginnings of multi-cellular life. For the merely human and well-documented cases prior to Mary, I invite you to research "plague".
    • Whether people died of other causes elsewhere had nothing to do with Mary's confinement. It wasn't solitary confinement, either - merely confinement to preclude her handling other people's food.
    • As for her not having typhoid, she did not have typhoid as a disease. She carried typhoid without herself being ill.
    • As for WHO eradicating diseases which no longer exist, I guess all we can ask for is WP:RS. Humans, have eradicated one disease. Smallpox. We hope to eradicate a second disease, Polio. While both disease are sometimes survivable, often victims do not survive. And those who do survive are often seriously harmed by the disease (in the case of polio, paralysis often results).

I guess that's as far as I can answer this comment. Tarl N. (discuss) 01:06, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I suppose the sarcastic form of OP obfuscates some real concerns, such as these that concern me too:

1. What is a cause? Nothing happens for one reason. If reckless driving by driver A causes a traffic accident killing driver B, the traffic accident might not have happened if B had been delayed 5 minutes by a quarrel with his wife C that morning, so she caused the accident. Sort of - it is a matter of perspective, and of creating a narrative that meaningfully can allocate guilt and/or be operational - lead to decisions that can reduce risk of repetition. Obviously Mary caused the diseases in one sense, germs in another; obviously neither she nor the germs were the single cause or entirely guilty. Some care with words is in place here. I'm not saying there's something wrong with the article as it stands, though.
2. There are obvious ethical issues raised by imposing strong measures such as involuntary islotaion on an individual who is not guilty of a crime - there might be some place on wikipedia describing such issues, and there might be a good way of linking this in the present article.
3. We may have no sources giving credible info about the mental state of Mary, but it certainly is an interesting question. What did her side of the story look like? Did she at some point realize and accept the fact that she "caused" these deaths? If so, of course she is guilty, to a certain extent. Changing her name suggests such an awareness, but she may also have lived in some sort of denial. She certainly didn't have an easy life! As the article stands, it more or less ignores that and sides with the people blaming her, but I don't have any suggestions how to balance that.--Nø (talk) 08:09, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

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Inconsistency

"Mary Mallon was born in 1869 ....She emigrated to the United States in 1883 at the age of 15."

If she was born in 1869, she couldn't have been 15 when she emigrated. So either that's wrong and she was 14 or the birth year is wrong. What does the offline source say? Valenciano (talk) 13:02, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

The cited source says 1884, and does not give her age at the time. Fixed. Kablammo (talk) 12:41, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Reference [2], "The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life" doesn't say "age 15":

"Typhoid Mary" (Mary Mallon, 1869-1938). Mary emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1884 (Leavitt, 1996).

No further biographic details are provided. I find considerable doubt about her immigration date. E.g., Gastroenterology says "emigrated to the United States in 1883 or 1884". Digging up a 1996 book [1] - Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health, by Judith Walzer Leavitt, I was able to confirm her birthdate (and since it was published in 1996, it isn't a circular reference to Wikipedia), but this book again only says "immigrated in 1883", but it specifies 1883 as the immigration date.

End result, I'm removing the "age 15" as unsupported by the references, and I'll change the immigration date to 1883 or 1884. Tarl N. (discuss) 12:47, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Autopsy

An edit was made claiming that the autopsy is an urban legend, and cites a passing comment about there being no autopsy, by a man who wasn't part of her care at the end of her life. Other research I find (e.g., Annals of Gastroenterology), asserts there indeed was a post-mortem and it found live typhoid in her gallbladder:

A post mortem revealed that she shed Salmonella typhi bacteria from her gallstones raising the issue of what would have happened if she had accepted the proposed operation. Some other researchers insisted that there was no autopsy and that this was another urban legend, whispered by the Health Center of Oyster Bay, in order to calm ethical reactions.

I think the proper way to handle these conflicting assertions is to take at face value the official statement that there was a post-mortem, and indicate that rumors claim there was no autopsy. I believe the current phraseology (which I'll be fixing) incorrectly takes the position that the rumor is absolute truth and the official statement is false. Tarl N. (discuss) 22:00, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Citation 23

The link for the 23rd citation is not on the archive anymore it appears. Milesbucket (talk) 14:48, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

I guess citation numbers may change, but I think this is about this one:

Goldman, Bruce (August 14, 2013). "Scientists get a handle on what made Typhoid Mary’s infectious microbes tick" Archived August 18, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. Stanford School of Medicine.

