WEBVTT - SYSK Selects: The Wind Cries Typhoid Mary 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:03.440 Hi, everybody. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know Selects. It's 0:00:03.440 --> 0:00:06.240 a Saturday, but I'm here anyway because I love you. 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:10.360 This week, I am choosing The Wind Cries Typhoid Mary 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:15.280 from oct two thousand eleven, and Uh, to be honest, 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:17.439 I think this one well for a couple of reasons. 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:21.080 A is because I love it. I love our history 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:25.800 podcasts and this one was super super interesting. And uh, 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:30.040 the other reason is, UH, to be honest, I really 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:33.760 just love this title, The Wind Cries Typhoid Mary. I 0:00:34.240 --> 0:00:36.640 titled this one myself, and I just wanted to see 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:38.600 it in our feet again because I like looking at it. 0:00:39.080 --> 0:00:49.239 So here we go, The Wind Cries Typhoid Mary. Welcome 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:58.800 to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:02.080 am welcome to the podcast son Josh Clark. There's Charles W. 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:05.800 Greeny Boy, Chuck and Bryant and Jerry back in the 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:10.880 his house. None more guests producing. No, that was a 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:17.040 rough week, she was, but she's back. Hey Jerry, did 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:24.240 you hear that? Everybody? Probably not Chuck Jerry. Have you 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:29.080 guys ever heard how much manure a horse produces in 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:31.280 a day. I'm glad you went with this. I was 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:36.720 never really occurred to me. Go ahead, pounds twenty five 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:40.000 pounds of manure? Did you do the math? Because I did? 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:43.039 All right, Well, you come with that in a second, okay, So, um, 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:45.280 just go back with me a little bit, chuck to 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:47.319 the time when Daniel day Lewis was walking around New 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:50.000 York with a meat cleaver, overacting a little bit in 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:56.160 my opinion. Um, And it's the the late nineteenth century, 0:01:56.800 --> 0:02:00.960 and the horse is the is the preferred of transportation 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:06.360 for everything from the most humble delivery cart to the 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:10.399 greatest ambulance to you know, people who like to ride horses, 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:13.840 three musketeers, that kind of thing. Everybody had a horse 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:19.000 to the limit, to the airport wherever. So there were 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.800 about two hundred thousand horses in New York City in 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:30.440 use in right, Yeah, multiply that times twenty five pounds 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:33.360 of poop a day and what do you get? Chucked? Well? 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:36.639 I did two because I thought that was the number. Okay, 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:39.000 So that's fine, we'll go with that. More than six 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:42.720 point two million pounds of horse poop per day deposited 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:45.720 on the streets of New York. Okay, Now, um, let's 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:50.919 say that's okay, Okay, Um, there's that many horses. There's 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:55.600 six point two million pounds of horsepoop every day. It's 0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:57.360 a lot of poop. But not only that, there was 0:02:57.400 --> 0:03:00.720 no one cleaning it up. It was not enough people 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:02.920 cleaning it up. Let's say that for sure. It was 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:06.360 just left there basically in a lot of cases, um, 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:10.280 to basically be ground into the cobble stone. And you know, 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:13.880 it makes you think, like, I'll bet there's a substantial 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:17.399 layer of horse manure under the streets of New York 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:21.840 that make up like that initial stratum of of of Earth, 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:25.680 the pupa sphere. Thank oh wait, that would be an 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:29.600 utter space. No, no, because the lithospheres. Yes, so you 0:03:29.639 --> 0:03:35.120 were dead on thank you the pupa sphere. Um, things 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:38.920 change a little bit. The New York institutes a Department 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:44.040 of Health and a group of basically an army of 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:49.040 cleaning guys, very much like the um the garbage man 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:53.800 that Homer Simpson envisions in the in the It's the 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:58.400 Garbage Commissioner episode. I can't remember which one it is, Uh, 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:02.040 the Loveday episode is what it is? Okay. Um. These guys, 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:04.800 they're called white wings. They are deployed to clean up 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:06.440 the streets of New York and they do a heck 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:11.480 of a job, and possibly the fact of the the episode, 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:13.760 if I may take it please, this is where the 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:17.040 term cleanliness is next to godliness is coined. Pretty cool. 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:21.320 The New York Department of Health slogan in downtown New 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:24.560 York Josh at the turn of the century. Back then 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:29.680 was a disgusting, filthy place. And yet I love New York. 