the last book I ever read (Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, excerpt eight)

from The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury:

The first Voodoo doctor of whom there is any record in New Orleans was a huge coal-black Negro with a tattooed face, who called himself Doctor John, and who flourished during the early and middle 1840’s. He was a mind-reader and a dabbler in astrology, and for special magical effected sold shells and pebbles which had been soaked for three days in an evil-smelling oil rendered from snakes, lizards, and frogs. Wrapped in a hank of human hair and carried in the pocket, one of these shells or pebbles provided blanket protection against all harm. Doctor John is said to have numbered among his clients the famous slave Pauline, a mulatto, who was the first Negro to be executed under the provisions of the Black Code after the American occupation, and the first person of any color to be hanged in the Parish Prison, which was erected behind Congo Square in 1832. Pauline became the property of Peter Redeck in the autumn of 1844, and soon thereafter bought from Doctor John a love-philter with which to charm her master. She succeeded and became his mistress, although the newspapers of the time were inclined to give the credit to Pauline’s handsome face and superb figure rather than to Doctor John’s magic. Late in 1844 Redeck went to St. Louis on business, and in January 1845 Mayor Edgar Montegut received an anonymous letter which informed him that a white woman was being kept prisoner in her own home at 52 Bayou Road. On January 14 Mayor Montegut and a detachment of police went to the address, which was the home of Peter Redeck, and found Mrs. Redeck and her three children, aged two, four, and seven, confined in a cabinet by the slave Pauline, who had taken possession of the premises as soon as Redeck had left for St. Louis. Mrs. Redeck told the Mayor that she and her children had been imprisoned for six weeks, during which time Pauline had beaten and starved her, and taunted her with the infidelity of her husband. Pauline was immediately tried, found guilty, and condemned to death, but because she was pregnant the execution was postponed to March 28, 1846. On that date, clad in a long white robe and white cap, her arms bound with black cord, she was hanged in the courtyard of the Parish Prison.