Marie Delphine Lalaurie

Shortly after the Louisiana Purchase, on March 26, 1804, Delphine Macarty’s husband was recalled to the court of Spain, the letter carrying this royal command stating that the young Spanish officer was ‘to take his place at court as befitting his new position.’ At this time Don Ramon was consul general for Spain in this new American territory. While in Havana, en route to Madrid, Don Ramon suddenly died and a few days later his daughter was born in the Cuban city. This infant was baptized Marie Delphine Borja Lopez y Angula de Candelaria, but she became best known in later years as ‘Borquita,’ meaning ‘little Borja,’ from the fact that she was named after her father’s grandmother.

Left a widow, Delphine Macarty and her baby daughter returned to New Orleans. Four years later, in 1808, she again married, choosing for her husband a prominent banker, merchant, lawyer, and legislator named Jean Blanque, a native of Bearn who had come to Louisiana with Prefect Laussat in 1803. At the time of his marriage, June 16, 1808, Blanque purchased the residence at 409 Royal Street and in this home Delphine became the mother of four other children: Marie Louise Pauline, Louise Marie Laure, Marie Louise Jeanne, and Jean Pierre Paulin Blanque. In that stylish Royal Street home or in the ‘Villa Blanque,’ a charming country place fronting the Mississippi River just below the city limits, Delphine Macarty Blanque divided her time, both places frequented by the socially elect.

Jean Blanque died in 1816, and Delphine Macarty remained a widow until June 12, 1825, when she again married. Her third husband was Dr. Leonard Louis Nicolas Lalaurie, a native of Villeneuse-sur-Lot, France, who came to New Orleans to establish a practice. Borquita, the daughter by her mother’s first marriage, became the wife of Placide Forstall, member of a distinguished Louisiana family, and Jeanne Blanque married Charles Auguste de Lassus, only child of Don Carle de Lassus, former governor of Upper Louisiana, and later governor of the Baton Rouge post of West Florida when they were under Spanish rule.

The Lalaurie mansion was erected in 1832 and for the next two years was the scene of many fashionable affairs, for the Lalauries entertained on an elaborate plan. On the afternoon of April 10, 1834, an aged cook set fire to the house during the absence of her mistress. When neighbors rushed into the mansion to fight the fire and try to save the furniture and other valuables, slaves were found chained in their quarters. Although the fire was extinguished, the indignation of those who found the helpless slaves blazed high and a newspaper editor, Jerome Bayon of the Bee, published a heated account of the happening and quoted those who had investigated the Lalaurie slave quarters. This newspaper account roused public indignation to such a pitch that on April 15 a mob, led by irresponsibles, charged the house and began to wreck it. The rowdies were finally dispersed by a company of United States regulars who had been called out by a helpless sheriff.

During the excitement Madame Lalaurie and her husband took to their carriage and, with their faithful Creole black coachman Bastien on the box, swept through the howling, cursing rabble and, with the horses lashed to a the full gallop, made her way out of the city. It is supposed the carriage reached Bayou St. John where a lake craft was secured, for on April 21, 1834, the Lalauries were in Mandeville, across Lake Pontchartrain, at the home of Louis Coquillon. There Madame Lalaurie signed a power-of-attorney placing her son-in-law Placide Forstall in charge of her affairs, while her husband signed a similar document in favor of his wife’s other son-in-law, Auguste de Lassus. From Mandeville the Lalauries made their way to Mobile, where a ship took them to France.

Neither Delphine nor her husband ever returned to New Orleans. She remained in Paris, living there honored and respected in spite of the lurid tales that lived after her in New Orleans. Following her death on December 7, 1842, her body was secretly returned to New Orleans and buried in St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery.

The Lalaurie mansion was sold to various owners but the tale that it was ‘haunted’ and the midnight rendezvous for ghosts grew in the telling as only such stories can grow. The principal ‘ghost’ is, according to the most frequently quoted tale, that of a little girl slave who, to escape the whip of her mistress, climbed to the roof and jumped to her death into the courtyard below. Another tale, equally untrue, was that the mistress of the mansion buried all her victims in the courtyard well. The general impression that the place was haunted was sufficient to keep superstitious blacks from passing the house after nightfall.

In the days of Reconstruction following the Civil War, the old Lalaurie mansion became the Lower Girls’ School. During the government of the carpetbaggers, whites and blacks were taught in the same rooms until the formation of ‘The White League’ in 1874, when the white element marched on the house and expelled the black pupils. In the 1880’s the mansion became a conservatory of music. No matter who has lived in it since, or the manner of business that was carried on in the ground-floor stores, the name ‘haunted’ has clung to it in spite of the testimony of those inhabiting the place that ghosts have never disturbed their slumbers.

