Madame Delphine LaLaurie’s House Of Horrors And Her Legacy Of Unspeakable Cruelty

LaLaurie is a notable figure in New Orleans society. When things go up in smoke for regular folks it’s a tragedy; for someone of her status, a fiery fate results in one heck of a financial loss. She desperately tries to save her possessions. Even so, the property contains human souls, not just expensive jewelry.  

The slaves are nowhere to be found, and onlookers can't help but wonder if they're still trapped in the burning home. This may have been an age of normalized racism, but that didn't mean they won't attempt to save the lives of the people inside. One group of would-be rescuers bravely ventures into the house; the situation is life or death. They make their way through the property as the fire rages.

Anything could happen. Around them, the grandness of LaLaurie’s residence is slowly disintegrating. There’s a constant threat that the structure might collapse in on itself before they make it back out. And as the rescuers enter, they are in danger from black smoke entering their lungs. A 70-year-old cook is reportedly found chained to the stove; worryingly there is also no sign of the other slaves as yet. The party moves upstairs. 

It’s a place that was no doubt impressive, though everyone knew the luxury was maintained by slaves. A sense of increasing dread was undoubtedly setting over them, still yet to find any evidence of the other survivors among the flames. Where could they possibly be? There was only one place left to look: the search party headed for the attic.  

Sure enough, here they were. The slaves had been abused by the “lady” of the house and were clearly being kept as prisoners. What on Earth had happened here? The stories about the ordeal they’d been through vary according to the source. One thing is certain though: this incident was shining a light on a brutal and unforgiving aspect of life in the so-called respectable heights of New Orleans society.

LaLaurie's mansion had yielded some shocking and disturbing secrets: the owner’s reputation would never be the same again. When the book was opened on LaLaurie, it not only contained the horrors of her attic. It also painted a more detailed picture of the person behind the dreaded title of “Savage Mistress”. She was reportedly a monster, but what had led up to this stomach-churning point? 

LaLaurie had been born on March 19, 1787, in New Orleans. As per website Fansided, she had Irish heritage, with her grandparents having emigrated from the Emerald Isle a half century or so earlier. Her birth name was Marie Delphine Macarty, which had ben adapted from the surname MacCarthy. Part of a colonial Creole family, she’d lived a life of privilege from the off.  

Her father was Louis Barthélemy de McCarty and her mother was Marie Jeanne L'Érable; they were an established and well-connected part of the community in Spanish Louisiana, and their relatives held prominent positions in local government. For example, her cousin served as Mayor of New Orleans from 1815-1820. Plantations loomed large in their considerable fortunes. Yet with these properties came tensions, which eventually boiled over.  

If slave owners thought their barbaric arrangements would run smoothly indefinitely, they soon received a significant shock to the system. The Haitian Revolution lasted over a decade, starting in 1791 when LaLaurie was four years old. In what was then the territory of Saint-Domingue, self-liberated slaves led by Toussaint L’Ouverture took control of their destinies by any means necessary. 

The bloody revolution resulted in some progress. PBS has described the conflict as “a complex web of wars among and between slaves, whites, free people of color, France, Spain, and Britain”. By 1794 slavery had been abolished in the French colonies. This wasn’t a permanent fix, though, with Napoleon reimposing it in the West Indies in 1802.

What’s more, the legislation that permitted slavery in French territories wasn’t abandoned until halfway through the 19th century. So, as you can see, the appalling practice didn’t go away quietly, and it took some time. Yet how did the revolution and revolt by the slaves in Haiti impact on the life of the woman who would grow up to become LaLaurie? 

News of uprisings and revolts in Haiti made slave-owners and those who profited from human servitude nervous, to say the least! The West Indies wasn’t the only place where people were throwing off the shackles of oppression and turning violently on those who considered themselves their masters. It was a dramatic time that ended in personal tragedy for the young LaLaurie.

As reported by the website History Collection, her uncle had been killed by one of his slaves in 1771. This had been some time before she was born, though reportedly the slave revolt of 1811 had also claimed the lives of her two cousins. By this time LaLaurie was a young woman. There are stories that her mother had also died at the hands of slaves, but these are incorrect.

