In the early 20 th Century, an Irish-born cook in the New York City area named Mary Mallon was dubbed “Typhoid Mary” after families for whom she worked kept coming down with Typhoid Fever. Each time a new infection broke out, Mallon denied that she was the source, but after 53 people contracted the disease and three died in seven of the eight households in which she worked, authorities determined that she was an asymptomatic carrier and forcibly quarantined her. After her release, she infected 25 people, killing three, while working at a women’s hospital in New York. She was forced into a second quarantine and once the press got wind of her story labeled her with the now-legendary sobriquet of “Typhoid Mary.”