On May 23, 1901, France's Attorney General received an anonymous letter which said, in part:
"Monsieur Attorney General: I have the honor to inform you of an exceptionally serious occurrence. I speak of a spinster who is locked up in Madame Monnier’s house, half starved, and living on a putrid litter for the past twenty-five years – in a word, in her own filth.”
The house referred to in the letter was located in an upscale neighbourhood in the French city of Poitiers. The Attorney General notified local police and asked them to investigate, but nobody expected anything to come of it. According to police who knew the area well, the only two people living at the address mentioned in the letter were Madame Louise Monnier and her middle-aged son Marcel. Both Monniers had lived exemplary lives, and Marcel was a law school graduate and a former sub-prefect. Madame Monnier's husband, Emile, had been the head of the local arts faculty before his death in 1879, while Madame Monnier herself belonged to the illustrious Poitier family (the city was named for them). She had even received an award from the Committee of Good Works for her philanthropic deeds.
Some of the older police officers were able to recall one other strange detail, however. Madame Monnier had a beautiful daughter named Blanche, who had apparently vanished without a trace twenty-five years earlier. Amazingly enough, the disappearance of a young socialite had somehow taken place without any police investigation or alarm being raised by her own family. Despite the odd nature of the disappearance, nobody had any idea of what would follow or the heartbreaking story that had remained hidden for decades.
When the police arrived, they searched the house and quickly found an upstairs room that had been padlocked shut. Breaking the door open, they were horrified to find Blanche Monnier, naked, emaciated, and with her head buried under the covers. According to an account by one of the officers:
We immediately gave the order to open the casement window. This was done with great difficulty, for the old dark-colored curtains fell down in a heavy shower of dust. To open the shutters, it was necessary to remove them from their right hinges. As soon as light entered the room, we noticed, in the back, lying on a bed, her head and body covered by a repulsively filthy blanket, a woman identified as Mademoiselle Blanche Monnier. The unfortunate woman was lying completely naked on a rotten straw mattress. All around her was formed a sort of crust made from excrement, fragments of meat, vegetables, fish, and rotten bread. We also saw oyster shells and bugs running across Mademoiselle Monnier’s bed. The air was so unbreathable, the odor given off by the room was so rank, that it was impossible for us to stay any longer to proceed with our investigation.
Terrified at the sight of strangers, Blanche continued to hide her head under a blanket. She was quickly wrapped in that same blanket and taken to a hospital in Paris for observation. Weighing a mere 55 pounds at the time of her discovery, Blanche seemed incapable of any coherent speech and was visibly frightened at being exposed to sunlight. As they would later discover, she hadn't seen the sun in nearly 25 years. Police examining the miserable cell where she had been kept found the word "Liberte" (Liberty) scrawled across the walls. They also determined that Blanche hadn't worn clothing for the previous twenty years, and her only friends were the rats that scrambled to eat the crumbs scattered on the floor of her room. Even as police were sending her off to the hospital, Blanche's elderly mother sat in the living room, apparently stunned at what was happening.
After police finished searching the house, they then proceeded to question Madame Monnier and her son. While Marcel continued to bluster and insisted that his sister was "foul, angry, overly excited, and full of rage," the doctors examining her at the hospital saw a frail and almost mute middle-aged woman who seemed excited at being given a bath and given new clothes. It was only after both Monniers were arrested that police interrogators managed to unravel the entire horrific story.
Twenty-five years earlier, Blanche had been a vivacious and attractive 25-year-old socialite facing pressure from her mother to find a suitable husband. Among her many suitors happened to be an older attorney who lived nearby with whom Blanche fell in love. According to some accounts, after becoming intimate (and more than intimate), it was after her announcement to her family that she wanted to marry this attorney that the trouble began. Her mother was adamantly opposed to the match. Not only was the attorney much older than Blanche was, but he had little money of his own. For this reason, Madame Monnier insisted that Blanche find someone more suitable.
When Blanche threatened to elope, her family took extreme action. They locked Blanche up in an upstairs bedroom and insisted that she would only be released if she agreed never to see her intended again. Though Madame Monnier and the rest of her family likely thought Blanche would give in, she remained adamant. As the years passed, Blanche stayed in her prison with no sunlight and only being fed scraps from her mother's meals. Even after her lover died in 1885, the imprisonment continued while her family told everyone that she had disappeared.
But it wasn't just the Monniers who were part of the conspiracy to keep Blanche imprisoned. Various servants would later testify that they had often heard Blanche's pleas to be released but didn't say anything, whether due to loyalty to their employers, belief that Blanche was insane, or fear of being arrested as accessories to her imprisonment. To this day, nobody knows who wrote the note that eventually secured Blanche's release. Whether it was a servant or someone who had heard about her secondhand is anybody's guess.