Sources state that LaLaurie was good-looking and eligible, although her relationships make for eye-opening reading: she entered into her first marriage at the age of just 13! LaLaurie’s first husband was Spanish military man Don Ramón López y Ángulo. He was 35 and had little regard for protocol, so the union was pretty scandalous all round. From these controversial beginnings, a four-year marriage sprang. 

Aged 19, LaLaurie gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Marie-Borja. But Ángulo sadly didn’t live to see it, dying during a stopover in Havana a few days before her birth. The family had been traveling to Spain in connection with Ángulo’s new job as a diplomat: depending on which source you believe, either LaLaurie had given birth on board a ship, or in Cuba. 

Ángulo had been made Spain’s Consul General in what is now the state of Louisiana: back then it was known as the Territory of Orleans. With his death, LaLaurie moved back to New Orleans and faced what may have seemed an uncertain future as a single mother and widow. 

Further heartache was to come when LaLaurie’s mother died soon afterwards. Having inherited a large sum of money from her, she met financial and legal bigwig Jean Blanque. Hailing from France, he was a man of means, but he was also described as a possible “hustler” by website Fansided. LaLaurie was still 19 when they met.

They are believed to have married a couple of years or so later. As with Ángulo, LaLaurie found herself in another major age-gap relationship with a man who’d lost his wife. She had four children with Blanque, three daughters and a son. The girls were named — make sure you pay attention — Marie Louise Pauline, Louise Marie Laure and Marie Louise Jeanne. Her son was named Jean Pierre Paulin.

LaLaurie, who obviously wasn’t known by this name yet, gained increased status through her marriage to Blanque. While her first husband had certainly been high-profile, all the same it was now when her position as a member of New Orleans high society is thought to have been well and truly established. The family lived in a townhouse and owned two plantations.

Blanque was over two decades older than his wife. By 1815 he’d passed away, leaving a nasty surprise. LaLaurie realized that the family was seriously in debt, to the tune of a reported $160,000: she and her children had wound up in a truly precarious situation. The money was eventually paid off, though it took ten years for matters to be fully resolved.

As per Fansided, during that time, LaLaurie relinquished her and Blanque’s community holdings, forfeited mutual assets and auctioned both property and human beings in the form of slaves. It was during this period where her dark side could have been developing: within half a decade, eight of her slaves had died. How had they perished? The facts aren’t available.

While sinister business may have been taking place behind the scenes, her life in public was on the up. Another inheritance came her way after her father passed in 1824. This is believed to have sustained her and the family financially as Blanque’s tragic legacy played out. The following year she met her third husband, Dr. Leonard Louis Nicolas LaLaurie. 

Dr. LaLaurie was a chiropractor and new in town: another man who’d arrived in New Orleans from France. LaLaurie first encountered her future husband in a professional capacity when visiting his office. The medic treated one of her children, and in the process won her heart, too. Also, there was a different dynamic at play: LaLaurie had previously married men who were significantly older. 

This time round, the beau was younger. At 25, the physician was approximately 15 years behind LaLaurie. Their 1825 marriage didn’t exactly prove harmonious, according to reports: in fact by 1832 LaLaurie had asked for a separation, claiming that her husband had “treated her in such a manner as to render their living together unsupportable.” All the same, it seems he had been present at the house at the time of the 1834 fire.

Website History Collection noted that her third marriage was the time when people started to notice her cruel attitude toward slaves. This period also coincided with the building of the property on Royal Street. The year 1834 saw the house go up in flames, and the extent of LaLaurie’s barbarism behind closed doors was finally fully exposed to the world. What exactly had the rescue party found?

The details of what the group who entered LaLaurie’s house discovered are harrowing. We won’t be going too far into the specifics, though certain shocking elements should be mentioned to give you an idea of just how awful things were in that attic. Naturally, this isn’t reading for the faint-hearted. It seems the malicious Madame had treated her servants worse than animals. 

One report mentioned that the couple wouldn’t give the rescuers the keys to the house. Jean François Canonge was among the group who needed to break down the door, following this additional and bizarre obstacle going in. He reportedly received a stern response from Dr. LaLaurie when asking about the condition of the slaves. Not the wisest idea, as Canonge was a judge! 

