A Popular History of Unpopular Things
A podcast that makes history more fun and accessible - we love all things gory, gross, mysterious, and weird!
A Popular History of Unpopular Things
The Delphine LaLaurie Murder Mansion
Join Kelli as she goes over the legend of Madame Delphine LaLaurie, a torturess from New Orleans who tortured, mutilated, and killed at least 20 slaves at her mansion on 1140 Royal Street.
But like we saw with the Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory... is LaLaurie's story grossly exaggerated? How much is fact, and how much is fiction?
Let's dive into the mysterious world of New Orleans legend to find out what really happened in Delphine LaLaurie's Murder Mansion.
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The Delphine Lalaurie Murder Mansion
Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a mostly scripted podcast that makes history more fun and accessible. My kind of history is the unpopular stuff - disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird.
On April 10th, 1834, a fire broke out at 1140 Royal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana. The house itself was already the subject of rumors because the owner, Madame Marie Delphine Lalaurie, had been accused of mistreating her slaves. When the property caught fire, people rushed in - and were shocked at what they found. They saw slaves in chains, in various states of starvation, tortured, and on the verge of death - and not because of the fire. Madame Lalaurie and her family fled the city in the hours after the fire, making their way over to France, and Lalaurie never returned to face punishment for her crimes.
Today, I want to talk about this story, Madame Lalaurie, a woman accused of torturing and murdering her slaves in the early 19th century, the 1800s. She’s become a local legend of sorts and features in tons of ghost stories and haunted murder tours. But for many of us out here, particularly my fellow millennials, you might have first learned about her from the third season of American Horror Story: Coven, where Madame Delphine Lalaurie was played by the incredible Kathy Bates.
For those of you who haven’t seen the show, I’ll give the briefest of summaries.
American Horror Story: Coven takes place in the present, which was 2013 when it was released. The plot focuses on the descendants of a group of witches who fled Salem in 1692 and ended up living in New Orleans. And while in New Orleans, the coven comes across a handful of ghosts and famous entities from various time periods - Delphine Lalaurie is one of them, obviously, but we also meet Marie Laveau, a creole voodoo practitioner sometimes called the “voodoo queen.” There’s also Papa Legba, a deity originally from the West African Vodun tradition that was included in the syncretic Voodoo religion. We also met the jazz-loving Axeman of New Orleans, a serial killer active in 1918 and 1919. And of course my absolute favorite woman on the planet, Stevie Nicks. Who played the White Witch. Not a character from New Orleans history… I just love Stevie Nicks and wanted to mention her. The 1997 live performance of Silver Springs in Burbank lives rent-free in my head. It is my Roman Empire.
Now the Delphine Lalaurie played by Kathy Bates showed viewers a sadistic, evil, torturous woman… who was also immortal. But I’m not going to get into that plot point. She used the organs of her slaves to create a balm of sorts to help keep her young. She bathed in their blood. She locked her slaves in the attic, where she experimented on and tortured them. It was bloody, it was violent, it was creepy, and it was awesome.
Now you may just think well, okay, that was all fiction. It was a TV show. And you’d be right to assume that; of course her legend was exaggerated for the show. However, much like what we saw with the Blood Countess, Elizabeth Bathory, one of my earliest episodes, her story has very much been exaggerated over the years. Sensationalized. In fact, author Stanley Arthur wrote that, quote, “I have always thought that Madame Lalaurie was the first victim of yellow journalism.” End quote.
So who was the real Madame Delphine Lalaurie? What’s her story? Was she a vile torturess and murderer? Or is much of her dark legend fictionalized?
Today, we’re going to dive a little deeper into her story. First, we’ll start with the historical context - what did New Orleans in the 1820s and 30s look like? We need to understand the world Madame Lalaurie lived in before we can place her story in context. We need to look at her story through contemporary sources, through an early 19th-century lens, not a 21st-century one.
After that, we’ll take a look at her story - first, the gross, bloody legend that inspired the Kathy Bates version of the character we saw in American Horror Story: Coven. But then, we’ll take a look at the real Madame Delphine Lalaurie, using tangible evidence compiled by New Orleans researchers like Carolyn Morrow Long, who wrote the book “Madame Lalaurie, Mistress of the Haunted House.” Was she a torturer and murderer? And if so, how much of the legend is true?
So let’s get started!
Historical Context
Considering we’re talking about a woman accused of torturing her slaves, our context today needs to be about slavery in and around New Orleans in the early to mid-19th century, that’s the 1800s. So what did New Orleans look like back then?
