Transcript of Mad Madame Delphine LaLaurie New

Hey weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Alayna and this is Morbid.

This is gonna be so morbid today.

You know what though, um, we're, we're, we're ready.

We're ready.

We can do this.

We can get through this. Yeah, we have blankets. Yep, we do have blankets.

We have blankies today because in good old New England, I don't know what happened there. Good old New England.

Good old New England.

I became Erika Jayne in that moment. Goodbye, Godric. Go listen to the rewatcher.

Yeah.

But anyway, in good old New England, we've had about 3 false starts to spring.

Yeah. Which we always do.

We do. I feel like we've had more than usual this year.

It always feels like that. And I'm cold. Yeah. We go, we slingshot back and forth. We're like, oh my God, it's 70 degrees. And then the next day it's like, oh my God, it's snowing. We literally looked outside and we said, why is it snowing? And then it went away and we were like, that was weird. And then all of a sudden it was like, and we were like, oh, it's sleeting.

Yeah.

It was like pale ice falling from the sky. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. And then today it's like 50, but I'm cold.

Sunny. I don't know. Hello? Yeah. We don't know how to dress. We don't know how to act.

Back to you, Pete.

Yeah.

That was Ash and Alina with meteorology.

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Unless it's many years from now.

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And there's merch for that.

There is.

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Do it. Make it a whole thing.

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Go have a weekend in New York. You deserve it.

Get crazy.

You fucking deserve it. You've been hard, you know.

If you woke up today in this world, you've done enough.

Yeah. So go get it. Go do it.

Also, we have something fun and exciting upcoming. Maybe, maybe sometime next week. Not totally sure on timing, but soon. Keep an eye on socials because we're going to be announcing something fun.

Yeah, that you guys will be psyched about.

You guys are going to be stoked.

Something you've been like, hey, hey, can I have that? So yeah. And also, last little tidbit, preorder The Butcher Legacy, period. If you haven't done it, what are you doing? Come on. It's the third in the series. You can get it at butcherlegacy.com. Anywhere you want. Go preorder it. It's coming out August 11th. And if you haven't, like, taken a little, little swan dive into the series, start at The Butcher and the Wren.

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It's, it's okay. It's really good. I feel good about it.

I would hype it up a bit more than that.

Yeah. The Butcher and the Wren, then get The Butcher game and then get The Butcher Legacy. Dive into a series. We all need it.

If not, you might be a loser.

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Go preorder The Butcher Legacy. My dog agrees.

Even Elena's dog agrees. Now we'll pause. Wow, there wasn't even a follow-up bark to that. So I think she was like, hell yeah, mama.

Yeah, she's just my hype girl. Yeah. That's my hype woman.

For real.

That was crazy. Which we needed. So this is going to be a rough one. Okay.

That sounded like my Siri.

Okay.

Okay.

We're finally going to be covering Mad Madame Delphine Lalaurie.

Oh no. Yeah, this bitch.

If you don't know who I'm talking about, I'm sorry, but I'm the one who's going to be telling you about this because she's one of the worst people ever.

Yeah, if you've seen American Horror Story, you know about this.

Yeah, you at least know like a fictionalized version of the history. Yeah. I love Kathy Bates. Love Kathy Bates, but hate— hate— um, and I believe that's how you pronounce— that's what I, I did. I, I looked at a lot of things to see how to say it, cuz you hear la la la.

Um, that's what I've always heard.

The correct pronunciation is actually la la re.

I mean, that makes sense cuz it's like French.

Yeah, cuz like French.

It's making me laugh because that's a French last name. It's making me laugh because there's a drag queen named La La Re.

Lala Ri.

Yeah.

Oh, so it's, it's not— is it spelled the same? No, it's—

I think it's L-A-L-A.

Oh, okay.

Because I was like, whoa, like her first name Lala, last name Ri.

Oh, that makes sense.

But when you say it quick, it sounds the same.

Yeah, that makes sense. Um, so this is, this is a story that is really gruesome. It's upsetting. It's got haunted elements at the end of it. Oh, it's got everything. Really?

Okay. Um, one pata.

One pada.

One pada.

And, um, so here's one thing I want to say right up front. I refer to the victims in this case as enslaved people, uh, because, you know, that's correct. Exactly. But some of the quotes that are going to be used in this are a little outdated. Okay. And they refer to them as slaves. Okay. I am going to read the quotes how they are just because they're quotes. Yeah, but just know that when I'm saying it, it's enslaved people. Those are quotes if it is a little outdated.

Got it.

Just to be clear. So let's start you at the end to then bring you back to the beginning.

Oh, I love a full circle.

We love that. In April 1834, a huge fire broke out at the mansion of Delphine LaLaurie on Royal Street in the New Orleans French Quarter. LaLaurie was known to have kept several enslaved people as servants in her home, but when neighbors, bystanders, anyone tried to go into the house and rescue those people that were trapped inside, they found that the doors were barred. After forcing them open and making their way into the house, the rescuers were absolutely horrified to find the, quote, horribly mutilated bodies of at least 7 enslaved people. Delphine LaLaurie was known, by the way, to treat her servants, quote unquote, very badly. Yeah. Um, including physically abusing them. Like, there were reports of that. It wasn't like it was completely hidden. But no one in New Orleans had imagined that she was a sadistic torturer and murderer.

Yeah, like, they did not know how bad it was.

Yeah. So let's go back to who Delphine LaLaurie actually was.

How the fuck did she get this way?

So her name is Marie Delphine McCarty. Originally.

That's like such a pretty name. What are you doing being a beast?

