[7] Her uncle by marriage, Esteban Rodríguez Miró, was governor of the Spanish American provinces of Louisiana and Florida during 1785–1791, and her cousin, Augustin de Macarty, was mayor of New Orleans from 1815 to 1820.

[17] Martineau wrote that public rumors about her mistreatment of slaves at the Royal Street residence were sufficiently widespread, so much so that a local lawyer was dispatched to the property to remind LaLaurie of the laws for the upkeep of enslaved people.

Later writers elaborated on the case, saying that Lia had been brushing Delphine's hair when she hit a snag, angering LaLaurie to the point that she grabbed a whip and started chasing her.

[20] According to Martineau, this incident led to an investigation of the LaLauries, in which they were found guilty of illegal cruelty and forced to forfeit nine enslaved people of the household.

[19] Similarly, Martineau recounted stories that LaLaurie kept her cook starved and chained to the kitchen stove, beating her daughters when they attempted to feed themselves or others.

Upon being refused the keys by the LaLauries, the bystanders broke down the doors to the quarters and found "seven people, more or less horribly mutilated ... suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to the other", who claimed to have been imprisoned there for some months.

[22] One of those who entered the premises was Judge Jean François Canonge, who subsequently deposed to having found in the LaLaurie mansion (among others) a "negress ... wearing an iron collar" and "an old negro woman who had received a very deep wound on her head [who was] too weak to be able to walk".

[23] A version of this story, circulating in 1836 and recounted by Martineau, added that the enslaved people were emaciated, showed signs of being flayed with a whip, were bound in restrictive postures, and wore spiked iron collars which kept their heads in static positions.

[21] When the discovery of the abused and enslaved people became widely known, a mob of local citizens attacked the Royal Street mansion and "demolished and destroyed everything upon which they could lay their hands".

[22] A sheriff and his officers were called to disperse the crowd, but, by the time the mob left, the property had sustained major damage, with "scarcely any thing [remaining] but the walls.

[24] The Pittsfield Sun, citing the New Orleans Advertiser, and writing several weeks after the evacuation of LaLaurie's quarters of her victims, claimed that two of the enslaved people found in the mansion had died following their rescue.

"[25] These claims were repeated by Martineau in her 1838 book Retrospect of Western Travel, where she placed the number of unearthed bodies at two, including the aforementioned child, Lia.

Martineau wrote in 1838 that she fled New Orleans during the mob violence that followed the fire, taking a coach to the waterfront and traveling, by schooner, to Mobile, Alabama, and then to Paris.

"[30] The English translation of the inscription reads: "Madame Lalaurie, born Marie Delphine Mccarthy, died in Paris, December 7, 1842, at the age of 6–.

[33] The entrance to the building bears iron grillwork, and the door is carved with an image of "Phoebus in his chariot, and with wreaths of flowers and depicting garlands in bas-relief".

The second floor holds three large drawing rooms connected by ornamented sliding doors, whose walls are decorated with plaster rosettes, carved woodwork, black marble mantle pieces and fluted pilasters.

[35] Folk histories of LaLaurie's abuse and murder of those enslaved on the property circulated in Louisiana during the 19th century, and were reprinted in collections of stories by Henry Castellanos[36] and George Washington Cable.

Jeanne deLavigne, writing in Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans (1946), alleged that LaLaurie had a "sadistic appetite [that] seemed never appeased until she had inflicted on one or more of her black servitors some hideous form of torture" and claimed that those who responded to the 1834 fire had found "male slaves, stark naked, chained to the wall, their eyes gouged out, their fingernails pulled off by the roots; others had their joints skinned and festering, great holes in their buttocks where the flesh had been sliced away, their ears hanging by shreds, their lips sewn together ... Intestines were pulled out and knotted around naked waists.

In her 1999 novel Fever Season, mystery writer Barbara Hambly incorporated the events of the 1834 fire and discovery of the brutal treatment of the slaves into her narrative.

In the 2015–2017 serialized science fiction novel Unsong by writer Scott Alexander, LaLaurie is mentioned as being in the nicest part of hell, reserved for the worst sinners, along with Hitler and Beria.