The territory itself became part of the US with the Louisiana Purchase, the massive land deal that we acquired from Napoleon and the French in 1803. But prior to this, the area was populated with a bunch of different people - creoles, free men and women of all different colors, indentured white servants, and enslaved Africans and Afro-Caribbean men, women, and children. And creoles in this original context meant those who had French or Spanish ancestry, not the mix it signifies today. It’s similar to the Spanish and Portuguese colonial caste system - the creoles were of European descent, and were higher up in society than any mixed races, the indigenous, or the enslaved.
The territory was originally a French settlement, hence New Orleans, named after the original Orleans, almost 70 miles south-ish from Paris. But in 1763, New Orleans fell under Spanish rule. It became French again for a short time before it, along with the rest of the Louisiana Purchase, was sold to the Americans.
Like with most early settlements, some powerful families rose to the ranks as the elite, due to their wealth and social status. Delphine came from one of those families - the Macartys, who were originally Irish, though the earliest Macartys moved to France before settling in New Orleans.
But despite New Orleans being run by creoles, ¾ of the population of the early settlement was made up of enslaved Africans, either directly from Africa or via the Caribbean. And a lot happened in the years between the settlement of New Orleans and the fire that broke out at the Lalaurie Mansion.
Two main concerns had the people rattled - the fear of death by tropical diseases like Yellow Fever and slave rebellions. Let’s cover the disease first, because it’s me, and it’s my thing!
Yellow fever is a virus that is spread through mosquitoes - it’s not spread through coughing, sneezing, or anything like that. When an infected mosquito bites you, the virus in its saliva gets into your system, and you contract the disease. It has the typical symptoms of viral infections - fever, chills, muscle pains, headaches, nausea… all of that. So why is it called yellow fever? Well, victims can also get jaundice, which is where your skin and eyes turn yellow. Or at least get a yellowish tint to them.
It takes around 3-6 days after the initial infection to see symptoms, and they can last 3-4 days. Somewhere around 15% of patients with symptoms will worsen, and up to half of those patients will die. But it depends on the outbreak; mortality rates can range between 20-60%. For example, an epidemic of yellow fever in New Orleans in 1853 killed around 8 - 12,000 people. This was around 8% of the city’s population, and it was the highest death rate for any city suffering from yellow fever in the 19th century. Which is wild! The majority of those who died were recent Irish immigrants; the existing population was much more immune to it.
So that was a running fear people had in 19th century New Orleans. But it wasn’t just that - it was also the constant fear of a slave rebellion. But this is something we saw in all the slave-owning territories, right? I mean, when you dehumanize and belittle an entire population of people, then you probably should be afraid of the potential consequences. But there was an even heightened fear because of a different event - the Haitian Revolution. I’ll keep it brief because I want to get to the murder and torture.
A slave revolt erupted in 1791 on the French-owned island of Saint Domingue. It was a complicated series of battles that involved enslaved men and women, free persons of color, colonists, black and white plantation owners, the French army, and more. It was the first and only successful large-scale slave revolt in history.
In 1794, slavery in Saint Domingue was abolished by the French, marking a win for the Haitians. But Napoleon ended up reinstating slavery in 1802 to increase profits from the sugar trade, which plunged the country into a second battle for freedom - can you imagine being freed, only to become enslaved again because a guy across the ocean said so? No thanks.
The French army came over to fight, many died from yellow fever, and eventually, they withdrew. Instead of trying to earn money from their sugar plantations in Saint Domingue, France instead sold us the Louisiana Territory. Saint Domingue became the Republic of Haiti on January 1, 1804.
So there you go - the Louisiana Purchase, Yellow Fever, and the Haitian Revolution are all tied together into one neat little historical package. I love it when that happens!
But the success of the Haitian Revolution sent shockwaves through the slave-holding territories of the Atlantic, including New Orleans, which isn’t all that far from Haiti. Slave owners relied on a series of rules and laws to govern the men, women and children they considered their property, but those rules allowed for torture and bondage.