Yeah, exactly. She was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on March 19th, 1787. And the beginning of her life is obviously a little sketchy because it's so long ago. Yeah. But property records from that period do indicate that her family was one of the wealthiest that New Orleans had ever seen. Oh, wow. In the late 18th century, letters written by a friend of her family said that her mother, who is also Marie McCarthy, uh, is— was described as vivacious and frolicsome.

Oh, but just describe me. That's my description from this point forward.

Vivacious and frolicsome.

What is frolic?

That's where you want it to end, the, the similarities between you and the McCarthy family. Yeah, definitely, for sure.

Um, but frolicsome, I like frolicsome. Does that just mean you're running around?

Probably.

All right, frolicsome, you know, frolicking.

And she was known to throw lavish parties. Fun. When you look at it from here, you're like, that sounds fun. Yeah. Uh, around this time Delphine and her brother Louis would have been about 9 and 13 years old. So while it's unlikely they participated in what was described as the Bacchanalia— what? Basically, there was like, there was some shit. It was just, it was a time. What are these parties? Were a time. Okay, watch The Rewatcher and watch True Blood and you'll get an idea.

We like to carry on parties.

Yeah, they were orgies. Some might say, bitch.

Some might say, bitch, not having orgies. Yeah, fine, have an orgy, but you have kids home. Don't do that.

Yeah, I mean, but they definitely— they witnessed a lot. Yeah, probably. And it would definitely have an influence on her later in life.

I was going to say, that'll fuck you up. Yeah.

And in stark contrast to these lavish parties and the lives of luxury that were experienced by the McCarty family, There was also a growing fear at this time that the enslaved people that they were treating so poorly and saying that they owned, yeah, were going to— they were starting to rebel and revolt. And so a lot of white people in the region felt that that was coming, which like, yeah, you deserved it.

It's also like, yeah, did you never think that was going to happen when you enslaved human beings?

Exactly. Um, and so Delphine's uncle, Jean-Baptiste Le Breton, was reportedly murdered by enslaved people on his plantation in New Orleans in 1771.

Probably had it coming.

100% had it coming.

Yeah, I'm not even—

let me take away that probably.

You're on a plantation, had it coming.

One evening, he was awoken from sleep by a fire raging in a shed just outside his bedroom window. And when he ran outside to direct the men to put the fire out, he was shot and killed. So it was like drawing them out. An investigation conducted in the days after this concluded that two of the people that Jean-Baptiste enslaved Temba and Myrtleton. They were responsible for the murder and were brutally executed for it. Their bodies were displayed in the city square.

Meanwhile, that's just like—

like, you can't treat people— you can't exactly like that for that long. Like, what? I'm not saying murder is ever okay.

No, but it's kind of like self-defense.

But it's like, you can't be doing this shit. And this is the kind— and you know what it is? It's like when you get— when you set this precedent of like brutality and violence and disrespecting people as human beings and like taking humanity out of the equation, which is what you were doing when you were enslaving people.

Yep.

How can you be surprised when people use that same precedent against you, right? You set the precedent. Exactly. Like, it's not like you're sitting here teaching— like, treating people like humans and having all this humanity and grace with people. And like, no, you're treating people like property and you're being brutal and violent to them.

Of course they're not just going to sit around and take that.

If it flips back on you You set the tone, man. Like, it's not okay from the jump.

Yep.

So it just pisses me off. But although this death occurred more than a decade before Delphine's birth, the effect of this death would definitely affect the family, like, as a whole.

Yeah.

Now, life in the McCarty home was one of luxury and excess, like I said, and Delphine wanted for nothing. And her heritage and family name were entitled, or so she thought, to all the finest things. She would just get whatever she wanted for the rest of her life. That's what she thought. But outside the home, there was the constant reminder fears of how easily those things could be lost or taken away, either by violence or simply lack of vigilance. And add to that the growing resentment of free and enslaved Black people, whom she perceived to not only be a violent threat but also a threat to her inheritance and social status. Oh, and what results is a cruel, callous, horrific, self-centered person who is capable of the most terrible of acts. Yeah, because she's growing up in this house of excess, never wanting for anything, witnessing lavish parties that were like not okay, a lot. And also like the people in her family, the men in her family especially, were treating Black women too like property. And they were having these like non-consensual relationships with them, sometimes impregnating them, and then also treating them like dirt, you know what I mean?

So she's seeing this like that, she's really seeing like throwaway people. Yeah. And it's like, and then she's growing up to think that's, that's okay to act that way. And then with this growing sense of fear in the community, yeah, having her uncle murdered by the people that he treated so horribly and owned, but she doesn't see it. She looks at it as their fault, not his fault, right? Yeah. Oh, that's a mess. So it's not a good mix to, to be grown up with. Now, in the late spring of 1800, when Delphine was barely 14 years old she married— hello, uh, Roman Lopez y Angelo de la Candelaria.

Brother, what are you doing with all those names and a 14-year-old?

Exactly what's going on here.

You're having too much.

He was 35 years old. Get a grip. And he was a widower and a high-ranking officer in the Spanish military.

Find a grown woman.

Yeah, get it together. Now, at the time of their marriage, he was serving as the second in command to the governor. Uh, he was the representative of the treasury, and he had jurisdiction over matters of police, the courts, and the military. So he had a ton of power and influence. Yeah. And shortly after they were married though, he was ordered to return to Spain because he hadn't asked for permission to marry a child.

Oh. Yep. It wasn't that he married the child. It was just that he didn't ask nicely.

Yeah. He had to ask the government for permission, like the crown for permission. And he hadn't done that. So Delphine went with him, but he was held and faced consequences in Spain for not seeking permission.

They were like, hey, is this your child bride?

She returned home without him, and on her return trip to Louisiana, she gave birth to their first child. Oh, she was barely 14.