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:31.800 I love the history New York. We watched that, we 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:35.080 both watched the same Nova video on Typhoid Mary today 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:39.880 and they had photos of mountains of manure pushed to 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:42.760 the sidewalks and uh, sort of like if you've ever 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:45.320 been in New York on garbage day, imagine all those 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:48.719 garbage bags is poop, Yeah, but not pooping bags, just 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:52.720 mound poop. And they were dead animal carcasses. Did you 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:55.479 see that. It was like these boys playing in the 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:57.640 street with just a dead horse right in the middle 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:00.920 of their little stickball bimond guess he was on base 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:05.520 or something. And it was just a foul, disgusting, unclean, 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:08.680 unsanitary place, which, like you said, led to the formation 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:12.000 of the Department of Sanitation, Right, So the Department the 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:16.720 Department of Sanitation. UM was imbued with a lot of 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:21.320 clout from the get go. Yeah. And as you said that, 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:26.640 the Nova documentary on on Typhoid Mary, it's called like 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:29.960 the Most Dangerous Woman in America, but it's also on 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:34.880 YouTube under Typhoid Mary Nova. That's good. It was UM. 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:36.880 But they had a lot of cloud. They could forcibly 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:42.280 inoculate you with these new fangled inoculations. They could forcibly 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:45.040 remove you to a quarantine island, and New York had 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:47.800 a bunch of them. Yeah, that was popular at the time. Yeah, 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:52.160 but basically your civil liberties could be entirely suspended without 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:56.080 any sort of due process of law. Um and you 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:59.640 if you were considered sick. And a lot of this 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:04.599 was based done this new understanding of science of germ 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:08.720 theory thanks to our buddy Louis past year bacteriology yep UM. 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:13.719 So the problem was science reporting hadn't been established yet. 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:16.359 So all of the people who were in charge understood 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:19.160 what was going on. They understood germ theory, they understood innoculations, 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:22.039 they understood force quarantine, but no one had explained it 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:26.080 to the public fully. Right, So it's a recipe for 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:31.360 disaster so there's this thing called typhus or typhoid. I'm sorry, 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:33.480 And apparently they were one and the same until the 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:37.640 nineteenth centuries. About this time, typhus and typhoid typhoid fever 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:41.920 were separated. But typhoid fever fever, which is the star 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:46.840 of this co star of this episode. Sure, Um, it's 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:51.760 particularly nasty, isn't it It is? Josh, we're talking not 0:06:51.839 --> 0:06:56.599 just ordinary diarrhea, but doubled over cramping, painful diarrhea. I 0:06:56.600 --> 0:07:00.240 think you'd call that violent diarrhea, violent diarrhea, high fee her, 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:05.760 red rashes, sleeplessness, death if you don't treat it. A 0:07:05.760 --> 0:07:08.240 lot of people through history have been stricken with it, 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:15.680 including Mary Todd, Lincoln, Georgia O'Keeffe, Rabbi Shankar, Frank I 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:20.320 really uh, Frank McCourt, author, and Wilbur Wright actually of 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:24.280 the Wright Brothers fame died from typhoid fever. Wow, pretty 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:27.360 sad And that was I mean, that's a scant, uh 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:29.720 sampling from a long long list of famous people that 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:32.200 have Those are the people who count who had typhois. 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:34.840 I think Lincoln's son actually died as from it as well, 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:37.800 But I don't think Mary Todd Lincoln died from it, Yeah, 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:42.320 but you can know she died of um or something 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:47.520 like that is what they would have called hysterics, right, Okay. Um, So, 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:50.400 before we started to get a handle on typhoid fever, 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:52.680 it's by the way, it's a um it's caused by 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:58.400 the bacterium Salmonella TYPEE. It's a type of Salmonella UM. 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:01.720 And before we got a hand on it with antibiotics, 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:06.360 apparently twelve of people died from typhoid. So it's a 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:09.200 big public health problem. Yeah, New York especially there were 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:12.640 four thousand new cases per year and killed one in 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:20.880 ten people at the time or one in remember that 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:25.920 god that nationwide? Uh yeah, as I understand it before antibiotics. 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:30.120 So um, let's even just say tempercent. That's a big 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:34.040 public health problem. And because it's spread by the bacterium salmonella. 