The 1724 French Code Noir, or “Black Code,” forbade the killing or mutilating of slaves, but allowed slaveowners to beat and whip their slaves or chain them up. When New Orleans became Spanish for a hot minute, the Spanish Black Code was a little bit more sympathetic to the enslaved, though it still allowed physical punishment. Once New Orleans became part of the US, the American Black Code followed suit and allowed the beatings and bondage to continue. But it also forbade slaves from being witnesses in court against whites… so if a slaveowner beat and abused them behind closed doors, and nobody saw except the slaves, they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Well, legally in court, anyway. It was a system that allowed for violence. And in this tense New Orleans climate, where there were fears about death by yellow fever and slave insurrections, some slaveowners like Delphine Lalaurie took advantage of the law and seriously mistreated the human beings they considered their property.
The Legend of Delphine Lalaurie
So before we take a look at the real history, I thought it might be fun to take a look at the legend first. The bloody and gross stuff, you know, the things I love most about this podcast.
When the fire erupted at the Lalaurie mansion, rescuers ran in to save whoever might be left behind - like the enslaved, who lived in separate slave quarters.
Mansions like the one the Lalauries built would often have the main house in the front, and a taller building in the back or connected to the back of the house where the kitchen and slave quarters would be. The Lalaurie mansion itself, at least at the time of the fire, was two stories. There was a service wing attached to the back where the kitchen and slave quarters were. So rescuers ran to those rooms to rescue anyone stuck there. And that’s when they discovered the depths of Delphine Lalaurie’s depravities.
Here’s a section from a book called The Haunted House of the Rue Royale, published in 1946 by Jeanne Delavigne. And just a heads up, it’s preeeeetty nasty. Quote:
“The men who smashed the [door] saw powerful 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 sewed together, their tongues drawn out and sewed to their chins, severed hands stitched to their bellies, legs pulled joint from joint.
Female slaves there were, their mouths and ears crammed with ashes and chicken offal and bound tightly; others had been smeared with honey and were a mass of black ants. 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. Some of the poor creatures were dead, some were unconscious; and a few were still breathing, suffering agonies beyond any power to describe…
Workmen began digging up human skeletons from under the house… they were found in all sorts of positions, helter-skelter, barely covered with soil, shreds of fabric still adhering to the bones. Some of the skulls had great holes in them.” End quote.
Now that is quite the story. Later iterations also include details like fingernail scratches underneath the floorboards of the house, indicating that some were buried alive. There were also stories that she had once chased one of the enslaved girls off the roof of the house.
The American Horror Story version of Delphine Lalaurie’s story clearly pulled from these tales. A serial killer, a woman who tortured her slaves and used her power and status as a New Orleans socialite to get away with it, until the fire exposed her to the community, and she fled to avoid prosecution.
But like the old saying goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right? So these rumors and exaggerations had to come from somewhere. So let’s take a look at her real story to see how much lines up with the legend.
The Real Story of Delphine Lalaurie
The rumors of her mistreating slaves started with her third marriage to a young French doctor, Louis Lalaurie. She was twice widowed by that point - and no, she had nothing to do with their deaths. Her first husband was Ramon Lopez y Angulo de la Candelaria, a Spaniard who was made the intendant, or administrator, of New Orleans while it was under Spanish control. He died in a shipwreck near Havana.
Her second husband was a Frenchman named Jean Paul Blanque who died at age 50, when Delphine was 28. She was very wealthy when she met Lalaurie, her third husband, who moved from France to New Orleans to begin a career in orthopedics; he specialized in hunchbacks and curvy spines and wanted to start a practice in New Orleans. But according to contemporary sources, the pair did not have a happy or stable marriage; they fought constantly and Louis Lalaurie moved out and lived in a separate house for much of their time in New Orleans. One of the sources we have is Jean Boze, a socialite who knew the Lalauries and mentioned them in letters to his friends. And from Jean Boze, we also learn that Delphine Lalaurie was brought before the court because of her cruelty to her slaves. Boze writes, quote,
“Finally justice descended on her home and, after being assured of the truth of the denunciations for barbarous treatment of her slaves contrary to the law, [the authorities] found them still all bloody. She had them incarcerated, letting them be given only the bare necessities.” End quote.
The case never went anywhere, in part because there were no witnesses - remember the American Black Code that prevented slaves from testifying as a witness against any whites in court.
But funeral records show that at least 20 slaves died under Delphine’s watch, almost all women and children. If you listened to my episode on the Spanish Inquisition, then you might remember that the Catholic Church was very methodical with its recordkeeping, particularly with deaths. But what we don’t know is how the enslaved died - yellow fever? Or starvation and torture?
The fire was covered by several newspapers at the time. The Creole-run Courier newspaper said that the fire started in the kitchen, set off by one of the older enslaved women who was tired of the mistreatment. The Courier reported that the upper part of the building, the slave’s quarters, was known to be a prison and there were several slaves chained up there on the morning of the fire.
