Marie Delphine LaLaurie (née
Macarty or
Maccarthy, c. 1775 – c. 1842), more commonly known as
Madame LaLaurie, was a
LouisianaLouisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
-born
socialiteA socialite is a person who participates in social activities and spends a significant amount of time entertaining and being entertained at fashionable upper-class events....
, known for her involvement in the
tortureTorture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
of black
slavesSlavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
.
Born in New Orleans, LaLaurie married three times over the course of her life. She maintained a prominent position in the social circles of New Orleans until April 10, 1834, when rescuers responding to a fire at her Royal Street mansion discovered bound slaves within the house who showed evidence of
tortureTorture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
over a long period. LaLaurie's house was subsequently sacked by an outraged mob of New Orleans citizens, and it is thought that she fled to
ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where she died.
The tale of the LaLaurie slaves has been repeated and embellished by a succession of authors and today plays a prominent part in the
folkloreFolklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
and ghost stories of New Orleans. As of 2011, the Royal Street mansion where LaLaurie lived is still standing and is a prominent New Orleans landmark.
Early life
Delphine Macarty was born around 1775, one of five children. Her father was Barthelmy Louis Macarty, whose father Barthelmy Macarty brought the family to New Orleans from Ireland around 1730. Her mother was Marie Jeanne Lovable, also known as "the widow Lecomte," whose marriage to Barthelmy Louis Macarty was her second. Both were prominent members of the New Orleans white
CréoleLouisiana Creole people refers to those who are descended from the colonial settlers in Louisiana, especially those of French and Spanish descent. The term was first used during colonial times by the settlers to refer to those who were born in the colony, as opposed to those born in the Old World...
community. Delphine's cousin, Augustin de Macarty, was mayor of New Orleans from 1815 to 1820.
On June 11, 1800, Delphine Macarty married Don Ramon de Lopez y Angullo, a
Caballero de la Royal de Carlos (a high ranking Spanish officer), at the
Saint Louis Cathedral in New OrleansSaint Louis Cathedral , also known as the Basilica of St. Louis, King of France, is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans; it has the distinction of being the oldest continuously operating cathedral in the United States...
. By 1804, Don Ramon had risen to the position of
consul generalThe political title Consul is used for the official representatives of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, and to facilitate trade and friendship between the peoples of the two countries...
for Spain in Louisiana. Also in 1804, Delphine and Don Ramon traveled to Spain. Accounts of the trip differ. Grace King wrote in 1921 that the trip was Don Ramon's "military punishment", and that Delphine met the
QueenMaria Luisa of Parma was Queen consort of Spain from 1788 to 1808 as the wife of King Charles IV of Spain. She was the youngest daughter of Duke Philip of Parma and his wife, Louise-Élisabeth of France, the eldest daughter of King Louis XV.She was christened Luisa Maria Teresa Ana, but was known...
, who was impressed by Delphine's beauty. Stanley Arthur's 1936 report differed; he stated that on March 26, 1804, Don Ramon was recalled to the court of Spain "to take his place at court as befitting his new position", but that Ramon never arrived in Spain because he died in
HavanaHavana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
en route to
MadridMadrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
.
During the voyage, Delphine gave birth to a daughter, named Marie Borgia Delphine Lopez y Angulla de la Candelaria, nicknamed "Borquita". Delphine and her daughter returned to New Orleans afterwards.
In June 1808, Delphine married Jean Blanque, a prominent banker, merchant, lawyer and legislator. At the time of the marriage, Blanque purchased a house at 409
Royal StreetRoyal Street is a street in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is one of the oldest streets in the city, dating from the French Colonial era, and is most well known for the antique shops, art galleries, and stately hotels that line its sides as it runs through New Orleans' French Quarter and tourist...
in New Orleans for the family, which became known later as the Villa Blanque. Delphine had four more children by Blanque, named Marie Louise Pauline, Louise Marie Laure, Marie Louise Jeanne, and Jeanne Pierre Paulin Blanque.
Blanque died in 1816. Delphine married her third husband,
physicianA physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
Leonard Louis Nicolas LaLaurie, who was much younger than she, on June 25, 1825. In 1831, she bought property at 1140
Royal StreetRoyal Street is a street in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is one of the oldest streets in the city, dating from the French Colonial era, and is most well known for the antique shops, art galleries, and stately hotels that line its sides as it runs through New Orleans' French Quarter and tourist...
, which she managed in her own name with little involvement of her husband, and by 1832 had built a three-story mansion there, complete with attached slave quarters. She lived there with her husband and two of her daughters, and maintained a central position in the social circles of New Orleans.
1834 fire
The LaLauries, in the style of their social class at the time, maintained several black slaves in slave quarters attached to the Royal Street mansion. Accounts of Delphine LaLaurie's treatments of her slaves between 1831 and 1834 are mixed.
Harriet MartineauHarriet Martineau was an English social theorist and Whig writer, often cited as the first female sociologist....