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:37.200 Did that come out weird? Because it did in my 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:39.880 head slightly a little bit of the lazy tongue there, 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:43.680 because because of because it's spread through salm manella or 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:46.840 because it's a results of salmonella, it's very very easily 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:53.520 spread from handling your own poop e g. Using the bathroom, 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:59.640 not washing your hands and then handling food, uncooked food specifically. Yeah, 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:03.480 it was normally considered to be like a disease of 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:08.360 the lower classes. Yeah, until nineteen oh six. Was it 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:11.640 chuck the summer of nineteen oh six in a in 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:14.880 a wealthy quarter of the United States on Long Island 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:20.240 called Oyster Bay, Billy Joels film, I believe it's neither 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:25.240 here nor there. That's one extra fact you just gave everybody. 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:28.320 That's true. Uh. Yeah, when it when it happened in uh, 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:31.600 Oyster Bay, it was a much bigger deal because it 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:34.520 was more closely associated with let's say, the Lower east 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:37.960 Side tenement housing, the filth of Lower Manhattan at the time. 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:42.840 They've cleaned all that up now, Um, it's expense. What 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:44.760 you get though, when you're in Oyster Bay is you 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:47.560 get wealthy families who can spend a little money, and 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:49.400 that's what you had. In the case of the Thompson family, 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:52.120 they were afraid that they would not be able to 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:55.720 rent out the house that they were living in because, uh, 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:57.719 people were getting sick in that house over and over 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:00.320 and over and they couldn't figure it out. They'd decided 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:04.200 to hire an investigator who turned out to be a 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:08.160 very prominent figure in this case name Dr George Soper, 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:12.760 a sanitation engineer and UH epidemiologists, one of the first 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:17.440 epidemiologists really looking to make his career well, he already had. 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:22.920 He had a reputation um of of you know, being 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:26.200 able to track any illness back to his source. So 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:28.880 this family, the Thompson family, is that the one who 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:30.679 owned the house or the one who's who got sick. 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:34.320 They owned the house, and I believe some family members 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:36.679 had also gotten sick. Okay, So but there's a family 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.960 that rented it originally. That's where the typhoid outbreak first happened. 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:42.320 So maybe maybe they were just a homeowner. The Thompson 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:47.280 family hired Soper I believe, yeah, and said, hey, we 0:10:47.320 --> 0:10:50.000 can't rent this house anymore because people are dying from 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:54.480 typhoid concerned, right, Yeah, So Soaper gets on the case, 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:59.079 starts um finds the family where the typhoid outbreak occurred, 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:03.679 and arts interviewing the heck out of him, and he's stumped. 0:11:04.120 --> 0:11:06.400 He can't figure it out, like, where did this thing 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:10.440 come from? There? These are clearly patient zeros right here, 0:11:10.480 --> 0:11:12.480 like nobody else on the Yster Bay had it before 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:15.880 then they didn't bring it with them from the city. 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:19.080 There's somebody missing, there's something missing. And he finally says, 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:22.360 have I talked to everybody who was in this house 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:24.880 in the summer of nineteen o six and they said 0:11:24.920 --> 0:11:29.280 you should talk to typhoid Mary. I don't know. I 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:32.400 didn't think of that, because what you know, what he 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:35.600 did was he interviewed kitchen staff, and it turns out 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:38.760 that there was a former employee that was no longer there, 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:42.920 Mary Mallon, And he said, wait a minute, you know, 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:45.400 maybe I should check this lady out. Turns out she 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:48.920 loved to serve this ice cream and fresh peaches, which 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:51.839 is uncooked, and that was her I guess her. She 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:54.720 was noted for that dessert, right. But even more incriminating 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:59.480 than the dessert is the idea that when he looked 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:02.840 into her history, she'd worked for eight families in ten years, 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:24.960 and six of those families said had typhoid outbreaks. So 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:29.640 he began to think that there was something special about 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:32.520 Mary Mallen and and that she was what's called a 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:36.920 healthy carrier, meaning um and and I'm just gonna paraphrase 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:41.280 this awesome way that nova doc put it right, when 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:45.200 you get typhoid fever, there's almost always a clear winner. 