Oh my God.

Borgia Delphine Lopez y Angelo de la Candelaria, or Marie Borgia, whom she nicknamed Borgita.

Okay.

Uh, in March 1807, on her 20th birthday, Delphine remarried, this time because she never saw him again. She remarried this time to Jean Blanc, a native Frenchman and local banker who was more than twice her age.

Sounds like a good wine.

Uh, yeah, yeah, Jean Blanc. I'll According to, um, sources, Jean Blanc was, quote, every bit Delphine's match— a ruthless wheeler-dealer who was a merchant slave trader, an associate of the pirates Jean and Pierre Lafitte. A few years earlier, Delphine's mother died from natural causes, and she left her a sizable sum of money which was put towards her $33,000 dowry. Oh, because remember, dowries were a thing. Oh, I kind of love the idea of a dowry that you have to pay.

No, I just like, I just like, I think I like the word. Yeah, you know what I mean?

You're like, I actually don't love the idea, I just like the word.

Yeah, not the idea, I just like the word. I was like, what about the idea?

It gets you going.

No, I just like, I like a collection. I don't like that you have to use it to be like, marry me, I'm so good. But I like the collection and I like the word.

Oh, okay.

Like collecting.

Okay.

Yeah. And it's pretty stuff like, oh, these nice glasses. Let's put them in your dowry. These shoes, you've seen these, these sparkly shoes, put them in your dowry. Yeah, I just don't want it to go to a man, and it will. No, I know. No, I think we should re— I think we should redo it. Yeah, let's update our dowries and just have like collections, because the name, the word dowry, it's a great word, feels nice.

Yes, thank you. It feels too nice for what it is, period.

You see where I'm coming from?

I do. Now, in addition to the money left by her mother, Delphine also inherited a large number farm animals, farming equipment, and a downtown plantation. I was gonna say hell yeah until you got to the plantation and you said hell no.

I was like, farm animals, downtown, let's go!

Now despite that inheritance, Blanc purchased a large home for them at 409 Royal Street, and he purchased that through a sheriff's auction. For the duration of their marriage, they would split their time between the plantation left by Delphine's mom and the house on Royal Street. Now, over the course of their 8-year marriage, Delphine gave birth to 4 children. Are you ready for their names?

I'm so ready.

Marie-Louise Pauline, Louise Marie Laurie, Marie-Louise Jeanne, and Jean-Pierre Pauline.

So she was just trying to do riddles.

She's just—

she was like, which one is which?

She's shuffling them around.

She just like presented them to groups and was like, who do you think this kid is?

I guess it's good because you can be like, Louise! And 3 of them are like, yep. Yeah, and you can always get someone.

And Marie.

Wow, Marie, you can always get Marie Louise, Louise Marie, Marie. Yeah, because it's Marie Louise, Louise Marie, and Marie Louise.

So just so the difference— reverse, reverse.

Marie Louise Pauline, Louise Marie's Laurie, and Marie Louise Jean. Now, while little is known about their private lives, there's a lot that's known about their public affairs during this time.

I need to go back for just one second. So there's all the Marie Louise's, and then there's Borgita.

Yeah, Borgita is from the other marriage.

But I'm just like, how do we go from Borgita to Marie Louise?

And actually, Borgita, her name is Marie, is Borgia Delfine Lopez y Angelo de la Candelaria, or Marie Borgia. Yeah. So there's another Marie.

So like, hello.

Yeah.

Anyway, sorry.

A lot is known about their public affairs. They were very local and very active in local real estate. And even more active in local politics. Blanc was very outspoken and often ruthless when it came to getting what he wanted. Yeah. According to Carolyn Long, Blanc was, quote, much disliked by most of the Native Americans residing in or near New Orleans, not only because his ways were entirely foreign to them, but also because, quote, they considered him a dangerous man. I'm sure. Another account of him written by a representative of the Spanish crown describes him in like only slightly kinder terms. It said, this clever and daring man is persuasive of tongue whereby he sways the crowd. Blanc is regarded as one of the persons financially interested in the piracies of Barataria, which he openly protects. Basically, he was not only despised by the native population, but also by the Spanish who identified him as one of those financially backing local pirates. Awesome. Yeah. So his financial support of the pirates, essentially, it was basically because he had relationships with pirates. He was friends with Jean and Pierre Lafitte, who were very famous. Right. Infamous, I should say.

At the dawn of the 19th century, as the agriculture business in Louisiana was like really booming, the Lafittes were among the many who were importing the labor of enslaved people from Africa and Caribbean nations. Okay. But they were known to also be among the more unscrupulous of people. Doing that. Not that any of them were scrupulous, but meaning they didn't abide by any laws, right? Uh, Jean Blanc would often receive these shipments of enslaved people from the Lafittes and either help to— and speaking in these terms really makes you— shipments of people, that just— it makes you— how anybody can hear that and not be absolutely just fucked up.

Like, people were walking around town being like, oh, there's a shipment of slaves today.

Yeah, shipment of people here. What? And even this next thing, he would either— so he would often receive the shipments of enslaved people from the Lafittes and either help to sell them, just really, really let that sit, or put them to work on the plantation left to Delphine by her mother. So he would, he would be snatching up enslaved people who are being shipped here like cargo and just give some of them to Delphine. Yeah. By that— by the time that he died in 1815, are you ready for this? He had owned or traded at least 367 enslaved people.

Holy shit.

You know that motherfucker is burning in the gnarliest hellfires right now.

I hope the hottest part.