Tradition has it that the handsome entrance door ‘was hammered out of iron by the slaves Madame Lalaurie kept shackled to the anvil.’ This must be taken with several generous pinches of salt, for the doors is not of iron but wood and the decorations on it were not cared but put on by appliqué, a sort of plastic wood applied and formed as a sculptor would lay on modeling clay. These ornamentations show, in the lower oblong panel, Phoebus in his chariot, lashing his griffins. Scattered over the door are urns, flowers, trumpet-blowing angels, a beribboned lyre, an American eagle bearing on its breast the shield of the Union, leaves, scrolls, and whatnots – a marvelous example of some unknown craftsman’s art. To save the door from the knives of souvenir-hunters, one owner painted it a dingy brown-black.

George W. Cable’s Strange Stories of Louisiana, and Judge Henry C. Castellanos’ New Orleans As It Was, contain full accounts of the Lalaurie episode. My account, differing in many respects from those of these earlier writers, is based on recently found documents, notarial acts, and family documents.”

In 1999, a crew from NOLA.com was allowed into the Lalaurie mansion by its reclusive owner. The fully refurbished house had been restored to its former glory after a century of failed business ventures and apartments. Now its gleaming wood floors and marble, and its grand staircase showed how grand the house must have been when an invitation to Delphine's balls was so sought-after. The house is a stop on almost every ghost tour in the Quarter, and many tourists knocked on the doors seeking entry. The owner allowed NOLA in to do a feature on the house in hopes of satisfying the curiosity of some.

 

 

History And Time Line Of The Lalaurie House

"In the Rue Royale stands this quaint, old-fashioned house about which so much has been written, and around which cluster so many wild and weird stories, that even in its philosophic day, few in the old faubourg care to pass the place after nightfall, or, doing so, shudder and hurry on with bated breath, as though midnight ghouls and ghosts hovered near, ready to exercise a mystic spell over all who dare invade its uncanny precincts."

Marie Puents, The Daily Picayune, March 13, 1892

 

"Legend has it she tortured slaves to wring from them information about her mother, the fabulous Madam MacCarthy, who was murdered on a Carrollton plantation during a slave uprising."
-- The States Item, May 6, 1975

1831 - Dr. Louis Lalaurie , and wife Madame Delphine Lalaurie purchased the house at 1140 Royal St. from Edmond Soniat du Fossat. Delphine Lalaurie rises to a position of social prominence.

1833-Many rumors begin to circulate about Madame Lalaurie's cruelty to her slaves. She is seen cowhiding the child of a slave when the young girl breaks away and runs onto the balcony. Madame Lalaurie chases the child - who falls and is killed. Madame Lalaurie has her secretly buried at night in an old well in the rear courtyard of the house.

1833 -- After the death of the young slave girl, Madame Lalaurie was fined and all of her slaves were taken from her and sold at auction. She convinced relatives to buy the slaves bacj for her at auction and return them to her.

April 1834 - A fire breaks out at the house. Rescuers discover tortured, tormented slaves locked and chained in rooms in the attic. More than a dozen slaves are found - some chained to a wall and in a horrible state. Some were strapped to crudely fashioned operating tables while others were confined in cages made for dogs. Human body parts were scattered around the attic. Some firefighters are said to have fainted at the sight.

The entire neighborhood gathers and storms the house. Madame Lalaurie escapes by carriage just ahead of the mob and takes a schooner from St. John's Bayou to St. Tammany Parish. She is said to have gone to Paris but her whereabouts remain unknown. Rumors persist that she lived on the Northshore, near covington or Mandeville, Louisiana until her death.

The following is the initial local account of the fire at the Royal Street home of Madame Lalaurie. It is reprinted in its entirety.

The New Orleans Bee
April 11, 1834

The conflagration at the house occupied by the woman Lalaurie in Hospital ... is like discovering one of those atrocities the details of which seem to be too incredible for human belief.

We would shrink from the task of detailing the painful circumstances connected herewith, were it not that a sense of duty and the necessity of exposing and holding to the public indignation such a wretch as the perpetrator, renders it indispensable for us to do so.

The flames having spread with an alarming rapidity, and the horrible suspicion being entertained among the spectators that some of the inmates of the premises where it originated, where incarcerated therein, the doors were forced open for the purpose of liberating them. Previous however, to taking this liberty, (if liberty it can be called), several gentlemen impelled by their feelings of humanity demanded the keys which were refused them in a gross and insulting manner. Upon entering one of the apartments, the most appalling spectacle met their eyes. Seven slaves more or less horribly mutilated were seen suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to the other. Language is powerless and inadequate to give a proper conception of the horror which a scene like this must have inspired. We shall not attempt it, but leave it rather to the reader's imagination to picture what it was.

