Born in New Orleans in 1780, Marie Delphine McCarty belonged to the upper class being an affluent white Creole family. She was only the second generation, as her family had moved from Ireland to then-Spanish-controlled Louisiana a generation before her.
She had five children whom she adored from her three husbands. Her first husband, a Spaniard, Don Ramon de Lopez y Angulo, was a high-ranking Spanish officer. He died untimely, and four years later, she married a Frenchman named Jean Blanque.
Jean Blanque was a banker, lawyer, and legislator and was almost as affluent in the community as Delphine’s family had been. They had four children together. He died later, and soon after, she married a young doctor, Leonard Louis Nicolas LaLaurie.
In 1831, Madame Delphine bought a three-story mansion, and like most society women of the time, she kept slaves. In public, she was so polite and kind to her slaves. There were rumours that the kind acts were a disguise for the conditions the enslaved people in her home faced.
Some of the rumours in circulation were that she starved her 70-year-old cook and kept her chained to the stove and that she was keeping secret slaves for her doctor husband to practice Haitian voodoo medicine. There were other reports that her cruelty extended to her daughters, who she would punish and whip if they tried to help the enslaved people in any way.
Two of the rumours have been recorded to be accurate, though, one being that her male slave chose to die by jumping out of a third-story window rather than be tortured by Madame Delphine.
The second proven to be true was that her slave girl, a 12-year-old named Lia, committed suicide for fear of being punished by Madame Delphine. Witnesses who saw madame Delphine burying her corpse reported her to the police, who fined her $300 and forced her to sell nine of her slaves that she bought back.
Following Lia’s death, people became super suspicious of madame Delphine, so when her house caught fire, and only her came running out, they went in to investigate. Nothing could prepare them for the horrors they saw.
The locals found the slaves in the attic, and they had been tortured. Reports from eyewitnesses claim that there were at least seven slaves, beaten, bruised, and bloodied to within an inch of their lives, their eyes gouged out, skin flayed, and mouths filled with excrement and then sewn shut.
One report claimed that there were over 100 victims in the attic along with dead bodies that had their corpses mutilated beyond recognition, their organs not all intact or inside their bodies. Another particularly disturbing report claimed that there were people with holes in their skulls and wooden spoons near them that would be used to stir their brains. The witnesses also said they saw a woman wrapped in human intestines.
The angry mob of over 4000 people destroyed everything in the house, but madame Delphine and her driver escaped. While people allege that she went to Paris, and records also claim that she did and died there, to date, the body of Madame Marie Delphine LaLaurie has never been found.