Still. Now, when he died in 1815, he left Delphine a 28-year-old widow with 5 children to care for and significant debts. Rather than risk having to forfeit the assets left by her mother, she went before the court and declared Blanc had left her, quote, encumbered with debt, and chose to relinquish any property and assets that they held together to pay for what he owed, because he was also just like A shady little bitch. Yeah. This totaled roughly $160,000, which is now $3 million today.

Wow.

Yeah. That's how much in debt he was. Damn. Now, in the end, Delphine was able to keep some of the property. She would either buy it with her own money and, you know, some of the property and assets were purchased by her brother and father, which at least kept it in the family. Okay. She also persuaded the court to allow her to keep 15 of the people she enslaved in her home as, quote, payment of her matrimonial rights.

What?

My God.

Holy—

Now, unlike her first two marriages where the husbands were at least twice her age, Delphine's third husband, Leonard Louis Lalaurie, was 15 years younger than she was when they met. Oh honey.

Yeah, I didn't know she was a cougar. She was.

Now, upon completing his medical studies in France in 1824, he left for Louisiana and arrived in the United States in February 1825.

Okay.

Once there, he set up shop as a local physician, and he was skilled in what the local newspaper papers described as, quote, the means of destroying hunches, which basically was repairing a crooked or hunched back. Oh, he helped with that.

I could use that.

He would destroy hunches. Just the way they said that was like, he just fucking destroys hunches.

No hunchback going to survive around him.

No way.

Oh damn, what's his secret? I have that little, like, I have a little hump in the back of my neck.

Isn't it called Technic? Yeah, it is called Technic.

I want it. I just want somebody to punch it.

Get that form bra.

Oh God, I hate bras.

But this one honestly is great.

Yeah, but isn't it kind of like, like uncomfy?

No, I think it's super comfy.

Oh yeah, maybe I'll get that brassiere.

Do it. Get that brassiere.

Get that brassiere, girl.

Now, there are a few different ideas about how they met initially. Mostly people believe that they met at one of the lavish parties that they were both invited to.

Was she going to sex parties too?

Probably. Now, however they met, the 38-year-old twice widowed mother of 5 was still considered one of the city's great beauties.

Wow.

Which, like, holy shit. As well as the member— and she was also the member of one of the most influential families in the city, so of course she's going to catch love.

There was money to be made.

According to Carolyn Long, by 1825, um, her name began appearing in letters written to Louis by his father. Uh, you can— they— I guess they never discovered Louis's part of the letters, but—

oh, okay.

So it's safe to assume that even if they weren't like romantic at this point, which I'm pretty sure they were, they'd at least become friendly enough that he was talking to his father about her. Right now, unfortunately, not long after he came to the U.S., his mother passed away. But at this time, his father and brother insisted he close his business in New Orleans and return to France. Oh, but by that time, Louis and Delphine had already started a courtship and they wanted to be married. So he said no. And he temporarily signed over his portion of his mother's estate to his father, which this would actually cause a lot of tension among the Lalaurie family.

Like, that makes sense.

Yeah. Um, but while it's possible there are many reasons why Louis decided not to return to France, there is good reason to think that Delphine had already become pregnant by this point.

I was wondering that.

And on August 13th, 1827, she gave birth to a boy, Jean-Louis Lénard. So we have another Jean, another Jean. Despite his refusal to go back to France after his mother died, after the birth of his son in August, he did leave the country in October and didn't return for several months. That's fake. And no one knows why he left or where he went.

That's weird.

But upon returning to New Orleans in January 1828, they appeared before a notary and were legally married. And he just needed to get some shit out of his system. I guess so. So is Wild Oats, I suppose. Yeah. In later accounts of their life together, the date of the marriage is often given as 1825. Presumably to uphold Delphine's honor since she had become pregnant and given birth before they had married.

Yeah.

Yeah. Now, at that— at the time, his assets were listed as $2,000, which he had inherited from his mother and was still controlled by his father. Delphine, on the other hand, was worth $67,000 at the time. So there was a big imbalance of power, but it was an unusual one because it was tipped in the woman's favor.

Yeah. This era did not happen.

Now, in the personal papers of Baron Henri de Stemgemmi— I have no idea if I said that correctly. I think you did. I loved it. He was a business associate of Delphine's father. There are letters that provide some secondhand accounts of the Lalaurie marriage. In one letter, he wrote, they do not have a happy marriage. They fight, often separate, and they return to each other, which would make one believe that someday they will abandon each other completely.

I mean, that makes sense because he did like pre-abandon her.

Yeah. So there's that.

And also, I can't imagine she was super duper never fun to live.

She's a fucking nightmare, so I can't imagine.

Yeah, she was probably abusive.

Now, in the summer of 1831, Delphine had grown tired of living in the country with Louis and started selling off her own property and mortgaging others to raise money for what would become her final home in New Orleans. By August, she had purchased the vacant lot at 1140 Royal Street— that's a very famous address now— and began overseeing the construction of a lavish multi-story mansion. The first floor of this mansion would have several galleries, sitting rooms. All were decorated in a style more American than French, which was pretty atypical at the time. Boo!

I love French decor.

The second floor had living quarters, which included a parlor, bedrooms, and a large formal dining room. And Carolyn Long suggests the attic under the hipped roof might have had quarters for the most favored domestic servants.

The attic.

However, the majority of Delphine's servants would have been quartered in one or more of the outbuildings in the rear of the house. Okay. Now, by early 1832, Delphine, Louis, and Jean-Louis moved into the home along with the four Blanc children, all but one of whom was an adult at the time. Okay. Despite the new environment in the city proper at this point, Delphine and Louis's relationship continued to deteriorate over the course of the year, and in November 1832, she filed for divorce. In the petition, she quoted state law almost verbatim, and she cited her reason for seeking divorce as his having, quote, treated her in such a manner as to render their living together insupportable. She also alleged that he had been physically abusive and claimed that Louis had been living out of the house for some time. Okay, whatever the cause of the separation, it doesn't appear to be permanent, at least not practically. It never is. By 1834, she was listed in the city records as being a, quote, wife separated in property of Louis LaLaurie, but in In reality, Louis had returned to living at the house at Royal Street and was at least very regularly an overnight guest, but was at home on the night of the fire in April 1834.

