Urban environments generally offered better food, clothing, and shelter for enslaved people. While certainly a benefit for those enslaved, this also benefited enslavers. The close living quarters of a city meant enslavers were physically closer to those they enslaved, and thus they desired better-dressed, healthier, and cleaner enslaved people around them. While urban living quarters were by and large improved from the plantation, they were still cramped, poorly ventilated, and unreliably sufficient. This room could have housed an enslaved mother and child, like Maria, who Samuel Hermann purchased in 1821 when she was seventeen, and her son, James. They two lived with Hermanns for seventeen years, most of James’ life. When they were sold, a condition of the sale was that they be sold out of the state and were never to return within 200 miles of New Orleans. On the sale document, Hermann accuses Maria of being “addicted to drunkenness” and James of stealing money from the family. Unfortunately for the mother and son and the vast number of enslaved people at this time, they did not have legal recourse to defend themselves from these accusations and were forced to suffer whatever consequences were assigned to them.