Delphine LaLaurie

thumb|alt=Three-storey rectangular building|The LaLaurie mansion, from a 1906 postcard

Marie Delphine Macarty or MacCarthy (March 19, 1787 – December 7, 1849), more commonly known as Madame Blanque or, after her third marriage, as Madame LaLaurie, was a New Orleans socialite and serial killer who tortured and murdered enslaved people in her household.

Born during the Spanish colonial period, LaLaurie married three times in Louisiana and was twice widowed. She maintained her position in New Orleans society until April 10, 1834, when rescuers responded to a fire at her Royal Street mansion. They discovered bound slaves in her attic who showed evidence of cruel, violent abuse over a long period. LaLaurie's house was subsequently sacked by an outraged mob of New Orleans citizens. She escaped to France with her family, and was never brought to justice.

The mansion traditionally held to be LaLaurie's is a landmark in the French Quarter, in part because of its history and for its architectural significance. However, her house was burned by the mob, and the "LaLaurie Mansion" at 1140 Royal Street was in fact rebuilt after her departure from New Orleans.

Early life and family history

Marie Delphine Macarty was born in New Orleans, Spanish Louisiana, on March 19, 1787, as one of five children. Her father was Louis Barthélemy de McCarty (originally Chevalier de MacCarthy), whose father Barthelemy (de) MacCarthy moved the family to New Orleans from Ireland around 1730, during the French colonial period. (The Irish surname MacCarthy was shortened to Macarty or de Macarty.) Her mother was Marie Jeanne L'Érable, also known as "the widow Le Comte", as her marriage to Louis B. Macarty was her second. Her uncle by marriage, Esteban Rodríguez Miró, was governor of the Spanish American provinces of Louisiana and Florida during 1785–1791, and her cousin, Augustin de Macarty, was mayor of New Orleans from 1815 to 1820.

Delphine was only four years of age when the Haitian Revolution erupted in 1791, something that made slaveholders in the Southern United States and the Caribbean very afraid of resistance and rebellion among slaves; Delphine's uncle had been killed in 1771 by his slaves, and the revolution had inspired the local Mina Conspiracy in 1791, the Pointe Coupée Conspiracy in 1795,

First marriage

On June 11, 1800, at age 13, Delphine married Don Ramón de Lopez y Angulo, a Caballero de la Real de Carlos, a high-ranking Spanish royal officer, at the Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans.

Third marriage

On June 25, 1825, In 1831, she bought property at 1140 Royal Street, which she managed in her own name with little involvement of her husband.

Torture and murder of enslaved people and 1834 LaLaurie mansion fire

thumb|alt=Black and white drawing of an engraved door recessed several feet into a stone archway|An artist's depiction of the entryway to 1140 Royal Street, c. 1888

Accounts of Delphine's treatment of the people she owned between 1831 and 1834 vary. Harriet Martineau (writing in 1838), recounting tales told to her by New Orleans residents during her 1836 visit, claimed that the enslaved people of LaLaurie were observed to be "singularly haggard and wretched" when compared to other enslaved individuals; however, at least in public appearances, LaLaurie was seen to be generally "polite" to black people, and solicitous of the health of those enslaved.

Court records of the time show that LaLaurie freed two captive, enslaved people (Jean Louis in 1819 and Devince in 1832). Martineau wrote that public rumors about her mistreatment of slaves at the Royal Street residence were sufficiently widespread that a local lawyer was dispatched to the property to remind LaLaurie of the laws for the upkeep of enslaved people. During this visit, the lawyer found no evidence to suggest wrongdoing or mistreatment of enslaved peoples by LaLaurie.

Martineau also recounted other tales of LaLaurie's cruelty that were whispered amongst New Orleans' residents around 1836, saying that (subsequent to the visit of the lawyer) one of LaLaurie's neighbors saw an eight-year-old enslaved girl fall to her death from the roof of the mansion while trying to avoid punishment from a whip-wielding LaLaurie. The girl's body was subsequently buried on the mansion grounds. Jeanne DeLavigne, in her 1945 account, gave the child's age as 12 years old and named her as Lia (or Leah). Later writers elaborated on the case, saying that Lia had been brushing Delphine's hair when she hit a snag, angering LaLaurie to the point that she grabbed a whip and started chasing her. Similarly, Martineau recounted stories that LaLaurie kept her cook starved and chained to the kitchen stove, beating her daughters when they attempted to feed themselves or others.

