When the officers broke down the door to the attic bedroom of the Monnier family’s elegant villa, they were greeted by a smell so terrible they cowered.
The sight that greeted them inside the dark room was even worse than the smell, so terrifying that at least some of the officers would never fully recover.
The Parisian elite
Charles and Louise Monnier belonged to the upper class of the city of Paris in the 19th century, were well respected and had never infringed on the family name. The family gave generously to charity and had even received awards for their work in the interests of society, were well connected to the political elite and the only son, Marcel, had been an excellent student who now worked as a respected lawyer. .
But the Monniers had two children. Besides Marcel, they had a daughter Blanche, born in 1849, who was one year younger than her brother.
Blanche Monnier was considered very beautiful.
Blanche was considered beautiful in some ways, but she was also described as an extremely well-mannered, sweet, and friendly girl. A number of young men sought to commune with Blanche, but without success.
The Monniers put a lot of pressure on Blanche to accept the proposal from some of the upper-class young men who followed her with the weed in their shoes, but Blanche refused.
love
When Blanche was 27, in 1876, she fell madly in love with him. The one who had her heart was considerably older than her, did not belong to the upper middle class of Paris and was a rather poor lawyer.
Her controlling mother didn’t think it was appropriate, so she tied her daughter to the bed in the attic, drew the curtains, and padlocked the door.
She told her daughter she had to stay there until she did what she wanted and married a man from the same social class she belonged to.
But Blanche Monnier never gave up.
It’s unclear what role his father, Emile Monnier, played in all of this, but he was a respected senior administrator of the Academy of Arts in Poitiers, France, where the family lived.
His wife was very controlling and it is believed that he probably chose to ignore the situation at home.
He died in 1879, by which time Blanche had been locked up for three years, but his wife and their son, Marcel Monnier, kept Blanche locked up and abused until the police freed her a quarter of a century later.
A quarter century of horror
During her first years in the chamber, Blanche screamed as loud as she could in her despair, and neighbors in this beautiful neighborhood often heard her cries.
Her mother told them that Blanche had unfortunately gone mad, but in those days it was not uncommon for mad people to be locked up and kept out of society. And little by little Blanche Monnier is forgotten.
During all the years she was confined to bed, she was fed only leftover food from the family table and many days passed between meals.
She had no access to a toilet and was never cleaned.
It was an anonymous letter sent to the attorney general that prompted the police to investigate Blanche.
Photo taken a few minutes after the discovery of Blanche.
Incredulity
The letter stated that Blanche’s mother had held her captive for years. The theory that Blanche’s brother Marcel wrote the letter because he was fed up with Blanche’s treatment by her mother received considerable support.
Others mean that one of the servants of the Monnier household wrote the letter.
But no one knows for sure.
When the public prosecutor gave the letter to the police, they found it hard to believe because the Monnier family was in the upper echelons of society and enjoyed great respect. But the police decided to investigate the case anyway, and it cost Blanche her life.
The case attracted a great deal of attention.
What happened to the police
The room was completely dark, but the second officer made his way to the window, tore the thick curtains and opened the window to air.
As the light entered, they were greeted by a sight that made their guts revolt. Everything was in ruins in the room, food was floating on the floor, rats were running around among the rotting food scraps, urine and feces.
On top of that, there were hungry caterpillars and beetles. But it wasn’t the most terrible thing the police had seen.
A naked woman was lying in a horribly dirty bed and she was tied up.
She was literally lying in her own excrement, and when the daylight opened, the shutters in the room locked and the daylight came in, Blanche covered her eyes and cried out in pain, n haven’t seen a bright day in 25 years.
His only companions in the hideous chamber were fish and rats.
Blanche narrowed her eyes to protect herself and at the same time tried to cover her naked, emaciated body with a dirty blanket.
Blanche spent the rest of her life in an asylum.
Madness, death and acquittal
She was 52 when officers released her from this prison on May 25, 1901. By then she had been in the chamber for 25 years, completely isolated from the outside world and only allowed to contact her mother and his younger brother.
By then his beloved had long since died, her mother and brother knew it but still kept Blanche locked up.
When Blanche was wrapped in a blanket and taken to hospital that day in May 1901, she weighed only 23 kilograms and was unable to speak.
Incredible as it may seem, Blanche mostly recovered physically, but mentally she was so bad that she spent what remained of her life in a psychiatric hospital in Paris, where she died in October 1913, at the age of 64 years old.
Her mother died of a heart attack two weeks after police released Blanche from prison. Marcel, who was a well-known lawyer and father, was sentenced to fifteen months in prison for his participation in the violence.
He appealed the verdict and was later acquitted.
