Historical Spotlight: The LaLaurie Mansion
Some people choose to ignore morality just to get ahead. Instead of doing the right thing and allowing their work to speak for itself, they manipulate, lie, cheat, steal, and take advantage of people and situations for their own personal gain. Greed and jealousy, two emotions that have influenced human behavior since the beginning of time, whisper lies that certain people are better than others simply because of their skin tone, family lineage, and other attributes that don’t consider merit or ability. Join me as we shine a Historical Spotlight on the LaLaurie Mansion Torture Chamber in New Orleans, a sad example of just how far some people are willing to go to maintain their unjust status in society.
New Orleans, Louisiana was founded in 1718 by French colonists to serve as the capital of the Louisiana territory and secure the Mississippi River delta for France. It was a difficult area for the French to settle due to the swampy marshlands and occupation from the Native Americans. To help, the city received its first shipment of slaves in 1719.
It belonged to the French and Spanish until the United States purchased it in 1803. Over time, cotton and sugar emerged as vital exports for the local economy and in the 1820s, the area produced more than half the cotton made in the entire country.
New Orleans was also the largest slave market in the United States up until the Civil War. More than 135,000 people were bought and sold in the city even after Congress banned the international slave trade in 1808. As many as 750,000 people were shipped there from ports like Baltimore, Richmond, and overseas before slavery was abolished.
By 1803, slaves made up more than one-third of the population in the area. It was so widespread that there were over 50 documented places for buying and selling people. Transactions happened most often at places called coffee houses which served as bars, restaurants, gambling houses, pool halls, meeting spaces, hotels, and auction blocks. They were often known simply as “exchanges” and emphasized how inhumane slavery actually was.
Traders would use the coffee houses to receive their mail, share prices of cotton, sugar, and humans, locate customers, and as general offices for networking and socializing. A popular one was called Hewlett’s Exchange, which held slave auctions daily except on Sundays. It’s estimated that some traders earned more than $56,000 annually from selling humans. One company known as Franklin and Armfield earned between $11,000 and $17,000 during the last two months of 1828, equivalent to $300,000 to $450,000 today.
Similar to the traders who actively participated in slavery, the elites of society also propped it up by not calling out their brethren. Instead, they had butlers, servants, and slaves to run their homes and raise their children. While they didn’t outright sell humans, they still upheld the system that put Black people in a subservient position in society.
Madame Delphine LaLaurie was a rich socialite born in New Orleans who hosted many lavish parties at her Royal Street mansion. She, like other wealthy members of society, had slaves to wait on her family hand and foot.
At that point in history, the police were not focused on punishing the powerful and wealthy people in society for how they treated their enslaved staff. Knowing that, she was notorious for mistreating her slaves and skated under the radar for a long time.
In 1833, Delphine chased a young Black girl to her death by making her fall off a roof. She tried to cover it up, but police found the poor girl’s body hidden in a well. She was found guilty for cruelty and was forced to forfeit nine slaves, but she arranged for her relatives and friends to buy them and secretly return them to her property.
On April 10, 1834, the LaLaurie mansion caught on fire after a 70-year old Black woman tried to escape Delphine’s torture. She was trapped in the kitchen after being chained to the stove and was terrified of being punished. Seven slaves, who were terribly mutilated, were found tied up in her attic wearing spiked iron collars. They were held there for months and probably would have died there if it weren’t for the fire.
A local newspaper named The New Orleans Bee reported on the incident and once word spread about her actions, an angry mob ransacked and destroyed what was left of the mansion. Delphine and her husband escaped back to Paris to avoid being prosecuted, but her reputation was ruined. She died in Paris in December 1849, but it’s believed that her body was brought back to New Orleans and buried at the St. Louis Cemetery.
The LaLaurie Mansion was once considered a living nightmare, but has now been turned into a tourist attraction because it’s supposedly haunted. Historians in the area have criticized how tourism and pop culture has glorified the mistreatment of enslaved Black people and has led to ghost stories driving visitors to the land where much suffering occurred.
While the Emancipation Proclamation freed many Black people from being forced into servitude, it did nothing to change the opinions or the unjust actions of the dominant society. That deep-rooted trauma experienced across centuries, around the country, and through family lineage continues to impact people even today. It’s important to keep pushing for a more fair and equitable society.
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Signed,
Jessica Marie