Here, four things are clickable:

1. the title links to http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2013/august/typhoid.html, which is a dead link.
2. "Archived" links to https://web.archive.org/web/20130818111217/http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2013/august/typhoid.html, and his is where the archived article is found - and it works for me.
3. "Wayback Machine" links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayback_Machine, i.e. the wikipedia article on this machine.
4. "Stanfordt School of Medicine" links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_School_of_Medicine, i.e. the wikipedia article on this school.

That all looks fine to me!--Nø (talk) 15:21, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Motivations for non-western academic-knowledge

Can you kindly clarify the background of your comment:-

We probably still need to go sort out Typhoid Mary. It blew up on a prof's Twitter account when an editor reverted major changes a couple of years ago.
— User:WhatamIdoing 21:07, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

so that I and other interested t/p watchers might chime in .....
Regards, ∯WBG^converse 10:32, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for following up, Winged Blades. I linked the wrong article; it was Super-spreader, where an editor insisted that Mary Mallon not be mentioned, because that editor was invincibly convinced that Mallon could not be a super-spreader because she was asymptomatic, despite being given multiple sources that explicitly said the opposite both in definitions of the term and specifically applying that label to Mallon. After a while, the reverting editor felt too exposed and headed to WP:RENAME (and then kept participating in the discussion under the new name). It was not a good experience for anyone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:43, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! ∯WBG^converse 16:19, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Another inconsistency

Following on from this and prompted by the latest i.p. edit, there's another age inconsistency. The article states she was born on 23 September 1869. The i.p. edit has changed her birth year in a later section to 1870. My first thought was that that was wrong, but the first ref from the NY Times says she died of a stroke at age 68 on 11 November 1938. That would put her birthdate at some time between 12 November 1869 and 11 November 1870, but either way, something's wrong. Valenciano (talk) 19:43, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

In such cases, it's worth going to reputable sources, and paying attention to the more detailed. In Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health, under "Events in Mary Mallon's Life", first entry: September 23, 1869. Born in Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland. Without any specific contradiction, the date stands. The NY Times reporting an age at death inconsistent with that birth date would be given a lower importance - someone might have dropped a carry. If the NY Times reported a specific birth date which conflicted, that would be a different matter. Tarl N. (discuss) 00:35, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Removing gallbladder

Would removing her gallbladder actually work to make her not be infectious? Did they think it then? Does modern medicine think so?Spitzak (talk) 18:21, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

It would have removed one source of typhoid bacteria. We have no way of knowing if it was the only such source in her body. Tarl N. (discuss) 22:58, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Quality of Sources

I am re-reading this article after being away from it for a year and a half. The tone seems rather different and so I have been looking at the changes. (It could be me that has changed, of course!) One thing has caught my eye so far: this biblio "Alexander, Caitlind L. (2004). Typhoid Mary: The Story of Mary Mallon: Educational Version. LearningIsland.com. ISBN 9781301357642." is a book written for 8-year-olds. Is that really a suitable primary reference? I am suspicious of anything drawn from such a source. -- Jeff Grossman, jeff circle-a beaucoin.net (I'm on the wrong device to login to my account, sorry)

Mary Mallon's stool report

This is Mary's stool report

An IP just added the following at a bad spot, but I have a question about whether we can use it at all.

Basically, it's an unauthenticated "I took the photograph at a friend's house", with no identification of the owner of the sheet of paper, or chain of custody described. There are probably copyright issues, as well as simply questions about whether the report is authentic. And it doesn't tell us anything particularly useful, either. Comments? Tarl N. (discuss) 04:22, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

An idea for Wikipedia in general

Since a) it's so aggravating to click on a tiny image and to be taken to a new, almost-empty, webpage with that same tiny, tiny image embedded in it (it actually looks even smaller then), and b) due to Wikipedia's love of tiny, tiny images in order to avoid paying anyone their rightful dues for using their images, how about this for an idea. When a) is going to happen, don't hyperlink the image. Just a thought. That, or pay folks for images, and use thumbnails plus actual respectable-sized images. Hmm? :) 2601:600:A480:4C20:D0AD:95D7:88B0:F9FB (talk) 01:02, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Neither suggestion is workable in the context of Wikipedia. We need to be able to click to get all available info on the image (more than it would make sense to show in the article), and we do not have paid content.

It might be possible to invent a cue to be shown with the picture in the article, signalling to the user that no higher resolution version is available through clicking. Or perhaps the full info could be accessible through a footnote instead of by clicking the image.

Anyway, wp:vp might be the right place for such discussion. Nø (talk) 07:46, 11 April 2024 (UTC)