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Elizabeth Moss to star in story of Tyrone's 'Typhoid Mary'

Elisabeth Moss is set to play the part of Tyrone woman 'Typhoid Mary'
Elisabeth Moss is set to play the part of Tyrone woman 'Typhoid Mary' Elisabeth Moss is set to play the part of Tyrone woman 'Typhoid Mary'

The BBC is set to tell the tale of a Tyrone woman who brought a typhoid epidemic to New York.

It is believed that Cookstown woman Mary Mallon - known as 'Typhoid Mary' - spread the potentially deadly disease after moving to America as a 15-year-old in the 1880s.

She later became the first US resident identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with deadly typhoid fever.

She unwittingly spread the disease while working as a cook in Long Island.

She was later held in quarantine on North Border Island in New York, where she died in 1938.

Her story is now set to be told in a major BBC series called Fever, with US actress Elisabeth Moss plying the lead role.

Moss is best known for her work in The West Wing and the hit series The Handmaid's Tale.

She recently said: "I am looking forward to telling this story about one of the most infamous women in America, 'Typhoid Mary,' a woman whose true tale has never been told.

"Mary was an immigrant in turn of the century New York, a time of huge change and progress in America. She was incredibly unique, stubborn, ambitious and in fierce denial of any wrongdoing until her death where she lived out her days imprisoned on an island just off of the Bronx."