Just a hop, skip and a jump away from the glitz and glamour of Manhattan, New York, North Brother Island harbors a dark and eerie past. From the 1880s to 1943, this island was a quarantine zone for patients suffering from lethal diseases like smallpox, tuberculosis, and leprosy, including the infamous ‘Typhoid Mary’ Mallon.
These individuals were whisked away to the island, far from the healthy populace of New York’s mainland, where it was thought they could be safely sequestered.
Mary, despite being asymptomatic, was linked to over 100 deaths after she unknowingly infected those she cooked for with typhoid in the early 20th century. She died in 1938, confined to a bungalow near Riverside Hospital on the island…