Notorious Women of New York - Typhoid Mary
This post is borne out of a lecture I attended at the New York Historical Society about Notorious New York women. Everyone has heard the name of Typhoid Mary but how many of us really know who she was or what she did? In the summer of 1906, in the tony resort town of Oyster Bay, Long Island (home to Theodore Roosevelt and part of what they call the Gold Coast on Long Island), the daughter of William Henry Warren, fell ill with typhoid at their rented summer home. Typhoid was a highly contagious communicable disease (Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort died from typhoid fever). During the 19th Century, thousands of people died from typhoid fever. In the year 1906 alone, 23,000 people died in the United States. Soon five more people in the Warren household fell ill with the fever, including Warren's wife. Experts were brought in to determine what caused the outbreak. Typhoid fever was usually found in the cities slums where sanitary conditions were primitive. Most tenements ...