These slaves were the property of the demon, in the shape of a woman whom we mentioned in the beginning of this article. They had been confined by her for several months in the situation from which they had thus providentially been rescued and had been merely kept in existence to prolong their suffering and to make them taste all that the most refined cruelty could inflict. But why dwell upon such aggravating and painful particulars! We feel confident that the community share with us our indignation, and that vengeance will fall heavily upon the guilty culprit. Without being superstitious, we cannot but regard the manner in which these atrocities have been brought to light as an especial interposition of heaven.

{Since the above was in type, the populace have repaired to the house of this woman and have demolished and destroyed everything upon which they could lay their hands. At the time of inditing this fury of the mob remained still unabated and threatens the total demolition of the entire edifice.}

The day after the fire on Royal Street

The following is the second day local account of the fire at the Royal Street home of Madame Lalaurie. It is reprinted in its entirety.

The New Orleans Bee
April 12, 1834

The popular fury which we briefly adverted to in our paper of yesterday as consequent upon the discovery of the barbarous and fiendish atrocities committed by the woman Lalaurie upon the persons of her slaves continued unabated the whole of the evening before last and part of yesterday morning.

It was found necessary for the purpose of restoring order for the sheriff and his officers to repair to the place of riot and to interpose the authority of the state, which we are pleased to notice proved effectual, without the occurrence of any of those acts of violence which are common upon similar occasions.

We regret, however, to state that previously some indignities had been shown to Judge Caponage who ventured to expostulate with the assailants upon the propriety of ceasing their operations and that during the same, deadly weapons were in the hands of many persons, a resort to which at one time was seriously apprehended. Nothing of the kind happily, however, transpired.

Nearly the whole of the edifice is demolished, and scarcely any thing remains but the walls, which the popular vengeance have ornamented with various writings expressive of their indignation and the justness of their punishment.

The loss of property sustained is estimated by some at $40,000, but others think this calculation is exaggerated. It must, however, been very great indeed, as the furniture alone was of the most costly kind, consisting of pianos, armoirs, bufets, &e, &e, which were removed to the garret and thrown from thence into the street for the purpose of rendering them of no possible use whatever.

This is the first act of its kind that our populace have ever engaged in and although the provocation pleads much in favor of the excesses committed, yet we dread the precedent. To say the least of it, it may be excused, but can't be justified. Summary punishments the results of the popular excitement in a government of laws can never admit of justification, let the circumstances be ever so aggravating. The whole of yesterday and the preceding day, the police jail was crowded by persons pressing forward to witness the unfortunate wretches who had escaped cruelties that would compare with those of a Domitian a Nero or a Caligula. Four thousand persons at least, it is computed have already visited these victims to convince themselves of their sufferings.

1837 - 1865 -The house is rebuilt and strange stories begin about ghostly sightings, unusual noises, and flickering lights in the upstairs windows. The next owner only lives in it for 3 months. The house is rented out; a furniture store occupies the basement for a short time. The house is a barbershop for a few months. No tenant or business stays too long. It is rumored that there is a curse on the location and that nothing will last long there.

"…The New Orleans mob met the carriage returning from the lake. What became of the coachman I do not know. The carriage was broken to pieces and thrown into the swamp, and the horses stabbed and left dead upon the road. The house was gutted, the two poor girls having just time to escape from a window. They are now living, in great poverty, in one of the faubergs. The piano, tables and chairs were burned before the house. The feather beds were ripped up, and the feathers emptied into the street, where they afforded a delicate footing for some days. The house stands, and is meant to stand, in its ruined state. It was the strange sight of its gaping windows and empty walls, in the midst of such a busy street, which excited my wonder, and was the cause of my being told the story the first time."
-- Retrospect of Western Travel, Harriet Martineau. 1838

1842 - Delphine Lalaurie dies and her body is said to have been buried in New Orleans at an undisclosed location.

 

1860 to 1865 - During the years of the Civil War the house was used as Union headquarters, and in the 1870's the building became a gambling-house. Stories were told and retold of the strange lights and shadow objects that were seen flitting about in different apartments, their forms draped with sheets, skeleton heads protruding. 'Hoarse voices like unto those supposed to come only from the charnel house floated out on to the fog laden air on dismal and rainy nights, with the ominous sound of clanking chains coming from the servant's quarters where foul crimes are said to have been committed.'"
-- From New Orleans City Guide, 1938.

1865 - During Reconstruction, the Lalaurie house becomes a girl's public high school, open to both white and black children.

1878 - New Orleans school system is segregated. School becomes high school for black girls only. It stays as a school just this one year.

1882 - Lalaurie House becomes conservatory of music and dancing school. Dismal failure when rumor spreads about owner of school and no one attends planned soiree and concert. Owner closed the Dance school the very next day. That night, it is rumored that the spirits of the Lalaurie house held a wild carnival to celebrate their triumph.