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:49.600 If the bacteria wins, you die, and if you if 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:52.160 you win, if your immune system wins, the bacteria dies. 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:55.520 But there's sometimes where there's a stalemate where your immune 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:58.640 system continues to function and you live and the bacteria 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:00.960 continues to live. In your sister to him, which means 0:13:01.000 --> 0:13:04.800 you're healthy, but you're also extremely contagious. And that's what 0:13:04.920 --> 0:13:07.880 Soaper came to believe Mary Mallen was. So she was 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:12.480 technically she actually had typhoid fever, but her immune system 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:16.240 was able to suppress all of it except the killing 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:20.280 of all the bacteria part right, So pretty cool, Soper cool, 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:24.199 but interesting because this is brand new. Yeah, and this 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:27.120 guy's on the cutting edge of this kind of thinking. Yeah, 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:30.520 And he knew like, potentially she could be the face 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:34.880 of bacteriology. The first bacteriology lab had just set up 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:38.040 in New York City and it was a burgeoning, uh 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:41.319 not industry but science. So he was like, man, this 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:43.200 is really gonna put me on the map if I 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:46.280 can prove this at least so he he didn't have 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:49.080 any training in science reporting either, though, did he he 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:52.080 didn't have training in people skills student either. He goes 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:54.840 to her and he's like, I finally found you. I 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:58.400 believe you're infected with typhoid. So I need stamples of 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:00.920 your stool, your urine and your blood. By the way, 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:03.840 my name is George, soaper good to me. And she's like, oh, no, 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:06.840 you're not. Yeah. So it's about this time that that 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:10.160 Mary Mallen. We should describe who she is, at least 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:13.920 go ahead. Mary Mallen was Irish. She or Irish came 0:14:13.960 --> 0:14:17.280 over as a teenager by herself. She was born in 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:22.960 the poorest town county in Ireland, and Ireland at that time, 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:25.760 especially in the poorest county not a great place to be, 0:14:26.480 --> 0:14:30.560 also dirty, also lots of death and dying in filth 0:14:30.640 --> 0:14:33.080 and disease. And she was born in eighteen sixty nine, 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:35.440 so I think that's on the heels of the Potato famine, 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:37.960 if not still in the middle of it. So she 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:39.680 comes over as a teenager, lives with her aunt and 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:41.880 her uncle who passed away, and then is basically on 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:46.160 her own in New York, and by all accounts, as 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:48.200 a result of how she grew up and then being 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:51.440 on her in New York. She was very, very tough, 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:55.680 in fiery and independent and resourceful. Like had it been 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:58.280 anyone else, this might not have gone down like this. 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:01.560 They picked, literally eat not picked. But as it turns out, 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:05.080 it sounds like she was the toughest, most obstinate, stubborn, 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:07.880 fiery woman in New York City, right. And but she 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:09.600 was also good at what she did. She worked her 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:14.200 way up in the domestic servant classes to the pinnacle 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:16.800 of it. A cook in that era in the domestic 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:20.640 in domestic service, and sort of manager of the kitchen staff. Well, 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:24.040 not just that, almost the whole house, basically the all 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:26.120 of the servants. The cook was pretty much at the top, 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:29.880 maybe tied with the butler, depending on the house. But um, 0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:32.560 she was a cook for all these these families, and 0:15:32.600 --> 0:15:34.920 not just you know, families that could afford a cook, 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:39.720 but like very wealthy families. Um, she was good at 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:43.040 her at her job. But she took no guff from 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:46.480 any man. And when souper came and told her that 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:49.640 he wanted her feces, she chased him off with a 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:55.200 carving fork. Supposedly, that's how Super reported it. Yeah, and 0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:59.480 you know, we'll get into her specifics later and she 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:02.880 got a real bad rap. But at the time there was, 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:05.680 like you said, there was no understanding on the public's 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:09.960 behalf of this, this whole zero I'm sorry, healthy carrier 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:12.920 is not even proven yet. So I mean, what is 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:15.360 she supposed to do? Just say like, sure, I'll go 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:18.960 with you, stranger, take my poop and and put me 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:21.840 in a quarantine. Yeah, so she thought it like she 0:16:21.960 --> 0:16:25.840 probably had every right to right most initial though, wouldn't 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:29.920 normally you know, brandish a fork a carving fork on somebody. 