“Thursday 22nd August – New Orleans is a
hybrid of cultures, religions and traditions. I arrived at my hotel, just
minutes from Jackson Square. Apparently this spot is the second most
photographed spot in the country (the first is the castle at Disney). I have no
idea how they work these things out but it’s beautiful nonetheless. Opposite
the park stands St Louis Cathedral, the largest Catholic cathedral in the
United States. I set out to explore the French Quarter in the early evening,
and it wasn’t long until I found myself on Bourbon Street, the liveliest and
craziest stretch of the city. So many sights, sounds and smells I had no idea
where to look first. There were street dancers, drunken men dressed as devils,
strippers trying to entice you into their clubs, Jazz musicians drawing large
crowds, playing their sax and trumpet...alongside all of this were tacky shops
selling t shirts, Mardi Gras beads and plastic Hurricane cocktail containers, a
famous drink that was created in New Orleans. I found a restaurant in the mix
of all the action and tried seafood gumbo, red rice and beans and crawfish
etoufee on a platter, then a chocolate-style bread and butter pudding dessert
(a Southern delicacy). Wherever you are on Bourbon Street, you can hear the
sound of Jazz, and it’s such beautiful and uplifting music particularly when
you are in a place with so much life.
New Orleans is also a fantastic place to learn about
Voodoo, a religion that has become misrepresented – even twisted into something
completely different by society. Voodoo has its origins in Africa. Our idea of
Voodoo, as in sticking needles in dolls and causing pain, is quite different to
reality. Voodoo dolls do exist, but the pins are used to concentrate positive
energy to a particular point of the body. It can be used to send negative
energy, but the religion is really based around peace, love and sex. Voodoo has
been described as a ‘three-tiered system’ of God, spirits and ancestors. A
single God is part of the religion, but spirits are consulted and worshipped on
a more regular basis. Ancestors become spirits and protect each individual
throughout their life. To summon or communicate with a spirit, a gris-gris can
be used. Gris-gris are objects used in Voodoo as a source of magic. An African
word, there are several different types of gris-gris but they are usually split
into four – love and romance (used to attract or keep a lover, or even to break
up other relationships), power (to gain a foothold over someone or in the world
generally), luck and financial gain, and healing or uncrossing (resolving an
act or spell that someone has done against you). In the c19th, Voodoo horrified
much of the elite, but wealthy businessmen did consult a famous Voodoo
priestess, Marie Laveau. Laveau was the daughter of an African American woman
and a white plantation owner, and she was so well respected that the Catholic
church allowed her to practice feet away from St Louis Cathedral. Unfortunately, the Voodoo Cultural Center regularly
has visitors asking how to direct pain to an enemy and some of the tacky shops
on Bourbon Street tend to perpetuate that myth rather than prevent it. I
suppose that’s unsurprising.
“Sunday 25th August – First thing this morning I had a tour around St Louis Cemetery, the oldest and most famous burial ground in New Orleans. If you open any tourist guidebook, or speak to any local, a cemetery tour is one of the best things to do in the city. It might sound odd, but these burial places are famous throughout the world because of the elaborate tombs and crypts. St Louis was founded in 1789 and holds the graves of, among others, Marie Laveau and Homer Plessy, an African American activist who challenged segregation laws in the Plessy vs Fergusson case in 1896. Most people think the tombs were built because the city is below sea level, but our eccentric tour guide informed us it was purely to emulate tombs in Europe. We learned about the 1853 Yellow Fever epidemic, the worst epidemic to hit an American city, where over 11,000 people died. In fact, the death rate was so high that people could not build coffins fast enough, so people were buried in mass graves, or simply just left. Yellow fever was a nasty disease, and was very often fatal: victims would suffer for a few days and then appear to get better, only to vomit black bile and expire pretty much on the spot. After this particular epidemic, New Orleans earned the nickname, “the city that care forgot.” It was a very humid day, so it was actually quite difficult to take in everything that was said (even for a history nerd like me). It is the middle of August so it’s not surprising, but walking around there made me feel like I was being shut in my own tomb of overwhelming heat. I walked back to the French Quarter and stopped for a quick hot chocolate for me in Café du Monde, the most famous eatery in the city. It was founded in the 1860s, and it’s open 24 hours a day for coffee and beignets, a French doughnut-type thing that is sprinkled with a lot of icing sugar. While my parents took a rest from the humidity, I ventured to the Pharmacy museum, the only one of its kind in the country. It preserves some of the medicines used to treat c19th illnesses, childbirth, herbal remedies (often involving heroine and cocaine) and some Voodoo potions (mainly for luck and fortune), which proved popular even among elite members of the community. This made the museum unique and incredible interesting. There were also some surgical kits from the Civil War, some horrible looking tools for amputation and a short history of the origins of anesthetics. During the war, a skilled surgeon could amputate a limb in 15 seconds, but you would still hope that poor soldier fell unconscious during that time. In the pharmacies and apothecaries of New Orleans, if an epidemic broke out different vases, called Show Globes, were placed in the window with coloured liquid to illustrate what type of disease it was – so there were different colours for cholera and Yellow Fever. The really interesting thing though, is that this was the standard way New Orleanians learned of an epidemic, as it wasn’t published in the newspapers. New Orleans was a port city, and depended on trade for survival, and panic in the newspapers about an epidemic would potentially frighten away investors. The Show Globes (below) were a quiet way of communication. Fascinating stuff.