1889 - An apartment in the house occupied by Joseph Edouard Vigne for a little more than 3 years. He was thought to be a pauper.

1892 - Vigne found dead upstairs - after black crepe seen on the doors. An inspection of his apartment reveals over $10,000 in cash and family heirlooms stashed in various places around the dwelling. Contents of house auctioned off.

"Three years ago Mr. Beoubay (owner at the time) found a tenant…Mr. Joseph Edouard Vigne…a few days ago it was discovered that Mr. Vigne had died…he was considered very poor…money to the extent of $10,000 was discovered in various hiding places."
-- Daily States, p.5/c.1 Feb 28th 1892

"F. Greco purchased the haunted house at Hospital and Royal…yesterday he posted large flowing placards upon the walls of the building announcing in both Italian and English,'The Haunted House.' There is an end to everything, so there is with ghosts. Come and be convinced. Admission ten cents."
-- Times Democrat, June 4, 1893 p.9

1920 - House is tenement by this time - many reports of ghosts. "There were no other families living here and one night, on the third floor, I saw a man walking carrying his head on his arm," reports one resident.

1923 - House sold to William Warrington who established the Warrington House, a refuge for young delinquents.

1932 - House sold to The Grand Consistory of Louisiana (a consistory is the organization that confers the degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry). The Consistory sold the house in 1942.

The house would become a bar and then a furniture store. The saloon, taking advantage of the building's ghastly history was called "Haunted Saloon". The owner knew many of the building's ghost stories and kept a record of strange things experienced by his patrons. The furniture store did not do as well at that location. The owner first suspected vandals when all of his merchandise was ruined several times, covered with a foul liquid filth. The owner waited one night with a shotgun, hoping to catch the vandals in the act. When dawn came, the furniture was once again ruined. He closed the place down shortly thereafter.

1941 - A grave marker plate for the tomb of Delphine Lalaurie is found in St. Louis Cemetery #1, Alley 4. But the plate is not attached to any specific tomb so the exact location of her crypt remains a mystery.

"In 1941 a one-time sexton of St. Louis cemeteries said he had discovered a copper plate relating in French that Delphine MacCarthy Lalauire had died in Paris in 1842 and that her remains were in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Descendents at that time said they had long known of this and had visited her tomb."
-- The Times Picayune, August 9, 1964

Workmen employed to repair the old cypress floors began digging up human skeletons from under the house. The owner of the property, in an attempt to down the mansion's gruesome reputation, announced that the house had been built over an ancient Spanish burying-ground, and that over an Indian graveyard. Which was quite true, only-the bones were too recent to have been deposited there before 1803, and they were too near the surface to have been at any time buried in graves. They were found in all sorts of positions, helter-skelter, some barely covered with soil, shreds of fabric still adhering to some of the bones; and whenever hair was found near a skull, it was Negro hair. Some of the skulls had great holes in them. The authorities said that at least some scraps of wood or metal would have been found with or amonng the bones, had they been interred in coffins. As they were not in a trench, their burial could not have been in consequence of an epidemic. So it all simmered down to one conclusion-they were bodies of Lalaurie slaves, buried thus in order that their manner of death should not become known."
-- "Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans" by Jeanne deLavigne, pub 1946 "The Haunted House of the Rue Royale" pp.248-258

"Believe it or leave it, there are ghosts in the French Quarter's famous haunted house at 1140 Royal St.

"Louise (Mrs. Harper) Richards, who shared an apartment with artist Zella Funck in the building while her home at 919 Gov. Nicholls was being restored, tells me 'many strange unaccountable things happened' during her residence there.

'Like what?'

'Well,' she replied, 'such things as the kitchen faucet suddenly started to run full force for no reason when no one was in the room. Sometimes the shower in the bathroom would do the same thing. And several times the front door we had bolted with two bolts would be found open.'"

"…During her residence with Mrs. Funck, Mrs. Richards said, 'Zella's ghosts were the prankish sort. I heard no moans or groans or dragging chains during the night. They just seemed to play all sorts of pranks on us.

'One day Mrs. E. S. Perkin's grandchild, Collier Perkins, and her little friend, Barbara Sproull, visited us to check on the ghosts and, sure enough, while we were across the room the door of the cupboard popped open. It had never done that before and it never happened again while I was there.'"
-- The States Item, March 7th, 1966.

"Zella Funck lives in the famous "Haunted House" at 1140 Royal St. 'My poltergeists are just playful,' she declares blithely. 'They're not around every day, but they do surprise visitors…'

"…The ghost, whom she says she has seen twice, is a romantic figure of a man. 'I've watched him for several minutes in a full-length mirror before he faded away. He's about 5'9", about 170 lbs, has a reddish clipped beard, and wears a creamy beige felt hat turned up slightly, with a cord around it.'"
-- The States Item, June 16, 1969