Rumors of LaLaurie’s Cruelty Began only after her Third Marriage
Delphine married her first husband, Don Ramon de Lopez y Angula when she was just 14, giving birth to her eldest daughter, Borja, after his death. In 1808, when she was 21, she married merchant and businessman Jean-Paul Blanque with whom she had three further daughters and a son. The family split their time between their plantation and a two-story townhouse at 409 Royal Street in New Orleans. It was at this house on Royal Street that Delphine began to carve out a reputation as a society hostess.
In 1818, Delphine was widowed and remained so for the next ten years. During the period of these first two marriages and her widowhood, not a breath of scandal touched her name. However, all that was to change in 1828 when she married her third husband, Leonard LaLaurie. Delphine first met her future husband in 1825 when he was a twenty-five-year-old physician newly arrived from France. Delphine engaged him to treat her daughter Pauline who seems to have had a spinal deformity. By 1828, Delphine had had LaLaurie’s son, and soon afterward, the couple married.
Almost immediately, the rumors began. In December 1828, Jean Boze, the business manager for a French absentee landlord, the Baron de Ste-Geme wrote to his employer how the authorities had descended on the Lalauries home and found ill-treated slaves “still all bloody.” That same month, Boze reported how Dr. and Madame LaLaurie did not “have a happy household.” “They often fight, often separate and then return to each other, “he told the Baron.
Harriet Martineau, an English Journalist who visited New Orleans in 1836, collected similar tales from other New Orleans Residents at the time. The LaLaurie’s slaves always looked “singularly haggard and wretched.” the informants claimed- and Madame LaLaurie punished her daughters if they attempted to feed them. So concerned were the authorities that they sent a young creole Law student to remind the lady of the letter of the law regarding the treatment of her slaves. The young lawyer found the still attractive Madame LaLaurie so gentle and courteous that he could not believe she had such dark secrets and declared all was in order.
In 1832, the family moved into a new home at 1140 Royal Street, a property Madame LaLaurie had started renovating in 1831. Here, the tales of Madame LaLaurie’s cruelty continued- and intensified.