Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Few people are synonymous or as intrinsically linked to a disease as that as Mary Mallon. The full name of the Irish immigrant to 19th Century New York might leave a blank look upon the face of many, but that single given name, coupled and tied with the terror of Typhoid, will leave a scar of realisation, the chill of how infection and disease are humanity’s greatest threat to existence.
The five-part series, hosted by and investigated by Ophelia Byrne, is one that strides the often-forgotten road of aural sculpturing, informative and enlightening, educational, but also one stepped in the human voice. This is a tale of what some might consider old news, almost ancient history to some, but which resonates across time, across the century between and build a bridge, a lesson for us to take heed lest we find ourselves once more in a situation that is all too familiar of late.
Lessons learned, perhaps, as the undertone of the investigation suggests, we have become too comfortable with the knowledge of how infections cross over between people that we have chosen to ignore the data, choosing instead to put fingers in our ears and declare that we are not able to be a carrier, and like Mary Mallon, Typhoid Mary, the choice of how we proceed once we are assured that we are patient zero, that should we continue to do the one thing that ensures others will die, do we still do it knowing it is the only way for ourselves to survive? Do we understand what self-sacrifice means?
As Ophelia Byrne states from the beginning of the investigation, it was a brush with Covid at the start of the pandemic that set her wondering just who this fascinating, if elusive, woman of history was. Even if we avoided the disease like the plague, we couldn’t help have been bombarded with her name being mentioned on the rounds of social media, the hashtags of the unrepentant and stoic, and her name, her moniker given to her by the papers of the day.
And that is a point of the case, that the press, in the infinite wisdom of all with vested interests, start a war with the woman who has already lost so much.
In the determination of public health, laudable, sincere, absolute, as it should be, what right do we have to make one person a pariah in their lifetime, especially when they already have lived knowing their mother, a sibling, and others around them have died; it is to be impressed upon such a person that they, for the benefit of public order, be seen to cooperate with ill, not with the stick of infamy.
Ophelia Byrne’s careful investigation, the belief she has of Mary Mallon as a decent, if misguided, scared human being is tantamount to the case, and to the overall structure of Assume Nothing: The Hunt For Typhoid Mary. A podcast of invaluable resource, of wanting to understand the nature of spreading disease, and that of social ambition.
Ian D. Hall