Another creole-run newspaper, the Bee, reported that, quote,
“[they found] seven slaves, more or less horribly mutilated… suspended by the neck with their limbs stretched and torn from one extremity to the other. They had been confined… for several months in [this] situation… and had merely been kept in existence to prolong their sufferings.
The Courier also reported that one of the enslaved men, quote,
“...had a large hole in his head, his body from head to foot was covered with scars and filled with worms.”
An American-run newspaper, the Louisiana Advertiser, wrote that, quote,
“in digging up the yard, bodies have been disinterred, and a condemned well being uncovered, others, particularly that of a child, were found in it.” End quote.
But then a later article in the Louisiana Advertiser came out saying that none of Lalaurie’s slaves were dead, and no bodies were found buried at the property. Which is strange. And if we just try to focus on these immediate, contemporary sources, we already see a problem - some were biased against Lalaurie, and some were in favor of her. A problem we also saw with Lizzie Borden, who killed her father and stepmother with a hatchet later in the 19th century - the problem being the political and social complexities added to crimes like this when high society women are involved.
We know, for instance, that Jean Boze was very much anti-Lalaurie. For whatever reason, he didn’t like her. And we can see that bias in his letters. But does that mean she didn’t abuse her slaves? Evidence from the court case from before the fire seems to imply that she did - we can corroborate Boze’s claims because we know that she hired a trial attorney at the same time. The church records tell us that there were 20 deaths on her watch, if not more - some may not have been buried and processed by the Catholic Church, as the interred body on her property suggests.
So while we can piece some truths together from eyewitnesses and newspaper accounts of the day of the fire, and the things found, we also know that there was bias against her. So we’ll never really know how much was embellished. It is more than likely that she chained up and tortured her slaves, as was unfortunately allowed by the various legal codes governing the rights of slaveowners against the enslaved. She probably felt emboldened to act this way. She might have taken her anger out on her slaves, primarily the women and children, as they were easier to mistreat. But all we can do is speculate based on the available evidence.
But we also know that she treated some of her slaves well, like her coachman Bastien. The one that Kathy Bates turned into the minotaur in American Horror Story. There are also court records that show she freed some of her slaves after years of service, like a Senegalese woman named Helene who was her children’s nursemaid. So… she’s all over the place. But it does seem like the violence picks up with her third marriage to Louis Lalaurie. We don’t have any concrete evidence as to why. Perhaps it was just a crap marriage. Maybe there were heightened fears of yellow fever and slave insurrections.
Bastien, the coachman, helped Delphine and her family escape in the hours after the fire. They made it to France via New York, where they lived out the rest of their lives. She died in Paris on December 7, 1849.
So in looking at this story, we’re presented with another situation where a socialite woman definitely mistreated, tortured, and killed people, either directly or indirectly. I have no doubt about that. She operated within the law to confine and punish her slaves, for whatever reason, and sometimes toed that line - evidenced by the court case. She made friends and enemies among New Orleans socialites. And when the fire exposed her, she fled, which only fueled the rumors about her actions. Something similar happened to Elizabeth Bathory in the 14th century, a story I mentioned earlier in this episode and was the subject of an early APHOUT episode. Both cases feature high-society women who abused their power and definitely committed violent acts against their slaves and/or servants, but whose stories are exaggerated. And these exaggerated stories are the ones told to tourists and ghost story aficionados.
I like how Ghost City Tours puts it on their website, quote:
“Are you noticing some similarities here? It seems as if over time, someone decided that they'll simply retell the stories about Elizabeth Bathory, and apply them to Madame LaLaurie. It all sounds a bit like tour guides, and storytellers are simply recycling ghost stories from other cities...or countries.”
But as Carolyn Morrow Long summarizes in her book, quote,
“The evidence against the lady is …strong. The testimony of numerous credible witnesses has persuaded me that the story of the fire, the abused slaves, and the attack on the Lalaurie mansion by the mob is fundamentally true, and that Madame Lalaurie was indeed guilty of the crimes of which she is accused.” End quote.
And I agree. And while we know that torture, confinement, and death happened at the Delphine Lalaurie Murder House, the truth is a lot less gruesome than the fiction.
Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things. My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the story of the Delphine Lalaurie Murder Mansion. Thank you for supporting my podcast, and if you haven’t already checked out my other episodes, go have a listen!
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