New Orleans French Quarters Dead Babies in a Church Wall
The Casket Girls
They arrived in 1728.
The port of New Orleans bustled with activity; the shouting of men, the stamping hooves of the horses, the scraping of boxes equally the ships were unloaded. For the grouping of young women aboard the transport, La Nouvelle Orléans was a taste of the forbidden, of the unknown.
The women were ushered down the wooden plank onto the soiled footing; to their chest, they each clutched a coffin-shaped cassette, or minor chest, that held all of their belongings. After nearly six months traversing the rough waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the young women were eager to make their arrival. Eager, and perhaps, also a fleck nervous about their welcome.
Handpicked by the Bishop of Quebec on order of the French King, the young women were all of appropriate historic period and background. On their agenda was simply one thing: to make a good friction match and ally one of the French colonists inhabiting the budding Louisiana colony.
Upon the sight of them, however, rumors began to circulate throughout the town.
"Pâle," the Frenchmen all muttered to themselves as they spotted the women meant to become their brides. Then very stake were the girls that their skin reddened and blistered within moments of indelible the hot, sub-tropical sun.
Clutching their casket-shaped chests in tight grips, the young women—Filles a la Cassette, as they became known—were brought to their new home. Until their respective marriages, they were to remain under the care and the protection of the Ursuline nuns.
The fate of the Filles a la Cassette was not as was expected. The local men in the Vieux Carre gravely disrespected the women. Some were placed into unwanted marriages, just to exist mistreated by their husbands. Others, upon finding themselves alone and unwed, were forced into prostitution.
The French Rex had had plenty. He demanded the girls' render to France.
The Sisters of the Ursuline Convent so took the caskets-shaped chests that had once carried everything that the Filles a la Cassette had endemic and climbed the steps to the tertiary floor of the Convent at 1112 Rue Chartres. Up until this time, the windows and door to the tertiary flooring had always been sealed shut, and they remained and then at that fourth dimension as well.
Just a short time later, when the nuns returned to the third flooring, they constitute that the chests . . . they were completely empty. They spared no section of the 3rd floor during their search though the holding were never recovered. Fearing that the immature women might have been something other than what they said they were, the Ursuline nuns spared no expense in making sure that zero ever left that third-floor space.
The doors were bolted shut; the nails to the windows were blessed past the Pope himself and locked in place.
The whispering began anew, only this time they added i more than word: "Vampire."
In 1978, two paranormal investigators seeking answers to whether the Filles a la Cassette had, in fact, been vampires, camped out directly in front of the Old Ursuline Convent at 1112 Chartres Street. They'd been previously kicked off the property itself for loitering, but decided to stay the nighttime and see if they experienced anything right outside of the walls themselves.
The hours passed, trickling by infinitesimal by minute; so slow was information technology, that sleep overtook them. And in their slumber, they failed to notice the third floor'southward shutters—the same i's which had been locked close by the blessed nails—open and shut, open and close. The recording cameras whirled to a stop as the scene faded to black.
The next morning the bodies of the investigators were plant.
Their bodies had been torn open, ravaged every bit if by the claws of brute . . . their bodies drained of blood.
Vampires. Filles a la Cassette. It was all one and the aforementioned.
The Myth Unveiled
The legend of the Casket Girls as blood-draining vampires has circulated since at to the lowest degree the early twentieth century. Tour guides bring wide-eyed tourists out to stand just across the street by the Beauregard-Keyes House Museum. There, every bit the tourists stand on their tiptoes, phones clutched in paw, they attempt to peer over the outer walls of the Sometime Ursuline Convent. Then, the guide flings one arm upwardly, index finger pointing squarely at the third floor of the Convent where the louvered shutters are tightly shut.
"It is in that location," the guide says, "that the Casket Girls nevertheless remain locked away. Without the nails blessed past the Pope, the young women who one time hailed from French republic would be out, roaming the streets to feast on the blood of the living."
(I'll give you a moment.)
(Another maybe).
(Simply one more).
