If you spend enough time online then chances are you have already seen this photograph. This is Blanche Monnier, a woman who was confined in a tiny room for over 25 years by her own family.
But what exactly led up to this and why would anyone do this to their own family member? We have to go back to 1800s France when Blanche was still a young, vibrant woman in her 20s.
Blanche’s Love Story
Just a few years prior, Mr. Monnier had passed away, leaving behind his wife, Louise, and two children. A son named Marcel, and of course, Blanche. Despite the loss, however, anyone looking in would have said that Blanche was on top of the world.
She came from a very wealthy family and no doubt had her pick of suitors. There was just one problem, however. Blanche had fallen in love with a lawyer, one who was not very well established.
He was definitely did not have anything near the wealth of the Monniers. The mother and daughter argued and bickered over the relationship but even so, Blanche still planned on marrying the man.
She told her friends about her plans and before too long the whole town anticipated the sound of church bells. Now, instead, they were met with silence.
Blanche suddenly disappeared from public view and at first, nobody suspected anything bizarre might have happened.
They continued going about their lives, but when Blanche failed to return after an extended period, people began to talk.
It was then that Mrs. Monnier broke down and admitted what had supposedly happened to her beloved daughter. She told neighbors that Blanche had actually gone insane.
And rather than cruelly admitting her to an asylum she was to be kept at the wealthy family’s home, her every need attended to. For the most part, the public did buy the story.
Keep in mind, that the Monnier family was not only extremely wealthy but also highly influential in both church and government.
The Letter
Marcel held a position in public office as this was going on. And there also hadn’t been much of a reason for anyone to the Monniers might be lying.
That is until about eight years after Blanche’s disappearance. Late one evening, a neighbor had been walking past the Monnier estate when he suddenly heard the sound of screams emanating from a tiny window at the family’s home.
The voice, which sounded female, was uttering things about being held against her will and not even knowing why. The next morning said neighbor confronted Mrs. Monnier about the incident.
To which she claimed that Blanche’s sanity had progressed to the point of delusions. Marcel vouched for her and the window was boarded up.
A couple of years later, the lawyer to whom Blanche was engaged passed away suddenly, and the public all but forgot about the vanished girl.
Meanwhile, Blanche was now living in complete darkness and wouldn’t see light again for a whole 17 more years. Throughout this period, Blanche was cared for by a long-time maid.
But once she’d retired she was replaced by two younger women. Both were horrified by the Monnier’s family secret.
In 1901 one of them decided to write an anonymous letter to the police alerting them about the girl kept locked up by her employer.
The letter read, “Attorney general, I need to notify you of a freakishly serious occurrence. I speak of a spinster who is locked up in Madame Monnier’s house, half-starved, and living in the putrid litter for the past 25 years. In a word, in her own filth.”
Discovery of Blanche
Authorities quickly made their way to the Monnier residence. And although they were initially met with resistance from Mrs. Monnier and Marcel, they were eventually led to Blanche’s room.
And what they found there was too much to stomach even for the veteran officers. The once young beautiful heiress that the town remembered was now in her fifties and seemed to be reduced to a corpse.
This is what one officer on the scene had to say about what he saw:
“The unfortunate woman was lying completely naked in a rotten straw mattress. All around her was formed a sort of crust made of excrement, fragments of leftovers, vegetables, fish, meat, and rotten bread. We also saw oyster shell sand bugs running across a blanches bed. The air was so unbreathable. The odor given off by the room was so ranked that it was impossible for us to stay any longer to proceed with our investigation.”
Following this discovery, both Mrs. Monnier and Marcel were arrested while Blanche was sent to the hospital. The infamous photo you see here was taken soon after.
And to add to the already shocking details of this tail, Blanche only weighed about 55 pounds at the time of her discovery and she’d lost the majority of her speaking skills.
According to both police and caretakers, Blanche at that point seemed almost childlike. Her chances of survival seemed extremely low but ultimately Blanche did physically recover.
But as one might expect, being confined for 25 years took too much of a toll on her mind. And she would die in an asylum over a decade later. But what about her captors?
Trial
By the time of her arrest, Mrs. Monnier was already in her mid-seventies and suffering from heart disease. In the end, she never did have to face punishment for the horrifying injustice done to her own daughter.
She passed away from her illness while in custody, just 15 days in. As for Marcel, he tried to pin the blame entirely on his mother. And despite the moral issues, legally, his defenses worked.
He pointed out to the courts that he didn’t physically detain his sister and later added that technically Blanche could have left at any time, but elected not to.
This, is despite the fact that police stated that both the door and window were sealed and that they’d even found writing on the wall spraying for freedom.
After a late trial in 1901, Marcel was acquitted and free to return to his wife and kids. And of course his inheritance which most likely was never shared with Blanche.
Justice Unserved
Now, we have discussed how all of this happened, but we haven’t exactly covered why. And the thing is that’s actually still up for debate if you ask most people.
It is true that Blanche had planned to marry a man her mother didn’t approve of. And while this may have been the reason for the initial confinement, it’s unclear why blanche was still locked up even after her fiance passed away.
Some chalk it up to religious panic. Keep in mind, Blanche’s mother was described as a devout Christian and some see this as partially why her reaction to her daughter’s relationship was so harsh.
Add that to the fact that her lover was essentially broke and many saw this as something Mrs. Monnier simply could not bear.
As for Marcel, it’s believed that his motivation here was to cut out his sister in order to leave him the sole beneficiary of the family’s estate.
But of course, regardless of their reasoning, what they both did to Blanca is completely unjustifiable.
And I think it’s safe to say that Marcel’s excuses were bogus. Even if no law existed for it at the time, Marcel should not have been able to get away with not reporting what was happening.
In the end, he and his mother completely got away with it and 120 years later people are still shocked at what these people did to their very own family members.