, writing in 1838 and recounting tales told to her by New Orleans residents during her 1836 visit, claimed LaLaurie's slaves were observed to be "singularly haggard and wretched"; however, in public appearances LaLaurie was seen to be generally polite to blacks and solicitous of her slaves' health, and court records of the time showed that LaLaurie emancipated two of her own slaves (a Jean Louis in 1819 and a Devince in 1832). Nevertheless, Martineau reported that public rumors about LaLaurie's mistreatment of her slaves were sufficiently widespread that a local lawyer was dispatched to Royal Street to remind LaLaurie of the laws relevant to the upkeep of slaves. During this visit the lawyer found no evidence of wrongdoing or mistreatment of slaves by LaLaurie.
Martineau also recounted other tales of LaLaurie's cruelty that were current among New Orleans residents in about 1836. She claimed that, subsequent to the visit of the local lawyer, one of LaLaurie's neighbors saw a young negro girl fall to her death from the roof of the Royal Street mansion while trying to avoid punishment from a whip-wielding Delphine LaLaurie. The body of the girl was subsequently buried on the mansion grounds. According to Martineau, this incident led to an investigation of the LaLauries, in which they were found guilty of illegal cruelty and forced to forfeit nine slaves. These nine slaves were then bought back by the LaLauries through the intermediary of one of their relatives, and returned to the Royal Street residences. Similarly, Martineau reported stories that LaLaurie kept her cook chained to the kitchen stove, and beat her daughters when they attempted to feed the slaves.
On April 10, 1834, a fire broke out in the LaLaurie residence on Royal Street. As reported in the
New Orleans Bee of April 11, 1834, bystanders responding to the fire attempted to enter the slave quarters to ensure that everyone had been evacuated. Upon being refused the keys by the LaLauries, the bystanders broke down the doors to the slave quarters and found "seven slaves, more or less horribly mutilated ... suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to the other", who claimed to have been imprisoned there for some months.
One of those who entered the premises was Judge Jean-Francois Canonge, who subsequently deposed to having found in the LaLaurie mansion, among others, a "negress ... wearing an iron collar" and "an old negro woman who had received a very deep wound on her head [who was] too weak to be able to walk". Canonge claimed that when he questioned Madame LaLaurie's husband about the slaves, he was told "in an insolent manner that some people had better stay at home rather than come to others' houses to dictate laws and meddle with other people's business".
A version of this story circulating in 1836, recounted by Martineau, claimed that the fire was started deliberately by LaLaurie's cook to draw attention to the plight of the slaves, and added that the slaves were emaciated, showed signs of being flayed with a whip, were bound in restrictive postures, and wore spiked iron collars which kept their heads in static positions.
When the discovery of the tortured slaves became widely known, a mob of local citizens attacked the LaLaurie residence and "demolished and destroyed everything upon which they could lay their hands". A sheriff and his officers were required to disperse the crowd and, by the time the mob left, the Royal Street property had sustained major damage, with "scarcely any thing [remaining] but the walls". The tortured slaves were taken to a local jail, where they were available for public viewing. The
New Orleans Bee reported that by April 12 up to 4,000 people had attended to view the tortured slaves "to convince themselves of their sufferings".
The
Pittsfield Sun, citing the
New Orleans Advertiser and writing several weeks after the evacuation of Lalaurie's slave quarters, claimed that two of the slaves found in the LaLaurie mansion had died since their rescue, and added: "We understand ... that in digging the yard, bodies have been disinterred, and the condemned well [in the grounds of the mansion] having been uncovered, others, particularly that of a child, were found." These claims were repeated by Martineau in her 1838 book
Retrospect of Western Travel, where she placed the number of unearthed bodies at two, including the child.
Late life and death
LaLaurie's life after the 1834 fire is not well documented. Martineau wrote in 1838 that LaLaurie fled New Orleans during the mob violence that followed the fire, taking a coach to the waterfront and travelling by
schoonerA schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being no taller than the rear masts....
from there to
Mobile, AlabamaMobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...
and then on to
ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. Certainly by the time Martineau personally visited the Royal Street mansion in 1836 it was still unoccupied and badly damaged, with "gaping windows and empty walls".
The circumstances of Delphine LaLaurie's death are also unclear.
George Washington CableGeorge Washington Cable was an American novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in his native Louisiana. His fiction has been thought to anticipate that of William Faulkner.- Biography:...
recounted in 1888 a then-popular but unsubstantiated story that LaLaurie had died in France in a
boar-huntingBoar hunting is generally the practice of hunting wild boars, but can also extend to feral pigs and peccaries. A full-sized boar is a large animal armed with sharp tusks which it uses to defend itself. Boar hunting has often been a test of bravery....
accident. Whatever the truth, in the late 1930s, Eugene Backes, who served as sexton to St. Louis Cemetery #1 until 1924, discovered an old cracked, copper plate in Alley 4 of the cemetery. The inscription on the plate read: "
Madame LaLaurie, née Marie Delphine Macarty, décédée à Paris, le 7 Décembre, 1842, à l'âge de 6--."
LaLaurie in folklore
Folk histories of LaLaurie's poor treatment of her slaves circulated in Louisiana during the nineteenth century, and were reprinted in collections of stories by Henry Castellanos and
George Washington CableGeorge Washington Cable was an American novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in his native Louisiana. His fiction has been thought to anticipate that of William Faulkner.- Biography:...
