A casket girl, also widely known as a cassette girl, refers to one of the women brought from France to the French colonies of Louisiana to marry. The name derives from the small chests, known as cassettes, in which they carried their clothes.^[1] They were conspicuous by reason of their virtue. Normally women were supplied to the colonists by raking the streets of Paris for undesirables, or by emptying the houses of correction. The casket girls, however, were recruited from church charitable institutions, usually orphanages and convents, and, although poor, were practically guaranteed to be virgins. For this reason it later became a matter of pride in Louisiana to show descent from them.

The first consignment reached Mobile in 1704,^[2] Biloxi in 1719, and New Orleans in 1728. They inspired Victor Herbert to write Naughty Marietta.

[edit] See also

• History of Mobile, Alabama
• History of New Orleans
• Old Mobile Site

[edit] References

1. ^ Higginbotham, Jay. Old Mobile: Fort Louis de la Louisiane, 1702-1711,pages 106-107. Museum of the City of Mobile, 1977. ISBN 0914334034.
2. ^ Thomason, Michael. Mobile : the new history of Alabama's first city,pages 20-21. Tuscaloosa : University of Alabama Press, 2001. ISBN 0817310657

[edit] Bibliography

• Dictionary of American History by James Truslow Adams, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940