Now, in her 1834 multi-volume account of her travels across the United States, British writer Harriet Mont— uh, Martineau— Martineau, sorry, Martineau— presents a picture of American slavery that is very naive. Yeah. Um, unsettling at times, and also like at times a little insightful. Okay. Very strange. And in later assessments of her writing, scholars have noted, quote, an inability to sympathize with cultural others who do not conform to the formulaic and imaginatively controlled terms in which she imagines difference. Basically, her sympathy towards enslaved people only extended to those who fit but in her very, like, narrow view of Black people. Okay. Now, I bring this up because it's important to talk about her view, because the majority of insight into how Delphine Lalaurie treated enslaved people in her home comes directly from Harriet Montagné's writings. Oh, okay. Yeah, like, a lot of scholars point to that. Interesting. So while she definitely had a complicated and very limited perspective on plantation owners and their treatment of enslaved people, She was able to identify cruelty and brutality when she saw it. About Madame Lalaurie, she said, it had been long observed that Madame Lalaurie's slaves looked singularly haggard and wretched, with the exception of the coachman, whose appearance was sleek and comfortable enough.

And that shows you that as long as the enslaved person was being seen by the outside world, they were being treated okay. Okay. If you were in that house she was going to treat you however she wanted to, and it didn't matter if the marks were physical. Wow. Yeah. Now, despite the obvious maltreatment of enslaved people that was occurring in the LaLaurie house, it seems few, if any, locals at the time were bringing, like, thinking to challenge her or raise a concern.

One, they're all pretty racist because they all probably had slaves of their own at the time. At the time, of course. And two, she's like super powerful in the town. That's what it is.

She was still one of the wealthier and most respected members of the New Orleans society, and to speak out against her would have had consequences. 100%. If only social, though.

Oh, I'm like, okay, well, it could have had—

there could be more consequences that I'm not seeing.

But I'm like, I think social consequences back then for— I'm not saying it's a good excuse, but I think social consequences back then meant so much more than they do today.

You just look back and you're like, you just wish people And I guess people weren't taught to value human life and human dignity, especially not then. You just wish somebody had taken it upon themselves, which people did. I will say a couple people obviously took some action.

Yeah, there's always good people.

You wish more people valued what the fuck was going on and taking a stance over, yeah, like their social standing. Because I'm like, the tide's gonna turn eventually and your social standing will be back because you'll be on the right side of history. And it's just so—

don't worry anyway.

Don't worry being— why do you want to be on the shitty side and keep that? You should, you know, it's weird. And here's the other thing, outside of the home, Delphine was perfectly pleasant to everyone she met on the street.

That's the thing, I didn't realize that.

I thought she was a big old bitch, and that makes total sense that you would think that, because I also would have thought that. And it's like, that's what makes it even harder for, I think, her local New Orleanians to—

because maybe people thought they were just rumors.

Yeah, like, I think they were just like, oh, well, she's wealthy, she's powerful. Maybe people are just making shit up about her because they can. And like, because so maybe they just were like, all right, I just don't believe that she would abuse her, her servants in her home. But people who went to her home, like neighbors and such, did note later that LaLaurie's servants seemed exhausted. They seemed malnourished, basically miserable and being mistreated.

Oh my.

They said it was obvious just by looking at them. Malnourished? Yeah, she wasn't feeding them. Now, whether or not the locals believed them, throughout the mid to late 1830s, rumors about Delphine's cruelty continued to circulate around the city. According to Martin New, the rumors eventually became so widespread that a local lawyer sent a letter to Delphine reminding her, quote, the law which ordains that slaves can be proved to have been cruelly treated shall be taken from the owner and sold in the market for the benefit of the state. That's the most wild statement in the entire world, that they— they're literally holding that as like, well, you need to treat the people that you buy and own correctly, or else we're going to take them from you and we're going to sell them to someone else because we are the morally superior people here.

And it's like, Christ, what?

You're talking about people? Christ, what the fuck?

That's nuts.

Martin claims that the lawyer even sent a younger employee to investigate the situation at the Lallery but this younger lawyer employee returned full of indignation against all who could suspect this amiable woman was doing anything wrong. I'm like, so did she seduce you? I was just gonna say, apparently she had convinced her that everything was fine— him— that everything was fine. Now, despite how it was framed or understood by Harriet Martineau and the American public at the time, we now know that the practice of slavery was not just morally reprehensible but also cruel and brutally violent on nearly every single fucking level that you can imagine. Absolutely. For the entirety of her life, Delphine had been raised in a family where human beings were not only owned but also treated badly, physically abused, and coerced into sexual relationships with the men in her family. So she was like, this is just life, deal with it, what it is. And she felt entitled to this. I'm entitled to own people and treat them how I want to.

She's just been able to own whatever she's wanted her whole life, and yeah, that goes to people too.

And people said it used to piss her off that the people, men in her family, were not ashamed of having relationships with Black women, even free Black women. Oh, so she was just racist. Like, she was— she had it in her DNA. Like, it was just in there. Now, in the period between 1816 and when she left New Orleans in 1834, because she eventually does, unfortunately, Delphine, uh, she gets chased out of there.

But still, Yeah, she's free to do so.

