Delphine LaLaurie was featured in Cabernet & True Crime’s third episode, called ‘Louisian-ian Creoles.’ Click here to listen!
I had first learned of Delphine LaLaurie in AHS: Coven (Which is the best season- I will die on this hill.) I have a cat named after Jessica Lange.
In the show, Delphine was played by Kathy Bates (whom I LOVE). In AHS she was a high-society Creole socialite in 1830s New Orleans. She was shown to be nefarious serial killer who tortured and murdered her African American slaves.
THE REAL DELPHINE
Marie Delphine Macarty was born in New Orleans on March 19th, 1787. She was one of 5 children. Her father was Louis Barthelemy de McCarty (aka Louis B. McCarty) whose father brought the family to New Orleans from Ireland around 1730, during the French Colonial Period.
HISTORY SIDEBAR
French Colonial Period is time from 1682-1803ish where an area of the United States was still under French control. The area originally covered the drainage area of the expanse of the Mississippi all the way to the Great Lakes –> Gulf of Mexico. Then from the Appalachian Mountains to the Rocky Mountains. The area was split into two halves, upper and lower Louisiana, named after Louis XIV (14). Lower Louisiana would eventually become the states of Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and obviously, Louisiana. If you’d like to read up on the ins and outs of “New France” – click here.
Louis B. was married to a widow Marie-Jeanne L’Erable. They were both prominent in the area’s European Creole community. The term creole was used originally by French settlers to distinguish persons born in Louisiana from those born in the mother country or somewhere else. It means “native born” it eventually came to be used to describe “Louisiana-born people of full European descent.” The commonly accepted definition of Louisiana Creole today is a person descended from ancestors in Louisiana before the Louisiana Purchase by the US in 1803.
HISTORY SIDEBAR INCEPTION
There were these girls called ‘Casket Girls’ because in the beginning of trying to colonize this area, it was predominantly male populated. There were soldiers placed there as indentured servants, and they were required to stay in Louisiana for a fixed length of time determined by a contract (to pay back cost of service and board). To increase the population, the government recruited young French woman, known as filles a la cassette (casket girls—for their suitcases/case of belongings they brought with them). They went to the colony to wed colonial soldiers. The king himself financed dowries for each girl. There’s a specific story, of The Baleine Brides (known from the ship they were sent over on) that was filled with 90 women, all of whom were most likely sex workers or felons (1721). Apparently this event inspired a 1731 novel by Abbe Prevost called (Manon Lescaut). Which is apparently also an opera. The more you know.
BACK TO THE BUSINESS:
Delphine’s uncle by marriage- Esteban Rodriguez Miro, was the governor of the Spanish American provinces of Louisiana and Florida from 1785-1791 and her cousin, Augustin de Macarty, was Mayor of new Orleans from 1815 to 1820.
So basically Delphine’s family was kind of a big deal.
Delphine marries for the first time on June 11th, 1800. Delphine was 13. She married Don Ramon de Lopez y Angulo – who was a high-ranking Spanish royal officer. They were married in the Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. In the 1760s, Louisiana had become a Spanish colony, when France was defeated by Great Britain in the 7 years’ war.
In 1804, after the American Acquisition of what was then again, another French territory (AKA – The Louisiana Purchase) Don Ramon was appointed to position of ‘Consul general” for Spain in the Territory of Orleans. To put in perspective of what was going on in France, it was ruled by good ole Napoleon at the time, and Thomas Jefferson was president of the United States.
*For reference: Napoleon had essentially gotten the area back, then in fear of losing it again, sold it to Thomas Jefferson for 15 million dollars. (As you do.)
Also in 1804, Delphine and her hubby travelled to Spain. Delphine gave birth to a daughter, Marie-Borja/Borgia Delphine Lopez y Angulo (nicknamed Borquita), enroute. Don Ramon dies before they reached Madrid. (Did Delphine go by Delphine? Seems weird to name your daughter Marie if that’s your name? Did she call her Junior? I have QUESTIONS).
In June of 1808, Delphine remarries. His name is Jean Blanque. He’s a prominent banker, merchant, legislator, and lawyer. He buys a house for her, which eventually becomes known as ‘Villa Blanque’. The couple have four children together, Marie Louise Pauline, Louise Marie Laure, Marie Louise Jeanne, and Jeanne Pierre Paulin Blanque.
HOLD UP FOR A DAMN SECOND. WHAT THE HELL, DELPHINE. That’s quite a confusing name set.
Her second husband dies in 1816.
On June 25th, 1825, Delphine gets married again, this time to physician Leonard Luis Nicolas LaLaurie. Apparently, he was much younger than she was. In 1831, Delphine buys a property at 1140 Royal Street, which he handled completely on her own with little involvement from her husband. Two years later, she had a two-story mansion built- it even had slave quarters. She lived there with her husband and two of her daughters (which two I’m not sure of, probably the youngest?) and maintained a high role in New Orleans society. She also had a son with Louis, named Samuel Arther Clarence Lalaurie, and I’m not sure where he was at that time.
