Two Friends and a Coffin

01/05/2024

Episode 23 of Two Friends and a Coffin is now live!

14/04/2024

Too soon?

07/03/2024

In the darkness, there is still light...such as our mascot Neptune "buddy", sleeping soundly. What's the sparks of light in your life?

12/02/2024

Still pertinent. In honor of couples in every age, everywhere.

10/02/2024

Get ready for the next Episode #22
Mistress of the House: Madame Lalaurie's Slaves

In the Vieux Carre of New Orleans stands a three story building which has become a stop on nearly every ghost tour within the French quarter of New Orleans. The Lalaurie Mansion has changed hands many times since it was built in 1831 (including a brief ownership by the actor Nicholas Cage), but by far, the original owner, Delphine Lalaurie, remains the most infamous.

The New Orleans that Madame Marie Delphine Macarty Lopez y Angulo Blanque Lalaurie was born into was a gumbo of cultures, changing national identities, and racial tension and fear. Originally the home of the Choctaw people, it became a fur trading outpost, and eventually, the capital of the French colony. By 1762 it had switched hands to the Spanish Crown, and by 1791 the arrival point for refugees from St. Domingue (modern day Haiti), which would eventually number 30,000. By 1809 the Crescent City had grown to a population which was equal parts white, freedman, and slave. In 1800 control once again reverted to French rule, which instituted many of the cultural, governmental, and legal customs that would last through much of the 19th century. Most particular was the Code Noir (“Black Code'') that governed the treatment and expectations between slaves and their owners. While the plantation system that governed much of the south was the predominant system, New Orleans was unique in the latitude granted to some of its slave populations. Sexual relationships between white owners and their domestics was common, and these mistresses and children were sometimes acknowledged, legitimizing them in the eyes of both law and church.

Unlike the rest of the south that preferred to keep their “negroes'' uneducated, New Orleans and surrounding areas of the delta were more complex. Learning to read and write was not uncommon. Some slaves were appointed as vendors of various wares, allowed to keep a portion of what they sold, leading to savings with the possibility of eventually buying their freedom. Theaters, churches, and entertainment venues for African Americans could be found. This would carry over into the final government change, which occurred with Napoleon’s sale of $15 million worth of land to the Thomas Jefferson administration in 1803.

Despite some concessions and cultural allowances, slavery remained an intolerable institution, in which people of color were property, primarily to whites, but also to some “freemen” (people of color who had achieved their own freedom, either through themselves, or being born into it). While supposedly protected by statute, slaves lived at the mercy of their masters, with little protections or consequences, and slaves were unable to testify against their masters. While many women remained powerless in society, they could be more cruel than their husbands to their slaves. Delphine Macarty appears to have been one of these.

Marie Delphine Macarty was born March 19, 1787, New Orleans, Spanish Louisiana to Louis Chevalier Macarty and Marie Jeanne Lerable. Raised as “Creole” (French or Spanish european descent) aristocracy on the Macarty Bywater Plantation, downriver of New Orleans, raised with every luxury imaginable and available. She would marry well a total of three times, starting in 1800 with Ramon Lopez y Angulo, a Spanish Royal Government Representative, who was 2nd in command to the Governor of New Spain. Despite being 13 years old, the uproar of their marriage appears to have been Lopez y Angulo’s not getting permission from the Spanish Crown prior. Within 3 years she was widowed after her husband died in Cuba during a voyage from Spain back to New Orleans. She remarried in 1807 the slave trader, businessman, political lackey, and somewhat scoundrel, Jean Blanque, affiliated with the pirate Lafitte brothers and Andrew Jackson during the Battle of New Orleans in 1812. Her final husband was to Louis Nicolas Lalaurie, a physician from France, specializing in osteoalignment (experimental medicine AKA physician applied torture). By this time, Delphine was 40 and Louis was 25, making Delphine the original Cougar. Delphine would have six children total between her husbands: Borja, Pauline, Laure, Jeanne, Paulin, and Jean Louis. Throughout her life, Delphine maintained a profitable estate of properties, inheriting massive fortunes from her mother and father.

