Delphine LaLaurie

Lore & Background

Delphine Macarty married three times in Louisiana. Her first husband, Don Ramón de Lopez y Angulo, died in Havana in 1804 while she was pregnant with their daughter Marie-Borja. She later married banker Jean Blanque in June 1808; he died in 1816, leaving her a widow with four children. On June 25, 1825, she married physician Leonard Louis Nicolas LaLaurie, who was fifteen years her junior. In 1831, she purchased property at 1140 Royal Street and built a two-story mansion with attached slave quarters in 1832. In public she was seen to be polite to Black people, yet Harriet Martineau, who visited New Orleans in 1836, was told that LaLaurie's slaves looked singularly haggard and wretched. Harriet Martineau recorded tales of an eight-year-old girl falling to her death from the roof while fleeing LaLaurie's whip, and a cook chained to a stove who set a fire in a suicide attempt.

Reader's Guide

Historical records indicate LaLaurie maintained a central position in society until her exposure. Court documents show she freed two slaves: Jean Louis in 1819 and Devince in 1832. Between 1830 and 1834, funeral registers documented the deaths of 12 slaves at the mansion, including cook Bonne and her four children. A lawyer dispatched to investigate rumors found no evidence of wrongdoing during his visit. However, Martineau noted that LaLaurie was later forced to forfeit nine slaves for illegal cruelty, only for them to be bought back by the family through an intermediary relative. Following the 1834 mob attack, LaLaurie escaped to France with her family and remained at large.

Did You Know?

• LaLaurie's uncle by marriage, Esteban Rodríguez Miró, served as governor of Louisiana and Florida from 1785 to 1791.
• Judge Jean François Canonge found a woman wearing an iron collar and another with a deep head wound too weak to walk inside the mansion.
• By April 12, 1834, up to 4,000 people visited the local jail to view LaLaurie's surviving enslaved victims.