Oh yeah, yeah, you wish she had stayed and faced the consequences because I think she'd be in several pieces around New Orleans. Uh-huh. Uh, but Delphine owned at least 54 men, women, and children. Oh, children.

And whether men and women as well, but you just think of children in this situation.

Yeah. And whether they acknowledged it or not, the public appeared to have at least some awareness of what went on inside that house.

Not to the extent of what went on, but still have even that it wasn't good thing to have even an ounce of awareness of what was happening in that house.

In an 1828 newsletter, uh, Jean Bozzi wrote, 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 bloody. She had been— she had them incarcerated, letting them be given only the bare necessities.

Oh my.

Now, in another report from the following year, quote, her viciousness roused her neighbors in arms against her. They announced that they would no longer hear of such actions, and in case they did, she should become amendable to the law. So it became a problem, like, pretty late in the game where her neighbors were like, okay, now we know what's going on. And they did start reporting her. Like, they started seeing things and they would report them, and authorities wouldn't do anything about it. So she was just getting away with it, and people were trying to report her at this point.

Okay, well, that's good.

Now, given what we now know about slavery in the United States during this period, Delphine's treatment of the people she enslaved in her home and on the plantation would have had to be particularly brutal and cruel for her neighbors to speak out against.

That's the thing that you really have to think about here, because people were not treating enslaved people well.

No, they were like—

they literally whipped them constantly.

They were hurt. They treated them as property.

So it had to have been really bad, like unimaginably bad.

And for people to speak out against somebody with such power and influence, you really have to think about that piece of it. But again, she was rarely held accountable for her actions. In fact, if anything, it seems most of the locals just ended up having to turn a blind eye to it because she was keeping up appearances in public. And so no one was doing anything about it. So they were like, what are we to do here? On one occasion in July 1829, she was brought before the court for mistreating the enslaved people in her house, but the charge was dismissed when her accusers failed to show up in court to testify that they'd actually seen her abuse them, right? So that's the only reason she got out of there. She probably threatened them. Now, she literally tortured these people in her house. She would beat them until unconscious. That was her MO, was if she was doling out a beating to you you weren't going to end that beating until you were out.

That's unreal.

Yeah. In 1833, neighbors reported her because— and this is horrific because it's about to get gnarly, so just be—

I mean, this story gets—

now, gruesome. Neighbors reported her because they saw her literally chase an enslaved little girl who was 12 years old off the fucking roof of her home. She was chasing her with a whip, and she was so scared she fell off the roof of the home.

Oh my God.

Lalaurie hid this murder and her body by hiding her in a well. And authorities did discover this after the reports because people, neighbors saw this happen and reported her.

She's literally chasing a child off of her roof.

And you know what they did? Nothing. They fined her and then they forced her. They told her that she had to sell her remaining enslaved humans. But she said—

That's the other thing. It's like to sell a human, like that's one concept that you have to— Yeah, you never can, but you have to try to wrap your brain around for this story. And then she gets to profit.

Yeah.

Like the punishment is, oh, sell your slaves and make some money.

Yeah. What? And she said, okay. And her friends and family bought those enslaved people back and then brought them back into her home.

Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah.

Isn't that insane? Wow. Now the full extent of Delphine's cruelty finally came to light on the morning of Thursday, April 10th, 1834, when a fire broke out at the mansion. What?

It's April 9th.

What the fuck, Elena?

It is April 9th.

How does this happen? Guys, I'm not even kidding you, we don't do this on purpose. Also, we were gonna do this story like a couple weeks ago, literally weeks ago, and I wanted to change a little bit just to add some things, and I did not. And then I literally was like, you know what, I'm gonna do that one for today.

It was like a game time decision.

Yeah.

Wow, that's chilling.

What the fuck?

That's chilling.

That's wild.

All of a sudden I was like, wait, is it? I thought it was April 10th.

That's—

but it's April 9th.

Like, what? It's a Thursday. Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Hello.

All right, so Thursday, April 10th, 1834, a fire broke out in the mansion on Royal and according to the local press, the fire started in the kitchen and quickly spread until the house was, quote, soon wrapped in flames. Immediately, the neighbors raced to the aid of the Lalaurie family, with many helping them to recover their valuables from the house.

Nice.

Then Judge Jacques-François Canonge asked Louis Lalaurie for permission to remove the enslaved people in the house to safety.

The fact that there was a possibility that he could have said no—

oh yeah, he literally— and he had to ask permission. Because that's their property. Oh, yep.

That makes— actually just made me nauseous.

Doesn't that like—

I mean, just nauseous.

Like, that's humans, man. Um, Lalaurie responded, quote, with much rudeness. It was Delphine who said this next part. She said, there are those who would be better employed if they would attend to their own affairs instead of officiously meddling with the concerns of other people. In other words, mind your own business and let them burn.

Wow.

Now horrified by that response and his refusal to unbar the door to the kitchen where at least 7 enslaved people were imprisoned and bound with chains, Judge Canonge ordered several people to break down the doors. Good. Once they were inside, the men were shocked by what they saw. According to the local press, upon entering one of the apartments, the most appalling spectacle met their eyes. 7 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. Oh yeah, they were all wearing, uh, metal spiked collars. Once removed from the house and cleaned, like cleaned of like soot and ash, the victims were found to be covered in old scars, and they were weighed down by heavy chains. Most of them couldn't even hold themselves up to walk. I'm sure had they not been rescued by that judge, like like just going against the homeowners, they surely would have died in the fire. Absolutely. Um, one of the, uh, newspapers said— language— and this is a wild quote— language is powerless and inadequate to give a proper conception of the horror which a scene like this must have inspired.

Wow. That should tell you what was going on.

That just gave me a full—

that a reporter whose words are their life and their job— language is powerless and inadequate it to fully tell you what happened here. That's—

oh my God.

