Public support plummeted and opinion turned against Mary Mallon in 1915 because of her conscious return to cooking when people believed she should have learned her lesson. "The chance was given to her five years ago to live in freedom," editorialized the New York Tribune, and "she deliberately elected to throw it away." Historians have since that time been no more lenient in their assessment of Mallon's informed return to cooking. In 1994, Robert J. T. Joy put it directly: "Consider that Mallon disappeared for five years, and used several aliases and went straight back to cooking! ... Now, as far as I am concerned, this verges on assault with the possibility of second degree murder. Mallon knows she carries typhoid, knows she should not cook—and does so."