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:33.200 But again it's lost to history whether she really did 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:35.520 do that or not. A good story. So Super takes 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:38.560 off and he's not one to let his career just 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:42.240 kind of slip through his fingers, and he goes to 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:47.280 the New York Commissioner of Health, Herman Biggs. So Biggs 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:50.160 was he was the one. He was the first one, 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:52.400 and he was the one who was like, oh, by 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:54.400 the way, we can come into your house and forcibly 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:56.680 inoculate you and your children if we want, and we 0:16:56.720 --> 0:16:58.920 will do that too, if we if we think that 0:16:59.000 --> 0:17:01.840 it's in the interest of the public health. So Biggs 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:05.439 was very sympathetic to Soaper's description of the story. Of 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:08.879 this crazy Irish woman who was just patient zero and 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:13.119 more than one outbreak um and basically needed to be 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:17.040 dealt with. Yeah, so he ordered a one of his 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:21.360 case workers, a few a few cops in an ambulance 0:17:21.520 --> 0:17:25.439 out to where Mary lived a tenement. Yeah. Josephine Baker 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:28.800 was the inspector and not the dancer. No, but she 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:32.199 apparently was pretty tough lady as well. She started her 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:35.159 own rainbow family. Oh really yeah. Oh, and you know, 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:37.000 we should also point out one of the reasons that 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:42.480 Mallon was so upset initially was that she got the 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:45.399 feeling they were essentially calling her dirty an unsantit here 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:48.840 because he explained to her like, oh, you go poop 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:50.359 and then you get boop in your hands and you 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:53.560 handle peaches that you feed people, and so she was 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:56.959 very uh, she was upset that they felt like they 0:17:56.960 --> 0:18:00.960 were picking on her cleanliness. She just a dirty Irish 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:04.360 im mcgrinners exactly. They were you know, dirty drunks and 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:06.720 causing problems and that was just the stereotype at the 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:12.160 time and she wasn't like that, she said, right. So, um, 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:17.320 Soaper goes to Biggs Bigs orders some people out. They 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:21.000 used their power and grab Mary. Well, she hides out 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:22.920 in the house for a while though okay, like it 0:18:23.000 --> 0:18:25.760 took three hours to find her. Well when they finally did, 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:28.639 apparently it took all either three or four cops to 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:32.440 drag her to the ambulance and then the the female 0:18:32.480 --> 0:18:35.520 case workers sat on her for the whole ride to 0:18:35.680 --> 0:18:39.480 this hospital, this quarantine hospital, where she was kept for 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:42.800 a while. And like you said, it's it just happened 0:18:42.840 --> 0:18:47.320 to work out that the person who was who was 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:52.920 typhoid Mary was this very stubborn, obstinate, self assertive woman 0:18:53.320 --> 0:18:57.920 from Ireland, and she came about at a time where 0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:00.800 there was a big question about public health, like you know, 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:05.359 where do an individual, civil rights and public the greater 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:09.159 public good begin. That's still going on, it still is. 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:13.600 But she forced this, this conversation into the national spotlight 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:17.200 starting about now. Yea. So they keep her, they test her. 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:20.080 They they're like, you need to poop into this bag 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:24.080 right now, and she did um and they tested it 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:26.879 and they said, well, this thing's lousy with typhoid. They 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:31.600 called her stool a factory for typhoid. Yeah, And what 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:35.359 they did was they said, here's the deal, give up 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:38.400 cooking because that's how you're transmitting this and we'll let 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:43.520 you go. And so did they say that immediately, but 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:46.119 not necessarily from the document, I think they initially offered 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:49.399 her that deal that she refused, which was one reason 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:51.560 why she was you know, lambasted in the in the 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:54.800 public later on in newspapers. But again, at the time, 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:59.520 she had managed to climb up out of the uh, 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:01.600 you know, poor conditions that she was living in an 0:20:01.640 --> 0:20:04.280 Ireland and get a really good job and one that 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:07.199 she was good at and she didn't want to have 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:10.080 to learn something new and start over again. So at 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:13.880 the time, you know, like later on I can doll 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:15.800 out some of the blame on her, but early on 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:18.520 she still feels well, right, it's like, I'm not sick. 