In 1831, the Lalauries purchased a 2 story mansion on Royal Street. Despite a rocky relationship, this would remain their home for the next 3 years, from which they oversaw their many business interests, including numerous real estate investments and 30 slaves. Delphine was known for the brutality that she dealt out to her domestics, and she was brought to court at least two times by fellow citizens willing to speak out against her excesses. In 1828 she was by judgment forced to sell several of her slaves. This was short lived however, as they were eventually returned to her possession, having been sold to family and friends, who sold them back.

In 1834, a fire broke out in the kitchen of the mansion. Neighbors and bystanders rushed to their aid. When they inquired about keys to the slave quarters, concerned about those that might be left inside, they were rudely told that they should “mind their own affairs.” The responders, led by Judge Canonge, broke into the quarters, finding seven slaves in various cruel states: Many were covered with whip marks and scars; some chained with heavy collars and foot irons, suspended by their necks, their limbs outstretched; a feeble elderly woman was found with a deep wound; a young boy reporting having been chained for 5 months, starved; and, possibly, most appalling, a man with “a large hole in his head, his body [covered] from head to foot with scars and filled with worms.” The enslaved “negroes” were put on display, with thousands of citizens of New Orleans coming to see for themselves the work of the “mistress of the house.” Throngs of people gathered at the mansion, waiting for the authorities to arrest the Lalauries. After a day of waiting, without any response, the mob took matters into their own hands and broke down the gates, demanding justice. A terrified Delphine escaped with her children, assisted by their loyal coachman Bastien. Enraged by the escape of their quarry, the mob tore the mansion apart, throwing expensive furniture into the streets until little remained but the mere walls.

The Lalauries got a boat across the river Mandeville, from which they traveled to New York City; crossed the atlantic by steamer to Le Havre; and finally on to Paris, leaving their interests in the hands of Delphine’s son in laws, Placide Forstall and Auguste DeLassus. Having been raised in French culture, they found a comfortable new life in Paris, where Delphine maintained a lavish lifestyle, near the Paris Opera House. Delphine remained unrepentant until the end of her days, being so brazen as to think she might eventually return to her beloved city, to her old life. In 1842, her son wrote in frustration that “I bemoan the fate that awaits us if ever again my mother sets foot in that place where her conduct elicited general disapproval. She has caused us to shed many tears, and where she goes we prepare ourselves for bad news owing to her presence” and that his mother “never had any idea concerning the cause of her departure from New Orleans.”

Despite the many legends about her death (including the most popular, being mauled by a wild boar, of which there are of course a great many in the cosmopolitan city of Paris), Delphine’s life ended in 1849. Her funeral mass was held from Saint Louis D’Antin, her body being laid in Montmartre Cemetery. In 1851, she was exhumed, returned to the city of her birth, and entombed in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. She left behind a fortune valued today at $7 million…a cushy end to a woman with little regard for life, and at worst, the most infamous woman to have graced the crescent city.

The Lalaurie mansion today bears little resemblance to that which Delphine would have recognized. The original building was only two stories, with slave quarters in a back building attic. Completely gutted by the mob of 1834, the new owners rebuilt the wreck into an even grander three story home. Today it is a private residence where access has been limited to a handful of personalities, including Christopher Rice. Ghost hunters and tours alike salivate at these rare opportunities, the majority who must be content with the sidewalk in front of the ornate door. For ten dollars and an hour of your time, they will gladly recount a story of a gruesome report, complete with tourists who report feeling chills, nausea, headaches, and other spectral phenomena. Yet, the legacy of the Lalauries need no gruesome boogeyman, as truth is so much more haunting than fiction could ever be. Delphine Lalaurie was made into a demon. Yet, the fact she was an upstanding pillar of the community, a socialite known for charity and her good works, who could do what she did, and not even understand why her actions made her vilified…well, in many ways, that’s even more terrifying than any clown in a sewer or Norman Bates.