There are reports that some of them were tortured to the point of being unrecognizable as humans, like their faces were completely mutilated. One woman's back was so badly cut and whipped that muscle and bones were poking through.

Oh my God.

They found one woman, and this is one that a lot of people I'm sure have heard of, I know, that had had her bones broken and reset several times so that she resembled a crab. Because they would, they would break and then reset in the broken place, essentially, so that they were like bent in all crazy angles. How do you do that to another human being? Apparently her daughters— she was trying to teach in her daughters the same hate and cruelty, but they did not have that inside of them. Oh, so they would try to feed the, the enslaved people. And when she would catch them, like, she would— because they— she wouldn't feed them, so she— they would try to bring food to them. When she would catch them, she would like beat and punish them. Her daughters? Yeah, for their kindness to these people. What the fuck? And it's become— and it should be, it should be obvious now that you've heard this, that everybody's heard this— scholars believe that this is just something that Delphine enjoyed. Like, this is— I mean, yeah, she's sadistic. Like, this isn't punishment. This is—

no, she was getting her— yeah, somehow.

Because, yeah, most of the enslaved people they found in her home were so badly tortured and disfigured that they could barely walk, never mind work, right? So she wasn't getting work out of these people. They weren't working for her. She was just a psychopath. She literally had a torture chamber. Torture and pain on people. Like, she liked this. This was a thing she did. Yeah. She's a literal psychopath. The awful discoveries only continued after the fire was extinguished as well. It turned out the fire had been started by the cook, who was found chained to the stove. So the cook was chained to the stove. When asked why she'd done it, the woman explained she set the house afire with the intention of terminating the sufferings of herself and her companions, or perishing in the flames.

So she was ready to die in a fire to escape suffering, the nightmare that she was living.

It was made clear that the victims who were discovered in the burning home again weren't being put to work, right, and were not being punished for any particular offense. They were, quote, merely kept in existence to prolong their sufferings and to make them taste all that was the most refined cruelty that could be inflicted. Like, that's a quote.

Yeah.

The victims were removed from the property and taken to a guardhouse to protect them from Delphine and provide medical care. In one account, journalist J.C. de Saint-Rome describes one man with, quote, a large hole in his head, and his body from head to foot was covered with scars and filled with worms.

Oh my God.

Yeah. It's like, like, thinkable.

It is. And my reactions are just the same over and over again, but you just don't know what to say.

No. After the initial reports of what was discovered in that house, more than 2,000 locals visited the guardhouse to see the victims with their own eyes. The incident inspired the residents of New Orleans to have such incredible outrage that they demanded justice for the men and women taken from that plantation, which is shocking. A writer for the New Orleans Bee said the community shares us our indignation, and that vengeance will fall heavily upon the guilty culprit. The outrage of the locals, while understandable, obviously, and like good, absolutely, is also like, guys, like, she, she was doing this, you know what I mean? Like, what the fuck? To some degree, yeah. It just like, she had been hauled into court several times for abuse. It's like, this can't be that shocking.

Like, obviously, then when you find out like exactly what was happening and you see it with your own eyes, like a woman having her bones reset as a crab.

Seeing the actual— what was like the actual stuff that happened must have been shocking. But it's— and I think it's just me being like hindsight 2020 and being like, well, it's like, I wish anybody had done something, like, you know what I mean? But then I have to go back and say, well, people were trying to like, you know, report this and trying to do something. And it's the authorities that really weren't doing anything. Because I'm sitting here saying like, why weren't they doing anything? I'm like, what do you do? Yeah, like I'm sitting here trying to figure out what I do in my own—

like, well, what do you do when you're going to the authorities multiple times over and over and nothing's happening and they're, they're going out there and just giving her tickets?

Yeah, like, and it's like, you know what it is? I'm more angry about some of the wealthier and well-to-do families in Long Island. I'm less angry at the the locals that were not of higher social standing because they really were powerless in a lot of ways. Yeah, I'm more angry at like the high society people fully who were helping to cover this up and get mad. Because like during one of her court cases where she was pulled in for abusing the enslaved people in her house, several of the servants described scenarios where she whipped them mercilessly for supposed infractions, including trying to feed themselves or their starving children. That was a— that was a punishable offense for her.

And they just gave her—

and when she was feeling particularly cruel, she would skip over the adults entirely and just beat their children as punishment in front of them. Oh, so she's— she's a fucking monster.

She honestly, like, she should have got the guillotine.

And honestly I think they would have kind of let justice happen. Like, if she didn't skip out.

Like street justice.

I think they would, because the people of New Orleans were ready to tear her to shreds. And I think if she had come back there, they would have torn her to shreds. And I wish she had been able to get the justice.

Isn't it like nobody really knows what happened to her? She just kind of like faded into obscurity.

I mean, unfortunately, justice was denied in this situation. In the immediate aftermath of the discovery, a lot of the locals took their anger out on the Royal Street property. They stormed the house. They destroyed everything in sight. They ripped paintings off the walls, destroyed the furniture. They made off with anything of value, which, like, good for you.

Yeah.

They called her the devil in the shape of a woman. Yeah. And they were out for blood. The crowd was eventually dispersed by the local sheriff, but by that time, the damage was done. Yeah. Later, the extent of the destruction would be estimated to have caused roughly $10,000 in damage. Uh, in a report in the New Orleans Bee, a reporter described the mob as, quote, animated with the desire to punish Lalaurie in the fire because of her cruelty towards her slaves, quote, again.

Yes.