. Cable's account (not to be confused with his unrelated 1881 novel
Madame Delphine) was based on contemporary stories in newspapers such as the
New Orleans Bee and the
Advertiser, and upon Martineau's 1838 account,
Retrospect of Western Travel, but mixed in some synthesis, dialogue and supposition entirely of his own creation.
After 1945, stories of the LaLaurie slaves became considerably more explicit. Jeanne deLavigne, writing in
Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans (1946), alleged that LaLaurie had a "sadistic appetite [that] seemed never appeased until she had inflicted on one or more of her black servitors some hideous form of torture" and claimed that those who responded to the 1834 fire had found "male slaves, stark naked, chained to the wall, their eyes gouged out, their fingernails pulled off by the roots; others had their joints skinned and festering, great holes in their buttocks where the flesh had been sliced away, their ears hanging by shreds, their lips sewn together ... Intestines were pulled out and knotted around naked waists. There were holes in skulls, where a rough stick had been inserted to stir the brains." DeLavigne did not directly cite any sources for these claims, and they were not supported by the primary sources.
The story was further popularised and embellished in
Journey Into Darkness: Ghosts and Vampires of New Orleans (1998) by Kalila Katherina Smith, the operator of a New Orleans ghost tour business. Smith's book added several more explicit details to the discoveries allegedly made by rescuers during the 1834 fire, including a "victim [who] obviously had her arms amputated and her skin peeled off in a circular pattern, making her look like a human caterpillar," and another who had had her limbs broken and reset "at odd angles so she resembled a human crab". Many of the new details in Smith's book were unsourced, while others were not supported by the sources given.
Today, modern retellings of the LaLaurie myth often use deLavigne and Smith's versions of the tale to found claims of explicit tortures, and to place the number of slaves who died under LaLaurie's care at as many as one hundred.
LaLaurie Mansion
The New Orleans house occupied by Delphine LaLaurie at the time of the 1834 fires stands today at 1140 Royal Street, on the corner of
Royal StreetRoyal Street is a street in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is one of the oldest streets in the city, dating from the French Colonial era, and is most well known for the antique shops, art galleries, and stately hotels that line its sides as it runs through New Orleans' French Quarter and tourist...
and Governor Nicholls Street (formerly known as Hospital Street). At three stories high, it was described in 1928 as "the highest building for squares around", with the result that "from the cupola on the roof one may look out over the
Vieux CarréThe French Quarter, also known as Vieux Carré, is the oldest neighborhood in the city of New Orleans. When New Orleans was founded in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the city was originally centered on the French Quarter, or the Vieux Carré as it was known then...
and see the
MississippiMississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
in its crescent before
Jackson SquareJackson Square, also known as Place d'Armes, is a historic park in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960.-Design:...
". The entrance to the building bears iron grillwork, and the door is carved with an image of "Phoebus in his chariot, and with wreaths of flowers and depending garlands in bas-relief". Inside, the
vestibuleA vestibule is a lobby, entrance hall, or passage between the entrance and the interior of a building.The same term can apply to structures in modern or ancient roman architecture. In modern architecture vestibule typically refers to a small room or hall between an entrance and the interior of...
is floored in black and white
marbleMarble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...
, and a curved
mahoganyThe name mahogany is used when referring to numerous varieties of dark-colored hardwood. It is a native American word originally used for the wood of the species Swietenia mahagoni, known as West Indian or Cuban mahogany....
-railed staircase runs the full three storeys of the building. The second floor holds three large drawing-rooms connected by ornamented sliding doors, whose walls are decorated with plaster
rosettesA rosette is a round, stylized flower design, used extensively in sculptural objects from antiquity. Appearing in Mesopotamia and used to decorate the funeral stele in Ancient Greece...
, carved woodwork, black marble mantlepieces and fluted pilasters.
Subsequent to LaLaurie's departure from America, the house remained ruined at least until 1836, but at some point prior to 1888 it was "unrecognisably restored", and over the following decades was used as a public high school, a conservatory of music, a tenement, a refuge for young delinquents, a bar, a furniture store, and a luxury apartment building.
In April 2007, actor
Nicolas CageNicolas Cage is an American actor, producer and director, having appeared in over 60 films including Raising Arizona , The Rock , Face/Off , Gone in 60 Seconds , Adaptation , National Treasure , Ghost Rider , Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans , and...
bought the LaLaurie House through Hancock Park Real Estate Company LLC for a sum of $3.45 million. The mortgage documents were arranged in such a way that Cage's name did not appear on them. On November 13, 2009 the property, then valued at $3.5 million, was listed for auction as a result of bank foreclosure and purchased by Regions Financial Corporation for $2.3 million.
Periodicals
– The relevant text appears at the top-left of the linked scan. A transcript of this article can be found
here for ease of reading. – The relevant text appears at the top-left of the linked scan. A transcript of this article can be found
here for ease of reading. – A transcript of this article can be found
here for ease of reading.