La Conçon, part 1

In her final years, La Conçon largely disappeared from public view. Though not exactly a recluse, she rarely ventured forth from her Garden District home, and only slightly more often did she entertain visitors. After a series of minor strokes (the first occurring almost immediately after her arrest in 1923), she had increasing difficulty getting around, and even brief conversations tired her.

On the morning of November 28th of 1927, La Conçon complained to her live-in nurse of stomach pain. By the late afternoon, a high fever had set in, and La Conçon drifted in and out of consciousness for the next few days. Graves reported “a curious delirium, in which past and present were mingled with pure fantasy; Miss Maurignonneaux was rarely incoherent, but even more rarely was she lucid of her surroundings.” La Conçon ultimately died a few minutes after sunset on November 31st, of what the coroner declared peritonitis.

Though very near completion at the time of La Conçon’s death, the manuscript of her memoirs was never assembled into publishable form until 1987, after it had been discovered among the late James Graves’ documents in the old Times-Picayune building.