As for Delphine herself, it seems that once the discovery was made, she didn't wait around to see how the crowd was going to react. She got the fuck out of there. It's widely believed that she fled the city that night and made her way to the water, where she and her family escaped to Alabama and into Paris, and she lived out the rest of her life in France and died on December 7th, 1849, at the age of 62.

The fact that bitch got to just go to France—

yeah, it pisses me off.

France doesn't want you, babe.

Yeah.

In the week to live your whole life— like, I mean, luckily so, but by that— by now she was elderly as hell.

Yeah. Now, in the weeks after the fire, two of the victims died from their injuries. And upon a further search of the property, the bodies of 2 more victims were discovered buried on the plantation grounds, one of which was the body of a child. Wow. Yeah. Now, the night after the fire and after the looting and destruction, the locals returned to the property and set the rest of the house on fire. They burned much of it to the ground. It shouldn't exist. No. It remained a burned-out rubble until the property was purchased in 1838 by Pierre Trastour, who built a new home on the land. Which remains at the corner of Royal and Governor Nicholls Street to this day.

Wow.

In the decades that followed Pierre Tourstor's death, the home served a lot of different functions, like it was used as a school building, a music conservatory, and an apartment building with the lower floors containing retail shops or other businesses. But as early as the late 1940s, the Lalaurie Mansion, which is— it's still known despite having been rebuilt built, has been the centerpiece of the city's rumored hauntings.

Yeah.

And has drawn tourists with an interest in all of these ghosts.

I mean, that is some gnarly ass energy.

According to a 1947 article on New Orleans hauntings, during the Reconstruction era, which is like 1865 to 1867, the house gained a reputation as a, quote, haunted saloon and has maintained that reputation ever since. Over the years, visitors have reported hearing weeping maidens who leap screaming from the roof.

Oh, that's horrible.

As well as countless other ghostly encounters over the years, the reputation of the mansion has definitely only grown. Residents of the second floor apartments that were there once reported hearing footsteps running along dim passages, mournful sighs, and at least once a smothered scream. Oh, the property has changed hands a lot of different times, including a recent period in which it was owned by actor Nicolas Cage.

Yeah, I knew that. He doesn't own it anymore?

No, he doesn't anymore. I don't think he does, at least. Um, when it was an apartment in the late 1800s, a tenant was found murdered there, and in the weeks leading up to it, he had told acquaintances of ghostly figures, voices, and violent demonic activity in his apartment.

Fuck.

Now, when it was a school as well, this like really fucked me up. It was once— it was a couple of different schools, and once it was an all-girls primary school, and it was, um, it was only for Black girls. And this is important. I only say this because there were reports of kids who were only like 6, 7, 8 years old and didn't know the history of Madame Lalaurie. Yeah. Rushing to their teachers with scratches and bruises on their arms. And the teachers would obviously be horrified being like, oh my God, thinking another child had done this. But they'd be like, who did this to you? And they would always say that woman. Oh yeah.

No.

Yeah.

Nope. Ew.

So that place, I mean, you can—

why would you ever make that an all-black girl school?

I have no idea who the fuck decided that. I guess it's just the only, the only property. I suppose if it can be turned into—

there's like a plaque there or something. I don't know that there is, but like that commemorates all the lives lost in the fucking—

what a gnarly— the energy. I'd love to hear from people who have like been to this particular place because it's like, how did that feel? Yeah, I don't— does it— I just feel like the energy even walking by that must feel— I got to say, I think that's one place I'm not interested in going.

It's just like, oh, it's so sad.

It is really sad. I don't—

like, I'm not saying like don't go there or anything like that.

I just—

I don't know if I could.

Yeah, I mean, it's not the mansion anymore. It's rebuilt.

Exactly.

But that grounds has a lot of—

Honey the Lamb.

Honey the Lamb. That's a perfect— honey, the land.

Honey, the land.

The land does have some gnarly shit.

I know, I know that story. Like, I know how bad it is, but it never gets any easier to listen to.

Yeah, it really doesn't. It was a gnarly— that's why it took me a little while to do it, because I was like, I don't know if I want to tell this one today.

Yeah, no, I fully understand.

But yeah, I wish she had got justice. I do too. I really do.

I'm just looking up a fun fact for us right now.

Okay.

Ready?

I'm ready.

There's a lot to this.

Okay.

So this is from a TikTok I saw last night. So I'm not sure. I gotta like double check it, but okay. Abraham Lincoln elected to Congress 1846. JFK elected to Congress 1946. Abraham Lincoln elected president 1860. JFK. Elected 1960. Actually, this is perfect. Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.

Yep.

Both wives unfortunately lost a child while living in the White House. Both were shot on Friday. Interesting. Both were shot in the head. Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy. Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln. Both were assassinated by Southerners. Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson. Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, he was born in 1808. Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded Kennedy. Lyndon B. Johnson was born in 1908.

That, I think that is all true because I've seen that, that, that as a thing forever. That? I think that's crazy.

That's nuts.

Like you can't.

Like that's one of the biggest.

That's a fun fact. Yeah.

Like that's a series of fun facts. Yes, I saw that last night at like midnight as I'm doom scrolling TikTok, and I was like, what the fuck?

What the fuck?

I was like, that's crazy.

That is— I remember like the Lincoln secretary was Kennedy, Kennedy's secretary was Lincoln.

Yeah, but then you go to the very dates and it's literally like very strange, perfectly 100 years ago.

I wonder, it's like simulation.

It's simulation for sure. Yeah. Well, with all of that being said, we hope that you keep listening, and we hope you keep keep it weird, but not as— I can't even say what she did was weird. It's much beyond that. So just like, don't—

just, just keep it weird. That's all. Don't be an asshole. Yeah, be nice.

And when you see something, say something. Yeah, to the authorities. To the authorities, not just to your friend.