In the 1930s, a little girl burst into the police
station in the French quarter, covered head to toe in blood. She had come from
a house not far away, and she told a horrible tale of torture: two men had kept
her and four other victims strapped to beds, drinking their blood at the wrist.
The police recognised the house as the Carter residence - two brothers had lived there for some years and were well respected in the community. They went to the house
and found four victims still alive, and twenty bodies stacked together in a
room, all completely drained of blood. The coroner estimated they had been
there for roughly three weeks. The next morning, the police waited for the
brothers to arrive home, and promptly seized them to take them away for
questioning. After a long hard day working at the docks, you would think the
brothers would be easy to arrest, but it took 8 policemen beating them with
clubs to finally subdue them. Strong individuals you might say. The brothers
were tried and executed, and their bodies were placed in tombs in St Louis
Cemetery. A year later, to make room for other bodies, their tomb was opened
but of course, there were no remains. No body or ashes to speak of. Since the
1930s, there have been several break ins recorded at the Carter House, and
sketches were taken from witnesses to try and catch the intruders. In most
cases, the sketches looked exactly like the Carter brothers…
A street away from the Carter house, stands the
Lalaurie Mansion. This was probably the most gruesome story I have ever heard,
and it’s not for the faint hearted:
Madame Lalaurie was born in 1775. She was married
three times, after the first two died in mysterious circumstances (read: she
killed them). In 1834, Madame Lalaurie and her husband hosted a large party at their house. Within a few hours, a fire broke out at the mansion and as the
guests evacuated the house, the wealthy socialite and her husband were nowhere
to be found. Police entered her house to try and find the source of the blaze,
but instead, they stumbled upon a hellish scene. They found a 70-year-old slave
in the kitchen, who confessed to starting the fire, and urged the police to go
upstairs since “anyone who had been taken there, never came back.” Behind a
thick, oak door was a torture chamber: bodies of mutilated slaves were stacked
against the walls, and as the police entered the room, they found slaves still
alive who had suffered horrific injuries. Hands and feet had been amputated
and sewn onto other body parts, men were suspended by the neck by iron
pikes; lips were branded or sewn shut, and one poor woman had all her bones
broken so she could be placed inside a small travelling suitcase. The tortured
slaves were rescued from the house (only to be put on display in the local jail
for a while) and were then taken to the hospital. Madame Lalaurie was never
found. Some say she died in Paris, but evidence remains elusive.
The last story our guide told once again concerned
vampires. Two or three years ago the guide and a friend cycled past the old
convent house in the French Quarter. They noticed a shutter on the window
hanging loose, as though someone had escaped from the inside. It
remained in that state for several days, something the guide thought was odd
since the New Orleans Historical Society usually worked fast to restore old buildings.
The guide decided to look into the history of the convent further, and
discovered that the particular room with the broken shutter was used to lock up
certain individuals – vampires. The bolts and nails of the shutter were made
from silver and blessed by the Pope himself. It took the convent nine days to repair that
broken shutter. Apparently, the same length of time it takes for the Pope to
bless silver nails, and send a missionary over to the convent to put the nails
in place…
A cracking good story.
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