I started research for this episode thinking it would be just another dark historical event. It’s hard to rattle me. But there was something in this story that struck a chord in me. I read everything I could find in relation to this part of New Orleans history and I dived deep into archives, source material, and original documents. Raised in Boston, I early on developed a pretty good understanding of our relationship with slavery. I’ve read the books, I've watched the movies, and consider myself pretty “woke.” Yet, this episode has been one of the most difficult for me. I don’t think you can see “sale” documents of human beings and not be affected. I was literally left with bile in my mouth for weeks. What can I say? S**t got real.

Of the 30 slaves that Delphine owned between 1828 and 1834, only 19 can be accounted for. These people remained as first names in inventories and estate documents, relegated as sales, inheritance, or in a handful of cases, manumissions. Despite the public outrage to Delphine, the contemporary accounts and news stories fail to name the seven victims rescued from the fire. Even the loyal servant Bastien who ensured Delphine’s safety on that night in 1834, was sold in 1834 and again in 1836, only receiving his freedom in 1849. As far as I can determine, only two of her slaves can be traced after 1850, these being a son who was reunited with his mother, living in freedom in the 1870 US census.

Priscilla
Bastien
Bien
Theodore
Celestin
Abram
Diana
Eulalia
Frederick
James
Lucinda
Nelson

It’s estimated that a staggering 10 million slaves lived in the United States between 1619-1865, and that these contributed about 410 billion hours of labor. While most of us are far removed from this period in history, it remains a stain on the formation of the United States, a chilling reminder of the lives of the people of color who suffered not only under Madame Lalaurie, but under the entire evil institution of slavery that so many profited from and whose labors we still benefit from. Today, 417,500 people in the United States live in physical and s*xual servitude, 80% of which being women and children

I write these words on an airplane headed to a cousin’s wedding in Florida, wondering if Delphine ever felt a twinge of disgust at what she had done after whipping the boy in her attic? I’m not sure it matters. What does matter is what these histories teach us, and, that we resolve to leave behind a world that is better than the one we inherited.

References

Caldwell, Joe. 2002. [Lecture]. The Louisiana Purchase Lecture Series, Lecture 11: Free Blacks and Slaves in New Orleans During the Interregnum. Metropolitan College of University of New Orleans.

Hacker, J David. 2020. From ‘20 and odd’ to 10 Million: The Growth of the Slave Population in the United States. Slavery and Abolition, (41) 4, 840-855.

Morrow, Carolyn. 2012. Madame Lalaurie Mistress of the Haunted House. University Press of Florida.

Morrow, Carolyn. 2012. Mistress of the Haunted House. 64 Parishes. https://64parishes.org/mistress-haunted-house

Morrow, Carolyn. 2013. The Macarty Family in New Orleans Parish. New Orleans Genesis.https://carolynmorrowlong.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2013-The-Macarty-Family-in-Orleans-Parish-Part-1.pdf

Cummins, Dan. 2019. [Podcast]. Madame Delphine Lalaurie: How Evil Was She? Timesuck.

Parks, Marcus, Zebrowski, Henry, & Kissel, Ben. 2023. [Podcast]. Episode 552 & 553: Madame Lalaurie Parts I and II - The Lady of the House. Last Podcast on the Left.

New Orleans Notarial Record Archives, Genealogical Society of Utah.
Paris, France Archives - Records of Death, Genealogical Society of Utah.

04/02/2024

Come listen to Episode 20
Secrets of the Paris Opera House
Delve into the mysterious and haunted history of the Paris Opera House. Discover the real-life inspirations behind Gaston Leroux's iconic novel, 'The Phantom of the Opera.' Learn about the strange events that surround this grand theater. Explore the eerie atmosphere of the underground lake, and, the reputed presence of the phantom. Unveil the scandalous sculptures, failed assassination attempts, and the famous chandelier incident that happened in the actual opera house. From ghostly sightings to tragic deaths, this episode provides a captivating insight into one of the world's most famous theaters.

01/01/2024

You are what you all what to are. F**k new years and all that. You are amazing all you coffineers the way you are. Straight, gay, 509 lbs, bi, sickle cell, bipolar, major depressive, what the f**k ever. We love you for what you are!

