She Was Far From the Only One
During Mallon’s legal battle, Science magazine published an article arguing that, because they’d since learned that about 4% of people who recovered from typhoid became asymptomatic carriers, “There are at the present moment probably 560 such persons in the state of New York” and “We cannot keep in detention all these people, why single out and imprison one?” Today, historians do believe she was unfairly targeted because she was “female, Irish, uncooperative, and without a family.”
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Why She Disobeyed
Mallon is vilified mostly because after she was released in 1910 under the condition that she never work as a cook again, she totally crossed her fingers behind her back, adopted a series of fake names, and did just that. But she’d only been released back to crushing poverty, couldn’t find a job that paid as well, and remained unconvinced, fairly reasonably, that she was a danger to anyone. That, of course, didn’t work out so great: She spread typhoid to 25 more people, two of whom died.