After all the conversations concerning the McCarty's I realized that I had heard of them before. This is copied from "The French Quarter" by Herbert Asbury. It is quite a story, but not for the squeamish! Penny T "There were a few slave-owners in early New Orleans who consistently refused to permit their black people to attend the gatherings in Congo Square, and one of them was Madame Delphine Lalaurie, the wife of Dr. Louis Lalaurie, whose mansion at Royal and Hospital Streets was one of the most magnificent in the city. Madame Lalaurie's slaves,in fact, with the exception of a sleek, handsome mulatto who was her butler and coachman, were seldom seen in public at all, and when they did appear, even her friends remarked that they looked cowed and beaten and were thin to the point of emancipation. The mulatto butler, however, was always plump and well fed; he was clearly Madame Lalaurie's favorite. Later it was hinted that his position in the household was even higher than that of a trusted servant. It seems that it should have been obvious even to the obtuse white officials that there was something queer about the Lalauries, but the dancers of Congo Square, among whom ran swift undercurrents of gossip and information, knew of the extraordinary happenings in the Royal Street mansion long before they came to the knowledge of the authorities, or at any rate before the authorities dared take any action. For Madame Lalaurie was a McCarty, a member of a very powerful New Orleans family, and herself so prominent in society that when Lafayette visited the city in 1825 she entertained him at dinner. she was famous throughout Louisiana as a charming and gracious hostess, and is said to have been one of the most beautiful women of the New Orleans of her time. Her husband -- he was her third -- was a meek, mousy little man, wholly under her domination. and so were her two daughters, one of whom was a cripple. This bewitching and engaging creature, who entertained the great of New Orleans at her sumptuous table and fascinated her guests by the brilliance of her wit, in reality had the heart of a sadistic demon and was unquestionably mad. A little of the truth about Madame Lalaurie became known about the beginning of 1833, when a neighbor, a woman, described to the police what she had seen on a moonlight night a few days before. She was looking out of her window, she said, when a little negro girl ran screaming out of the Lalaurie mansion into the courtyard, followed by Madame Lalaurie lashing her savagely with a heavy whip. The child made the circuit of the courtyard and then fled back into the house, pursued by Madame Lalaurie, and the neighbor heard them as they ran through the house, the sounds of shrieks and pattering footsteps punctuated by the crack of the whip-lash as it found its mark. Presently they appeared on the roof, and the child, beaten to the eaves by a rain of blows, leaped wildly into space and shattered her body upon the flagstones of the courtyard. The police found the broken corpse at the bottom of an old well on the Lalaurie premises, and Madame Lalaurie was summoned to court, where she was fined and all her slaves taken from her. But the confiscated Negroes, when sold by the Sheriff at public auction, were bought by Madame Lalauries relatives and immediately returned to her. she resumed her sadistic cruelties and practiced them without restraint or interference until April 10, 1834. On the morning of that day fire broke out in the Lalaurie mansion. It spread rapidly, and within a few minutes the main part of the house was filled with smoke, and streamers of flame were darting from the windows. The alarm bell was rung, and a large crowd began to gather, while the firemen hurried to the scene with their buckets and primitive fire-engines. Neighbors and friends of the Lalauries rushed into the house and began to carry out the furniture, while Madame Lalaurie calmly pointed out the pieces she wished saved. Several men, headed by Judge J. F. Canonge of the Criminal Court, went into the kitchen where they found Madame Lalaurie's cook, a seventy-year-old Negress, kneeling in the center of the room, manacled to the end of a twenty foot chain. The links where broken and the slave carried to the street, and Judge Canonge asked De Lalaurie if there were any more slaves in the house who might be in danger from the fire. Dr. Lalaurie suggested "in insulting tones" that Judge Canonge mind his own business. Meanwhile the cook, who later confessed that she had fired the house, preferring death to Madame Lalaurie's cruelty, had told police that other slaves were confined in the garret. Judge Canoge and Felix Lefebvre, with several men, started upstairs, smashing several locked doors which barred the way. When they reached the attic, they found seven slaves, four men and three women. All were naked and laden with