On April 10, 1834, a fire broke out in the Royal Street mansion, beginning in the kitchen. When police and fire marshals reached the residence, they found a 70-year-old cook chained to the stove by her ankle. The cook later said that she had set the fire as a suicide attempt because she feared being punished, stating that slaves taken to the uppermost room "never came back".

One of those who entered the premises was Judge Jean François 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 said that, when he questioned LaLaurie's husband about those enslaved on the property, 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 and recounted by Martineau, added that the enslaved people 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. Marie's slaves were taken to a local jail, where they were available for public viewing. The Bee reported that, by April 12, up to 4,000 people had attended to view the slaves "to convince themselves of their sufferings". 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 aforementioned child, Lia. 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".

Later life and death

thumb|right|alt=Black and white image of copper plate, bearing text reading "Madame Lalaurie, née Marie Delphine Macarty, décédée à Paris, le 7 Décembre, 1842, à l'âge de 6--." |Copper plate found in Saint Louis Cemetery #1, which claims that LaLaurie died in Paris in 1842

While Delphine was living in exile in Paris with her mother and two sisters, Pauline and Laure, her son Paulin Blanque wrote on August 15, 1842, to his brother-in-law, Auguste DeLassus, stating that Delphine was serious about returning to New Orleans and had thought about doing so for a long time. He wrote in the same letter that he believed that his mother never had any idea about the reason for her departure from the city. Despite Delphine's "bad mood" and her determination to return, the disapproval of her children and other relatives had apparently been enough for her to cancel her plan.

The circumstances of LaLaurie's death are also unclear. In 1888, George Washington Cable recounted a popular but unsubstantiated story that LaLaurie had died in France in a boar-hunting accident. 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 Maccarthy, décédée à Paris, le 7 Décembre, 1842, à l'âge de ." The English translation of the inscription reads: "Madame Lalaurie, born Marie Delphine Mccarthy, died in Paris, December 7, 1842, at the age of ." According to the French archives of Paris, however, LaLaurie died on December 7, 1849 and not 1842, at the age of 62. This house was burned by the mob in 1834 and remained in a ruined state for at least another four years. It was then rebuilt by Pierre Trastour after 1838 and assumed the appearance that it has today. Over the following decades, it was used as a public high school, a conservatory of music, an apartment building, a refuge for young delinquents, a bar, a furniture store and a luxury apartment building.

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 depicting garlands in bas-relief". On November 13, 2009, the property, then valued at $3.5 million, was listed for auction as a result of foreclosure and purchased by Regions Financial Corporation for $2.3 million. The property last changed hands in 2010 when it was purchased by current owner Michael Whalen for $2.1 million (~$ in ).

LaLaurie in folklore

Folk histories of LaLaurie's abuse and murder of those enslaved on the property circulated in Louisiana during the 19th century, and were reprinted in collections of stories by Henry Castellanos and George Washington Cable. Cable's account (not to be confused with his unrelated 1881 novel Madame Delphine) was based on contemporary reports in newspapers such as the Bee and the Advertiser, and upon Martineau's 1838 account, Retrospect of Western Travel. He added some of his own synthesis, dialogue and speculation. DeLavigne did not cite any sources for these claims, and they were not supported by the primary sources.

The story was further 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 re-tellings of the LaLaurie legend often use DeLavigne and Smith's versions of the tale as the basis for claims of explicit tortures, and number enslaved people living on the property who died under LaLaurie's care at as many as 100.

In popular culture

In her 1999 novel Fever Season, mystery writer Barbara Hambly incorporated the events of the 1834 fire and discovery of the brutal treatment of the slaves into her narrative.

The 2000 horror film The St. Francisville Experiment is loosely based on the story of Delphine LaLaurie.

Kathy Bates portrayed a heavily fictionalized version of the character in the third season of the anthology television series American Horror Story to widespread critical acclaim and earned a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for her performance. In the series, some of her actions are conflated with those of Elizabeth Bathory such as when she applies blood to her skin to appear younger.

In the 2015–2017 serialized science fiction novel Unsong by writer Scott Alexander, LaLaurie is mentioned as being in the nicest part of hell, reserved for the worst sinners, along with Hitler and Beria.

Notes

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Books

Academic papers

Newspapers and magazines

– The relevant text appears at the top-left of the linked scan. A transcript of this article can be found here In evil's footsteps 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 In evil's footsteps for ease of reading.