When Blanche was finally released, the story quickly became international news. Newspapers christened Blanche "la Sequestree de Poitiers," and public outrage against the Monniers reached a fever pitch. This outrage grew as more details about her imprisonment became available. Neighbours even threatened to destroy the house belonging to two of the Monniers' servants since they had apparently been complicit in her imprisonment. When Madame Monnier was arrested for her role in her daughter's 25-year-imprisonment, she was likely astonished at the angry mobs that had gathered about the prison where she was kept.
Considering her former place in Poitiers society, the sight of many of her old neighbours and acquaintances yelling and threatening her with revenge must have been a substantial blow to her already poor health. Almost immediately, she was placed in the prison infirmary where doctors could monitor her condition. Not that she survived for long. On June 9, 1901, just fifteen days after her arrest, Madame Monnier died unexpectedly from heart disease. Newspapers speculated that her condition had deteriorated after the judge's examination of the case just days before, which caused her to realize the full gravity of what she had done. According to one account, doctors reported that her last words were: "Oh, my poor Blanche!"
Madame Monnier's death basically meant that her son Marcel would stand trial alone for his role in Blanche's imprisonment. Marcel insisted that his mother was mainly responsible, and he had only gone along with her out of filial piety. He also added that his nearsightedness had kept him from seeing how terrible her living conditions actually were. Despite his claims, it's probably not surprising that he needed police protection to keep him safe from the crowds while his case came to trial.
Marcel's wife and daughter were targeted despite their insistence that they had no idea what was happening. After the story erupted, both of them retreated to a convent for their own protection. Ironically, Marcel's daughter, a beautiful 17-year-old socialite, had been engaged to be married to a well-respected French officer, but this was quickly canceled due to the horrendous publicity over the case.
In the meantime, Blanche continued to improve slowly in the hospital where she was being treated. Though doctors determined that she was no longer in danger of dying, nobody had any real expectation that she would ever recover. As one news story noted, "When she was removed from her mother's house to the hospital, she had almost lost the use of her tongue. She could only stammer a few words and could not frame a complete sentence. Little by little, the power of speech has returned to her. She recognizes flowers, birds, and articles which were once familiar to her."
As story after story came to be written about the case, the house where Blanche had been kept became a ghoulish tourist attraction. Hundreds of visitors made the pilgrimage to the house on Rue de la Visitation and lined up to see the covered window of Blanche's prison. It also became apparent soon enough that the imprisonment had not been all that secret. Many of the neighbours admitted to being aware that Blanche had been locked away, but they had accepted her mother's claim that it was due to her being insane and not wanting to send her to the asylum. Others told newspaper reporters that they had often heard Blanche screaming at times. One neighbour reported that she had heard her scream, "Oh God, when will they set me free? Why am I imprisoned here? I am suffering the tortures of the damned." This was eight years after she had first been locked up, but, again, nothing had been done.
Considering the stigma surrounding mental illness in 19th century France (and most other places), it was hardly uncommon for insane relatives to be locked up in a cellar or attic so they could be kept out of sight. Though Blanche had shown no symptoms to suggest that she was going mad, hardly anyone raised awkward questions when her mother and brother shut her away. Virtually every old family had a mad relative or two, so why should the Monniers differ?
When Marcel Monnier finally went on trial, the audience was packed with Blanche's supporters, all of whom wanted to see him go to prison. Testifying on his own behalf, Marcel insisted that he had no control over his mother, who ruled the household with an iron fist. She also controlled the family's wealth, and going against her will would have meant financial ruin for him and his family. He also insisted that he did what he could for his sister, including going into her room and reading the newspaper regularly. As for the servants themselves, they testified that they were used to the appalling conditions since "it had been like that when they got there." Many of the servants were even expected to stay in the room with Blanche if she needed anything (except for her freedom).
Part of the court's problem in prosecuting Marcel was that he hadn't actually done anything illegal. There was no law at the time against locking up insane relatives. The only one who had broken any laws was Blanche's mother, who was already dead. On October 11, largely to satisfy the mob mentality of the public, the court eventually sentenced Marcel to fifteen months in prison. Hearing the verdict, the courtroom erupted in applause, quickly spreading to the large crowd waiting outside.
But this public approval was short-lived. Marcel appealed the sentence (I did mention that he was a lawyer, right?). During his appeal hearing, Marcel's attorney insisted that Blanche had been free to leave anytime she wanted and that no violence had been used against her. Once again, the fact that Marcel hadn't broken any laws came into play. Finally, on November 30, the appeal court overturned the previous sentence, and Marcel Monnier was a free man. Though the people in the courtroom were horrified, there was no attempt at overturning this decision. Marcel eventually inherited his mother's estate (except for the house where Blanche had been kept) and retired to a country house far from Poitiers, where he died in 1913.
As for Blanche herself, she recovered to some extent and even gained a little weight, but she could never rejoin society. Eventually placed in a sanitarium in Bois, she passed away in 1913, twelve years after being rescued from her family home. Aside from a book written about the case by Andre Gide in 1930, her story remains little known outside of France. The house where she had been kept is still standing though extensively remodeled inside and out. Nothing remains of the room where Blanche spend so many years locked away from the world.