heavy chains riveted to iron bands fastened about their necks, waists, and ankles. In addition, two wore iron collars with sharp edges and studded with spikes which had caused horrible wounds. Several were manacled in positions which had crippled them for life. The floor of the attic was littered with instruments of torture, sufficiently numerous to cover a long table when they were displayed later in the courtyard of the calaboose. One by one the slaves were led or carried into the street. The crowd pressed food upon them when they said they had not eaten for a week, and two ate and died; the others were taken to the calaboose, where they were attended by physicians. when they were well enough, they talked. some of them had been chained in the attic for five months; others for shorter periods. Daily, and sometimes oftener, Madame Lalaurie came into the attic and beat them with iron bars and heavy whips, or gouged their flesh with sharp instruments. Frequently she was accompanied by the mulatto butler, who wielded the whip and otherwise assisted in the torture while she watched in ecstasy. By the time the last of the manacled slaves had been rescued, the fire was extinguished and the furniture carried back into the house. More than two thousand persons were now gathered before the mansion, and they waited patiently, expecting the police or soldiers to appear and take the Lalauries away to prison. But nothing happened. Hours passed, and still there was no indication that the city intended to d anything about the situation that had been exposed. Dr. Lalaurie had vanished, but through the windows the crowd could see Madame Lalaurie as she moved about, chatting with friends and directing the replacing of furniture. Late in the afternoon, just before dusk, angry murmurs began to arise from the crowd, whereupon the mulatto butler promptly closed and barred the heavy door of the house and the iron gates of the courtyard. angered, the crowd now became a vengeful mob, milled uncertainly for a few moments, and then swayed forward, battering vainly upon the stone walls of the building. But the men in the front ranks fell back as the gates were suddenly flung open, and a carriage emerged from the courtyard, drawn by a team of black horses at a plunging gallop. On the box was the mulatto, lashing with his whip the frantic horses and the faces of the men who clutched vainly at the rocking carriage, while crouched in the back seat was the veiled figure of Madame Lalaurie. The carriage moved swiftly up Hospital Street and turned into Bayou Road -- Madame Lalaurie was gone. Several hundred men streamed down the road, yelling and cursing, but the remainder of the mob turned its attention to the house. the doors and windows were quickly smashed, and the rioters thronged into the mansion and began their work of destruction. Furniture was thrown into the street, where it was destroyed or carried away; pictures and hangings were pulled from the walls; carpets were ripped up and slashed; the mahogany balustrades were torn away; the wainscoting was hacked and gouged; and every pane of glass in the building was broken. Part of the mob, as one of the newspapers said next day, was "in the very act of pulling down the walls," while other rioters had begun to loot neighboring houses,when Sheriff John Holland appeared with a posse of deputies and a detachment of United States troops. Soon afterwards the mob dispersed. Meanwhile, according to the most plausible account of Madame Lalauries movements, the mulatto coachman had driven her to St John Bayou, where her husband was waiting with a small schooner, in which they sailed at once for Mandeville, on Lake Pontchartrain. Once his mistress was aboard the vessel, the mulatto drove back toward New Orleans, but on Bayou Road met a mob which killed him and destroyed the carriage. From Mandeville the Lalauries went to New York, but left there for Paris when they were recognized and hissed at a theater. Madame Lalaurie is said to have been killed a few years later while boar-hunting at Pau. The mansion on Royal Street was rebuilt, but it was a haunted house from the moment Madame Lalaurie's carriage dashed through the courtyard gates. Tenants usually left after a few months, and many of them complained that at night they heard the footsteps of the Negro child who had jumped from the roof, and the clanking of chains in the garret. In later years, the building was successively a school for whites, a school for Negro girls, a gambling-house, and a cheap tenement. For several years, the lower floor was occupied by the Haunted Saloon. The structure still stands, and is today the Warrington House, a refuge for friendless and penniless ex-convicts. {Pgs. 247-252} ____________________________________________________________________________________ You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com