Delphine LaLaurie

Marie Delphine Macarty (or MacCarthy), born March 19, 1787, and known later as Madame Blanque and more infamously as Madame LaLaurie, was a prominent New Orleans socialite who gained lasting notoriety for her alleged torture and murder of enslaved individuals in her household. Following the revelation of her crimes, she became one of the most infamous figures in the history of antebellum New Orleans.

Born during the Spanish colonial era, LaLaurie married three times in Louisiana and was widowed twice. She maintained a respected place in New Orleans society until April 10, 1834, when a fire broke out at her Royal Street mansion. As rescuers responded, they discovered enslaved individuals in the attic, bound and showing signs of long-term, brutal abuse. The news shocked the city. An enraged mob soon descended on the mansion, ransacked the property, and forced LaLaurie to flee. She escaped to France with members of her family and never returned to New Orleans.

The building traditionally identified as the "LaLaurie Mansion," located at 1140 Royal Street in the French Quarter, remains a landmark today. Though famous for its association with the LaLaurie legend and its striking architecture, the structure standing now was rebuilt after the original was damaged by fire and looting in 1834.

Accounts of LaLaurie’s crimes began circulating in Louisiana folklore shortly after the fire and continued into the late 19th century. These stories were collected and reprinted by writers such as Henry Castellanos and George Washington Cable. Cable’s version, separate from his 1881 novel Madame Delphine, was based on newspaper reports from sources like The Bee and The Advertiser, as well as Harriet Martineau’s 1838 memoir Retrospect of Western Travel. He also introduced fictional elements, including imagined dialogue and interpretation, which blurred the line between historical report and literary invention.

In the decades following World War II, accounts of the LaLaurie scandal became more graphic and sensationalized. Jeanne deLavigne’s 1946 book Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans portrayed LaLaurie as a sadist driven by an insatiable appetite for cruelty. She described rescue workers discovering enslaved men chained naked to walls, with their eyes gouged out, nails removed, skin flayed, ears shredded, and intestines wrapped around their waists. One man’s skull was said to contain a stick used to "stir the brains." These claims, though widely repeated in later retellings, were not supported by primary sources, and deLavigne did not cite evidence for them.

Further embellishments appeared in Journey Into Darkness: Ghosts and Vampires of New Orleans (1998) by Kalila Katherina Smith, a local ghost tour operator. Smith added even more grotesque details, including victims mutilated to resemble "a human caterpillar" or "a human crab" with broken, reset limbs. Like deLavigne’s, many of Smith’s claims were either unsourced or not substantiated by the references she cited.

Today, modern interpretations of the LaLaurie legend often draw heavily from these mid- and late-20th-century narratives, incorporating their graphic details and dramatized imagery. Some versions claim that as many as 100 enslaved individuals died under LaLaurie’s care, though such numbers are not verified by contemporary records. While there is no doubt that abuse occurred in the LaLaurie household, much of what is commonly repeated today reflects folklore shaped by ghost stories, sensational literature, and commercial tourism rather than strictly historical documentation.