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:22.120 This doesn't make any sense. What does this healthy carrier thing? Yes, yeah, 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:25.200 she was not buying it at all, and she basically 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:27.680 came to believe that the Public Health Department had a 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:32.919 vendetta against her personally and felt quite persecuted. Um. So 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:35.040 when she said no, she wasn't going to stop cooking, 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:36.679 they said, okay, well we're gonna take you to a 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:40.040 nice little island called North Brother Island. It's not a 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:43.480 nice island. Seven. They took her there in quarantine her 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:46.359 their North Brother Island is a or it was a 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:51.320 tuberculosis hospital, quarantine quarantine hospital, i should say. And she 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:54.960 didn't have tuberculosis, and she wasn't even sick, she didn't 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:57.159 have any symptoms, and yet she was being kept here 0:20:57.200 --> 0:21:00.520 against her will on North Brother Island, which you sent 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:06.240 a killer urban exploration photo spread that I want everybody 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:09.680 to go check out. It's creepy. It's on Gothamist dot 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:13.159 com and that's g O T H A M I 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:16.119 S T. And it's titled a Trip to the Abandoned 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:19.200 North Brother Island. It is so cool. Yeah, located there 0:21:19.280 --> 0:21:22.560 was a riverside hospital and initially there was nothing there 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:27.040 and they said, hey, the idea of island quarantines was 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:28.639 pretty popular at the time, so we should build a 0:21:28.640 --> 0:21:32.240 hospital there so we can treat these people. But um, 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:34.800 North Brother Island sort of gained a reputation over the 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:37.840 years because one it was I mean, it was much 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:41.040 more than tuberculosis. It was like later on it was 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:44.080 like hero and junkies were treated their syphilis like any 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:47.119 kind of nasty disease or addiction they would dump you 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:50.720 on at Riverside Hospital. It was in asylum. It basically was. 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:54.040 It was sort of like, uh, what's the DiCaprio, shutter island, 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:57.880 sendal island. Um. But they had a hard time staffing 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:00.840 it with real doctors for a while because actors understandably 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:03.560 didn't want to work there, so they had nurses only 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:06.760 for a time. Eventually there was a public campaign to 0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:10.160 clean it up and to build better buildings and change 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:13.800 his rep which sort of worked, sort of didn't. But um, 0:22:15.200 --> 0:22:17.359 in New York City at the time, especially on the 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:20.800 Lowery Side and where poor people lived, it had a 0:22:20.880 --> 0:22:23.200 very bad reputation as you don't want to go there 0:22:23.200 --> 0:22:25.720 because you go there and you don't come back. People 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:28.000 were afraid of it, right. So that's where they send 0:22:28.000 --> 0:22:32.080 this Mary Malin off to so and when she gets there, um, 0:22:32.160 --> 0:22:36.840 she starts trying to get out. She hired a escaping 0:22:37.160 --> 0:22:42.320 right now, using legal channels. She um. She she hired 0:22:42.359 --> 0:22:46.160 a lab, a private lab, and started sending them samples 0:22:46.200 --> 0:22:48.600 of her stool and they were testing it and they 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:51.159 were not getting the same results. Her boyfriend would sneak 0:22:51.240 --> 0:22:53.600 her poop to the lab and they weren't getting the 0:22:53.640 --> 0:22:55.880 same results that the Public Health Department said that they 0:22:55.880 --> 0:22:59.040 were getting UM. As far as her being a factory 0:22:59.080 --> 0:23:02.360 for typhoid right, which could have been a false negative right. 0:23:02.680 --> 0:23:04.359 It could have been because they said that you don't 0:23:04.359 --> 0:23:07.399 always find it in the testing, and that's what they 0:23:07.400 --> 0:23:10.439 said in the documentary. I believe so. But there was 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:12.440 a discrepancy and it was enough for her to get 0:23:12.440 --> 0:23:15.360 her day in court New York Supreme Court. So she 0:23:15.760 --> 0:23:19.199 makes her way. She's allowed to UM to leave the 0:23:19.240 --> 0:23:22.520 island to go for her court date, and basically the 0:23:22.560 --> 0:23:25.359 Public Health Department was like, look, she's a she's a 0:23:25.400 --> 0:23:29.679 healthy carrier, and she's a public health threat. And Mary's like, 0:23:29.720 --> 0:23:32.399 these people are holding me against my will. And the 0:23:32.440 --> 0:23:34.760 New York Supreme Court said, you're a public health threat. 0:23:34.760 --> 0:23:37.000 Go back to North Brother Island. Yeah. And around the 0:23:37.040 --> 0:23:40.200 same time, it started getting newspaper coverage courtesy of William 0:23:40.280 --> 0:23:44.640 Randolph Hurst, who may have financed her UM law. That's 0:23:44.680 --> 0:23:47.560 crazy her legal expenses. Imagine it was. It was great 0:23:47.600 --> 0:23:49.399 for the papers, So yeah, I could see him throw 0:23:49.440 --> 0:23:51.399 a little money toward it, totally. But that's where she 0:23:51.440 --> 0:23:54.560 was dubbed typhoid Mary, and that's where the public cinement 0:23:54.640 --> 0:23:57.960 really swung because she was painted as someone who was 0:23:58.200 --> 0:24:02.199 willingly giving people typhoid fever. Right, Well, no, she was. 0:24:02.480 --> 0:24:05.240 She was called typhoid Mary because they were protecting her 0:24:05.480 --> 0:24:08.919