Okay. Surely you lot didn't believe whatsoever of that nonsense? Tales of murder, blood-starved women and vampires seem like a satirical spin-off to the legends of Vlad the Impaler, the Romanaian prince who did, in fact, stick his enemy'south heads on spikes leading up to his castle. (Even this was only washed to ward off any other invading armies who thought they could accept Vlad; and even this was done because Vlad was short on armed forces supplies and had to think outside of the box).
But for the so-chosen Casket Girls, the rumors of vampires and the undead has no basis for truth. Rumors of vampirism is a much newer addition, peradventure exacerbated by Anne Rice. Fans immediately began to suspect that the Filles a la Cassette were actually transporting vampires in the chests from the Old World to New Orleans.
As for the prostitution gene . . . well, that deserves an even closer inspection.
History of Immature Women Brought to the New World
New France
The Casket Girls were non the get-go program initiated by the French Crown to create population growth in the New World. The Canadian colony of New French republic (modern-mean solar day Quebec) was the start, tracing dorsum to 1663.
Plain that colony, likewise, was defective in the way of the fairer sexual practice, and the Intendant of New French republic, Jean Talon, decided to pen Rex Louis XIVth and ask him for women. The King complied and began to recruit women to be sent. It was a stringent process—the women had to be betwixt the prime ages of 12 and 25, and they had to provide a letter from their respective parish priests which recommended them for the position.
They were given the proper noun Filles du Roi, the King'south Daughters, and between the years 1663 and 1673, over 800 young women made the voyage from France to Canada.
Don't be fooled though: Not all the women made it in Quebec. Some died en road to Montreal; others stood at the port in France and rethought their life decisions before hightailing back to their village; while still others were really sent back to France from Canada for failing to live upwards to the standards of being the Filles du Roi.
The idea that the women were prostitutes was fostered early on, even inside a century of the women landing. Baron La Hontan wrote that the women were of "middling virtue" and that the only reason they had chosen to emigrate was because they needed religious absolution from their sins (i.e., they were Ladies of the Night and desperately needed God in their lives).
Except that out of over 800 women whom were sent to New French republic, only one women was ever charged with prostitution. Her name was Catherine Guichelin, and she only turned to prostitution after her hubby decided that he'd much rather live in France. Naturally, he and then abandoned her in the new world with their 2 children.
However, the rumors continued to persist. And it seems that they sort of became a trend.
Biloxi: The Next Group
The next group of immature women came in July of 1704, though they were sent to the French colony in Biloxi.
They arrived on the Pelican at the bidding of Jean Baptiste La Moyne, Sieur Bienville. Like Jean Talon, Bienville had written straight to Male monarch Louis Xiv for potential brides for his soldiers and men.
After all, the soldiers and expeditions who had sailed down the Mississippi River with Bienville were now "chasing through the woods in pursuit of Indian mistresses." Bienville was desperate.
King Louis Xiv agreed and sent a grouping of 20-three young women in the care of the Sisters of Charity, an guild of Quebec, as well as Begetter Henry La Vente and three other priests. The marriageable women ranged in historic period betwixt fourteen and 19, but had been specifically chosen because they were pure. Virgins. Necessary helpmate material for the turn of the eighteenth century.
An alleged letter written to Bienville by the French Male monarch read, "His majesty send by that ship 20 girls to be married to the Canadians and others who have begun habitations at Mobile in order that this colony can firmly found itself. Each of these girls was raised in virtue and piety and know how to work, which volition render them useful in the colony past showing the Indian girls what they can exercise, for this there beingness no indicate in sending other than of virtue known and without reproach."
The women were called well, cheers to and so Bishop of Quebec, Jean Baptiste de La Croix de Chevrieres de Saint-Vallier, and the Biloxi colony blossomed.
And and then the next group arrived, who weren't so very pure or virtuous.
The Inflow of the Baleine Brides
In one case once more, Bienville was desperate for women. This time he was in the new colony of New Orleans and it was the twelvemonth 1721, but the desperation was all the same.
