Plus Ça Change – June 21, 2026
I’m plotting out the series of chapters about the cholera epidemic in New Orleans in 1832. Lots of ideas… focusing on Marie as a healer. She has discovered empirically a way to treat this new disease.
Marie has an uncle, Josias Kerr, an Irish medical doctor who (for real) married Manette Trudeau. Manette is one of Marie’s white aunts. Dr. Kerr recognizes the value in Marie’s treatment, takes her to his hospital to start treating people there. Where there is a confrontation with a more traditional doctor who rejects anything Marie knows because she is a woman, and of color. Two strikes.
So this oppositional doctor is minor, a one-off who serves a purpose in the narrative. When I can, I go into history and find a real person and use the name. It’s verisimilitude. I look through the 1832 New Orleans directory for doctors, and pull up a name, Isadore Labatut. I like it because it has a nice French ring to it, nothing more.
Next, just because I’m a pedantic so-and-so, I gotta know who was this guy? How old is he? Is there an historical image? Those sorts of things. Turns out he was born in 1793, so he’s 39 in this scene, that’s good, it helps me paint the picture. He is Dr. Kerr’s age, so they are medical colleagues.
Then, the astonishing coincidence, the real Isadore Labatut is family. He is married to Caroline Urquhart. I recognize the surname immediately. Her father, Thomas Urquhart, is married to a Trudeau. Caroline Urquhart’s mother is Caroline Trudeau, Manette’s sister.
That makes Caroline Urquhart—Labatut’s wife—niece to Manette and Josias Kerr. She is Marie Laveaux’s cousin, they share a common grandfather. And Josias Kerr is more than colleague to Isadore in this case, he is Isadore’s uncle by marriage, just like he is to Marie.
New Orleans, big city, small town. Alrighty then… we’ll see if any of that gets into the story.