17/12/2023

09/12/2023

Looking for a coffineer to join our team as a social media influencer. Come be an integral part of who we are! Carly Welch Joshua Guppy Behn

09/12/2023

Eva Braun: Naive barbie girl, blaise hausfrau, willful lover, or cunning opportunist?

06/12/2023

Happy Tuesday fellow coffineers! Almost the weekend!

15/11/2023

We need more Barbaras in the world...

24/10/2023

Episode 19: Dark Disney. Learn about Walter Elias Disney and the rags to riches story, his empire built on dark cartoons of woodsmen cutting out hearts. Along the way, we'll scatter some ashes at the Haunted Mansion; overturn a bobsled ride; catch a brain eating amoeba at River Country; and find a steamer trunk of Marilyn Monroe p**n. Come to the intersection of magic and corporate profits. With special ghost host Palestina.

05/10/2023

Find laughter in even the dark moments...

03/09/2023

Seriously though, fellow Coffineers, Carls and Behn hope you stay safe out there with Hurricane and tropical storm season upon us. Listen to your local authorities and EVACUATE when the order comes down. Don't try to ride these out.

29/08/2023

Happy Tuesday Coffineers. You survived another Monday!

26/08/2023

Great website for those wanting to learn more about the Whitechapel Murders, the victims, the suspects, the investigation, and everything in between.

The Jack the Ripper murders history site. We discuss the Whitechapel murders of 1888, outline the full history and assess the various suspects.

18/08/2023

Jack the Ripper: Our First Episode A-Lister

Between 1888 and 1891, eleven impoverished s*x workers were murdered, resulting in an atmosphere of fear among residents. This palpable fear was possibly equalled only by the heightened frustration of ithe nvestigators who scoured any and all possible leads looking for the cur. Despite extensive resources and the best investigators which the London Metropolitan and Scotland Yard could offer, those responsible for the crimes would never be identified. Whether they were committed by the same perpetrator or several different ones has always been debated. However, the so called "Canonical Five" were initially linked together by police, and, continue to live on in popular culture and among, media, sofa sleuths, and historians as having been victims of "Jack the Ripper."

In this episode of Two Friends and a Coffin, Carls dives into the Whitechapel Murders of 1888, speaking for the canonical five, as well as an additional suspected victim who may have been "Saucy Jack's" first murder:
Martha Tabrum
Mary Ann Nichols
Annie Chapman
Elizabeth Stride
Catherine Eddowes
Mary Jane Kelly

27/04/2023

Carolyn Bryant Donham has died, the last, and arguably the catalyst, involved in Emmett Till's murder. Rather than focusing on her, I want to focus on Emmett, one of a long line of Black youth, killed for being black. In 1955 his battered body was pulled out of a river with a fan tied around his neck. His mother, Mamie Till Mosley made the decision to display his body, whose photographs were published across the US. This was one of the events that gave momentum to the Civil Rights Movement, that made real the face of violent racism and oppression, forcing eyes open and the "waking up" of America. Much, much, much work remains still. Till's casket was saved following an exhumation in 2005, and it makes up an exhibit at The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC.

15/04/2023

New episode up this weekend. Can you guess the topic. 🤔

15/02/2023

It's been long long LONG overdue, but we are excited to announce that we have a website! This will help us get more exposure and get more Cofineers on board. All episodes are on there, ready to listen. Come check us out!!

Two Friends and a Coffin is a podcast that explores the dark side of life and death. True crime and dark history, we speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves.

01/01/2023

Two new episodes:
1. The Ogden Utah Hifi Murders
2. HIV: Gaetan Dugas, Patient Zero
Spotify, itunes, Passenger Pigeon ☺️

25/12/2022

Blessed 7th night of Chanukah and Eve of Christmas to you all!

19/12/2022

Wishing all of our Jewish friends, colleagues, and fellow casketeers a very very Happy Chanukah!

11/12/2022

Truth...