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 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."A torture chamber is uncovered by arson - Apr 10, 1834", HISTORY.com; Retrieved on January 23, 2017.
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.King (1921), pp. 368–373. (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.
Both of Delphine's parents were prominent in the city's European Creole community.Arthur (1936), p. 148. 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.King (1921), p. 373.
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;Long (2012), pp. 15–17. 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, and the 1811 German Coast uprising, all of which caused many slaveholders to abuse slaves even more harshly out of fear of insurrection.Long (2012), pp. 38, 45–46.
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,King (1921), p. 359. at the Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. Luisiana, as it was spelled in Spanish, had become a Spanish colony in the 1760s after France was defeated in the Seven Years' War.
In 1804, after the American acquisition of what was then again a French territory, Don Ramón had been appointed to the position of consul general for Spain in the Territory of Orleans and was called to appear at the royal court in Madrid. While en route with Delphine, who was then pregnant, Don Ramón suddenly died in Havana. A few days after his death, Delphine gave birth to their daughter Marie-Borja/Borgia Delphine Lopez y Angulo de la Candelaria, nicknamed "Borquita". The widowed Delphine and her child returned to New Orleans.
Second marriage In June 1808, aged around 21, Delphine married Jean Blanque, a prominent banker, merchant, lawyer and legislator. At the time of the marriage, Blanque purchased a house at 409 Royal Street for the family, which became known later as the Villa Blanque. Delphine had four children by Blanque, named Marie Louise Pauline, Louise Marie Laure, Marie Louise Jeanne and Jean Pierre Paulin Blanque. The elder Jean Blanque died in 1816.Arthur (1936), p. 149.
Third marriage On June 25, 1825, Delphine married her third husband, physician Leonard Louis Nicolas LaLaurie, who was fifteen years her junior.Martineau (1838), p. 137. In 1831, she bought property at 1140 Royal Street,Cable (1888), p. 200. which she managed in her own name with little involvement of her husband. In 1832, she had a two-story mansion built there, complete with attached slave quarters. She lived at the residence with her third husband and two of her daughters, and maintained a central position in New Orleans society.
The marriage soon showed signs of strain, however; on November 16, 1832, Delphine petitioned the First Judicial District Court for a separation from bed and board of her husband, in which Delphine claimed that LaLaurie had "treated her in such a manner as to render their living together unsupportable", claims which her son and two of her daughters by Jean Blanque confirmed. The separation does not seem to have been permanent, as Dr. LaLaurie was present at the Royal Street house April 10, 1834, the day of the fire.Long (2012), pp. 70–71.
Torture and murder of slaves and 1834 LaLaurie mansion fire
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 her slaves were observed to be "singularly haggard and wretched" when compared to other slaves; however, at least in public appearances, LaLaurie was seen to be generally "polite" to black people, and solicitous of the health of her slaves.
Funeral registers between 1830 and 1834 document the deaths of 12 slaves at the Royal Street mansion, although the causes of said deaths are not mentioned. These deaths included a woman named Bonne (February 7, 1833), a cook and laundress, and her four children, Juliette (c. 1820February 21, 1833, died age 13), Florence (c. 1821February 16, 1831, d. age 10), Jules (c. 1827May 29, 1833, d. age 6) and the youngest, Leontine (c. 1829August 26, 1831, d. age 2), respectively. Bonne had previously been owned by a refugee from Saint Domingue, and was described during her sale as "a chronic runaway"; with an influx of white and free Saint Dominguen refugees of color and their slaves, the fear of the enslaved from Saint Domingue still lingered in Louisiana.Long (2012), pp. 82–83.
Court records of the time show that LaLaurie freed two slaves (Jean Louis in 1819 and Devince in 1832).Orleans Parish Court, Index to Slave Emancipation Petitions, 1814–1843, City Archives and Special Collections, New Orleans Public Library. 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 slaves. During this visit, the lawyer found no evidence to suggest wrongdoing or mistreatment of slaves by LaLaurie.Martineau (1838), p. 138.
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.Long (2012), pp. 81–82. 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.
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 of the household. These nine slaves were bought back by the LaLauries through an intermediary relative, and thus returned to the mansion.Martineau (1838), pp. 138–139. 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.Martineau (1838), pp. 139.
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".
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 quarters and found "seven people, 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.New Orleans Bee (April 11, 1834).
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 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".As quoted by Castellanos (1895), pp. 58–59. A version of this story, circulating in 1836 and recounted by Martineau, 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 abused slaves became widely known, a mob of local citizens attacked the Royal Street mansion and "demolished and destroyed everything upon which they could lay their hands". A sheriff and his officers were called to disperse the crowd, but, by the time the mob left, the property had sustained major damage, with "scarcely any thing [remaining] but the walls."The New Orleans Bee (April 12, 1834). 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".
The Pittsfield Sun, citing the New Orleans Advertiser and writing several weeks after the evacuation of LaLaurie's quarters of her victims, claimed that two of the enslaved people found in the mansion had died following their rescue. It 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."Pittsfield Sun (May 8, 1834). 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.
Escape from punishment and migration to France LaLaurie's life after the 1834 fire is not well documented. Martineau wrote in 1838 that she fled New Orleans during the mob violence that followed the fire, taking a coach to the waterfront and traveling, by schooner, to Mobile, Alabama, and then to Paris.Martineau (1838), pp. 141–142. 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".Martineau (1838), p. 142.
Later life and death