Many of the accounts concerning the slaves are unconfirmed, but it all sounds like something from your worst nightmares. As outlined by various sources, the slaves in the attic showed evidence of torture. They’d been brutalized and degraded, wounded and chained up. The headlines and news stories that followed in wake of the discovery disturbed and sickened the general population of New Orleans.

Some slaves had apparently received deliberately inflicted injuries to their eyes and skin. This was bad enough, but the story of LaLaurie includes sadistic details usually only found in the worst excesses of macabre horror fiction. We won’t recount the full details here, but they are readily available elsewhere online if you have the inclination — and the stomach — to learn about them. Suffice to say this wasn’t “just” a torture chamber: for some it was also to be a final resting place. 

One especially alarming detail described one woman whose bones had allegedly been broken and then reset in another shape. Truly appalling, and one of the most lurid elements of the grim story. How much these aspects had been exaggerated, either at the time or with later retelling, is unclear.

We mentioned before that a cook had been found chained to the stove in the kitchen. It was her who reportedly claimed responsibility for the fire: the dramatic move had apparently been a suicide attempt. Some sources state it was the cook who had pointed rescuers toward the attic; others that she’d taken them up there herself. Presumably this was after the initial fire had been extinguished.

In the years prior to the blaze, it had been reported that a male slave had killed himself by jumping from the mansion’s third floor. After this incident, the window was sealed with cement. It’s also believed that a young had thrown herself off the roof after being whipped. This severe punishment had reportedly been meted out because the girl, aged either eight or 12 according to differing sources, had been brushing LaLaurie’s hair too hard! Some accounts say LaLaurie had been later spotted burying her body.  

There is also some confusion regarding the number of slaves imprisoned in the attic on the day of the fire: the highest estimate is more than 100. The brutality sparked outrage and anger as people finally saw how terrible LaLaurie and her family were once and for all.

The fire didn’t bring the house down, but the people did. Outraged by reports of what had been found, an angry mob of ransackers took the high-profile pile apart more or less brick by brick. What happened to the “Savage Mistress” herself? By some accounts, she escaped justice and went to France. But did she? LaLaurie left behind a morbid mystery in her wake. Around a century after the fire, some evidence of her death was found.

This took the form of a plaque, cast in brass, which lay in the Saint Louis Cemetery of New Orleans. While the legend on the plaque stated that LaLaurie had passed away in Paris in late 1842, the official records over there present a different picture. According to these, she wouldn’t meet her end until seven years later. Some believe she had returned undetected to New Orleans prior to her death.

How she’d managed to keep her presence under wraps is anyone’s guess, particularly for someone whose face was associated with such cruelty. Certainly her actions had been enabled to a large degree by the attitude toward people as slaves in general. Laws existed regarding servitude, and LaLaurie had fallen foul of them long before the fire. Yet that didn’t provide much protection at all for those serving her.

As a woman of considerable means, she had been able to pay any fines and go right back to buying and abusing slaves. There are also accounts of her having freed slaves, though these reported instances of generosity pale into insignificance when you compare them with the horrors that were eventually revealed in her mansion. Her transformation from society figure to callous criminal was complete.

LaLaurie’s story passed into the culture, where it received numerous treatments. Author George Washington Cable released a novel, titled Madame Delphine, in 1881. During the latter half of the 20th century, the story was retold, each time becoming more horrific and deepening the lurid legend. And in the 21st century, the narrative was given a whole new spin.  

The long-running TV series American Horror Story featured LaLaurie as a character; taking on the role was esteemed actress Kathy Bates. Her portrayal was of course a fictional one, with liberal dramatic license taken. LaLaurie appeared in the third season of the franchise, subtitled Coven. Bates earned an Emmy for her performance and a new generation were introduced to LaLaurie’s crimes, both real and embellished. 

With anger at the legacy of colonial behavior still a hot topic today, the story of LaLaurie is arguably as relevant as ever. Her monstrous reputation as an abuser has lived on through the centuries, reminding the world of the savage excesses of this period. Ultimately, though, she can be properly regarded as a dangerous human being who would be unwelcome in any age.