So, the LaLauries had several black slaves in slave quarters attached to the mansion. During the period of 1831-1834, people are mixed on how she treated her slaves. Harriet Martineau (often cited as the world’s first female sociologist and probably the biggest gossip queen at the time… I’m thinking like, 1830’s Vogue) had visited New Orleans in 1836, and described LaLaurie’s slaves as ‘particularly haggard and wretched’. But, in public appearances Delphine was seen as being generally polite to black people and concerned for her slave’s health. In 1819 and 1832 she freed two of her slaves, Jean Louis and Devince respectively).
Apparently, in Martineau’s tales, a local lawyer was dispatched to the home to remind the couple of the laws for the upkeep of slaves, but during that time he saw no evidence of wrong doing.
Rumors, still being spread by Martineau’s writings, said that neighbors had seen a twelve year old slave (Lia) fall to her death from the roof of the mansion whilst trying to avoid punishment from Delphine. The fable goes that Lia was brushing Delphine’s hair and hit a snag, and Delphine grabbed a whip and chased her to, essentially, her death.
This incident, according to Martineau, led to an investigation to which Leonard and Delphine are found guilty of illegal cruelty, and as a punishment are forced to forfeit nine slaves. Those slaves, however, end up back at the Royal Street Mansion. People also said that Delphine kept her cook chained to the kitchen stove and beat her daughters when they tried to feed any of the slaves.
THEN THERE’S A FIRE….
On 4/10/1834, a fire breaks out in the mansion—which started in the kitchen. When police/fire marshal arrived, they found the cook, a 70-year-old woman, chained to the stove by her ankle. She later said that she set the fire as a suicide attempt because she was scared of being punished, telling the police that slaves who went up to the highest level of the mansion never came back.
As reported in the newspaper the very next day, bystanders who were trying to help rescue who they could in the fire attempted to enter slave quarters to be sure that everyone had gotten out safe. After trying to get keys from Delphine, who refused, the bystanders broke down the door, and what they saw was horrific.
There were “Seven slaves, more or less horribly mutilated… suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to the other”. Some had been there for months.
Also, inside were “a negress wearing an iron collar” and “an old negro woman who had received a very deep wound on her head and who was too weak to be able to walk”. The man who had found these women asked Leonard about their treatment, to which, in so many words, Leonard told him to “mind his own damn business”.
Our gossip queen, Martineau, stated in 1836 that her (Delphine’s) slaves were emaciated, showed signs of being flayed with a whip, and were bound in restrictive postures. They wore spiked collars that kept their head in static positions.
When bystanders found the abused slaves and everything became more than gossip, a mob attacked the LaLaurie residence and “demolished and destroyed everything they could get their hands on”. A sheriff arrived, but by the time he got there the damage was so bad, there was hardly anything remaining but the walls.
The LaLaurie slaves were taken to the jail where they were available for public viewing (weird). The New Orleans Bee reported that by 4/12 (just two days later) that 4,000 people had come to the jail to view the slaves to “convince themselves of their sufferings) – was it because they didn’t believe Delphine capable of such things?
Several weeks later, two of the slaves rescued from the home had died, Also, numerous bodies were found In the grounds of the mansion.
After the fire, it’s believed that Delphine avoided capture by the mob violence, travelled by a schooner to Mobile, Alabama, and hitched a ride to Paris. Not much else is known about her life from then.
How she died is also unknown. There’s a highly unsubstantiated rumor that she was killed in 1888 in France during a boar-hunting accident. In the late 1930s, someone found an old, cracked, copper plate in the cemetery. It stated:
“Madame LaLaurie, Nee Marie Delphine Maccarthy décédée à Paris, le 7 Décembre, 1842, à l’âge de 6–.”
(Madame LaLaurie, born Marie Delphine Mccarthy, died in Paris, December 7, 1842 at the age of 6—.)
According to French archives in Paris, Marie Delphine Maccarthy died on December 7, 1849, at the age of 62. (Which coincides with her birth date being what’s stated on here and not something else that’s stupid like 1775)
After 1945, accounts of the LaLaurie slaves became 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 cite any sources for these claims, and they were not supported by the primary sources.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MANSION?
So, the house commonly referred to as the LaLaurie Mansion or the Haunted house isn’t the actual house. The original NOLA home no longer even exists.
When she bought the property in 1831, a house was already under construction and finished for LaLaurie. THAT house was burned by the mob in 1834 and remained ruined for at least another 4 years after that. It was rebuilt in 1838 and now looks the way it does now.
In the past, that building has been a public high school, a conservatory for music, an apartment building, a refuge for young delinquents, a bar, a furniture store, and a luxury apartment building. In April 2007, the house was bought by Nicolas Cage, but then sold in 2009 as part of a bank foreclosure.