Folk histories of Lalaurie's poor treatment of her slaves circulated in Louisiana during the nineteenth century, and were reprinted in collections of stories by Henry Castellanos[REF] and George Washington Cable [REF].
Today, modern re-tellings of the Lalaurie legend often use deLavigne and Smith's versions of the tale to found claims of explicit tortures, and to place the number of slaves who died under Lalaurie's care at as many as one hundred [REF].