The men of New Orleans needed brides, as they were having illicit affairs with enslaved women or women of the gens libres de couleur, to say nothing of the fact that the men were reportedly the scum—Bienville's words—of France with only debauchery on their minds.
Bienville needed good, virtuous women.
Who was the King of French republic to turn downwardly such a proposal? He gladly acquiesced. This time he turned to the Hôpital Général de la Salpêtrière for the women Bienville needed.
Eighty-8 women arrived near Mobile Bay on January 8, 1721, and were promptly handed over to Bienville to deal with. Unfortunately this time around, the French King had establish his "supply" of women from the House of Correction. All were destitute, almost were prostitutes, and they were all meant to become proper wives.
Equally y'all can imagine, this programme wasn't also executed as in 1704 or even in 1673 past the French. And these new women? Well, they simply added to the terse and debauched environs already raging in New Orleans.
It would come as no wonder that Bienville might try again simply a few years later, and it's perhaps this event in 1721 that stained the reputation of the Filles a la Cassette in 1728.
Dismantling the Myth of the Casket Girls
Did the French colonists once again retrieve that Bienville had brought them prostitutes equally wives? Information technology's perfectly plausible, especially since like rumors had followed each shipment of young women to the New Earth in the prior lx or so years.
A Thing of Pale Skin
But what nosotros accept no record of is whatsoever of the early New Orleanians thinking that the young women who arrived in 1728 were vampires. Commentary that the women were pale is understandable—later on all, they'd been stuck inside of a ship for six months and probably saw little to no lord's day as they'd been put beneath desk-bound equally was "proper for young, virtuous women."
The French Creoles living in New Orleans would also been quite tan. Situated near the Gulf as it is, New Orleans is a sub-tropical climate. In comparison to the sun-kissed skin of the Frenchmen, no dubiety the Casket Girls would take looked nearly transparent.
The Significant of "Cassette"
The word "casket" was not widely used until the mid-nineteenth century to refer to burials or the dead. Cassette is a Middle French word, but refers to instead "a small box for jewels" or "chest."
The Catafalque Girls were known to have brought cassettes with them, but they literally were meant for storage. Baggage. (Can you blame a daughter for wanting to bring every bit much with her when traveling to an unknown location?)
The author Nathaniel Hawthorne reconfirms this idea when he said in 1863, "Caskets! A vile modernistic phrase, which compels a person . . . to shrink . . . from the thought of being buried at all."
By 1900, the term "casket" in relation to a burial object was widespread in North America. In the early eighteenth century, the cassettes brought with the young women were—sorry to disappoint—nothing but a breast, unlikely even in the shape of a casket or bury at all.
The Secret Third Floor of the Convent
Although information technology's great to imagine the Pope—which one though? We don't fifty-fifty know that!—blessing the nails to go along the vampires locked inside of the attic space . . . Well, information technology's highly unlikely.
In reality, those louvered windows are a lovely set of hurricane shutters installed some time in the last decade or so.
And within that third floor . . . nosotros at Ghost City Tours have it on practiced authority from the Archivist of the Archdiocese of New Orleans that there is nothing on the 3rd floor of the Old Ursuline Convent besides archival records and other storage items.
Non every bit thrilling every bit vampires or abased caskets for the undead, but at that place you have it.
Why the Myth?
It'south hard to say why the vampire myth has stuck around for so long, and who exactly started information technology.
Was information technology really Anne Rice's accept on it that sparked the whole thing? Is information technology but the fact that nosotros New Orleanians dear the alternative and weird, especially when information technology is intrinsically continued with our beloved history? Maybe it's only a instance that the legend is retold and retold once again because tourists love to hear information technology.
What nosotros do know is that the Catafalque Girls went on to make some brilliant marriages in their initial years here in the French Quarter, and it's said that almost of all of New Orleans tin can trace their lineage back to one of the young women sent from French republic to become the French Creoles' brides.
Some other myth mayhap?
Maybe we should merely stick with the blood-sucking, undead version instead.
Source: https://ghostcitytours.com/new-orleans/ghost-stories/truth-casket-girls/
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