Locked Away in Poitiers: The Horrific Imprisonment of Blanche Monnier a Crime that Shocked the World in 1901

 It began on May 23, 1901 when the Paris Attorney General received an anonymous letter.  To this day, though there has been much speculation over the past 12o years, no one knows for certain who wrote that letter.

The note stated:

“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 lying on a putrid litter for the last twenty-five years--in a word--in her own filth.”

The letter spoke of a once beautiful and captivating young woman, a socialite who had stolen the hearts of many a potential young suitor named Blanche Monnier from the central French city of Poitiers.

Blanche, born on March 1, 1849 was the daughter of strict Catholic bourgeois parents Charles and Louise Monnier.  Her family name in central France was one of long-standing nobility and she was by birth a member of the French aristocracy.

As a young woman Blanche was renowned across Poitiers for her beauty and it seemed as if all the young men who met her were captivated by how attractive she was.  Her parents, and her overprotective older brother Marcel were able to keep Blanche aloof from all those who came to seek her hand in marriage at least for a time.

But in 1876 at the age of twenty-seven (a rather old age for such a captivating aristocratic woman to marry at that time) after her father became grievously ill with what was most probably tuberculosis, Blanche declared her love for an older, apparently not so well off attorney.  Blanche’s engagement to the struggling lawyer became the talk of Poitiers.

There were even rumors that the older man and younger woman had been “romantically” involved prior to taking one another’s hand in marriage.  It would appear that all of the gossip, and the unexpected love affair with a struggling older man, in addition to her husband’s illness, was too much for Blanche’s mother to bear.  Louise Monnier declared that, “No daughter of mine is going to marry a penniless lawyer,” and it was at that point that Louise, with the help of Blanche’s controlling older brother Marcel, locked her away in a small upstairs attic room.

Supposed colorized photo of a teenage Blanche Monnier

They told all those who inquired that Blanche had run away, gone off to Paris and simply disappeared, perhaps been murdered.  The so-called “penniless lawyer” that had sought Blanche’s hand in marriage passed away in 1885 and it would seem that all investigations into Blanche’s disappearance, or death, simply ceased.

  In public, Louise and Marcel mourned Blanche’s disappearance and apparent death while continuing to live their lives as normal until that fateful day in May of 1901 when the Paris Attorney General received that anonymous letter and dispatched the police to go and investigate.

The police demanded to see Madame Monnier’s daughter.  At first, Louise Monnier put up resistance and denied that there was anyone else in the home other than herself and her son Marcel, but eventually under the threat of arrest she demurred and directed the police up the stairs to a small pad-locked room in the attic.

When the police forced entry into the room the smell of human waste and filth was overpowering and forced the officers who arrived on the scene to gag and vomit where they stood.

The police who entered saw lying on a straw mattress covered in her own filth and crawling with vermin, the emaciated skeletal body of Blanche Monnier now aged fifty-two years who had not seen the light of day in over a quarter of a century.

One policeman who entered described what he saw.  “The unfortunate woman was lying completely naked on a rotten straw mattress.  All around her was formed a sort of crust made of excrement and rotten fruit and vegetables…we saw bugs running across Mademoiselle Monnier’s bed.  The air was so unbearable, 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..”

1901 drawing of Blanche's discovery

Blanche had been locked away from the world inside a small attic room, and fed scraps and offal by her mother and older brother, for over twenty-five years!

She was rushed by the authorities to a hospital weighing only fifty-five pounds and completely devoid of sanity, barely able to speak, due to the abuse and social isolation that she had suffered for so long.

Once news of the horrific crime spread around Poitiers an angry mob quickly gathered outside Louise Monnier’s house even while the police were still conducting their investigation.  Blanche’s mother was promptly arrested, and though at the time of Blanche’s discovery, her brother Marcel did not technically live in the house with Louise, he did live across the street in another home that had been purchased by the Monnier family.  He too was almost immediately taken into custody for Blanche’s heinous imprisonment.

When questioned by the police Blanche’s mother Louise couldn’t understand why the French public would be so upset by what she had done and reportedly asked the police why, “there was all this fuss about nothing?”

Already ill at the time of her arrest, Louise Monnier’s health continued to deteriorate while in jail, and she died only two weeks after being taken into custody at the age of seventy-five.

Her husband, Blanche’s father Charles, had died years earlier after succumbing to illness himself.  Many surmised that it was after the untimely death of her father that the imprisonment and abuse of Blanche became its most horrific and neglectful.

When a picture of an emaciated Blanche Monnier (the one which headlines this article) was published on the front page of newspapers across France, the story of Blanche’s abuse and imprisonment went the early twentieth century version of viral.  The French public clamored for news of her story and demanded to know how such a heinous crime could have ever happened.

Unfortunately, there were and still are, no easy answers to explain the horrific imprisonment of French socialite Blanche Monnier at the hands of her own mother and brother.  

Although physically Blanche Monnier would go on to recover she was forever psychologically destroyed by the abuse that she had suffered.  Blanche would be diagnosed with a series of emotional and mental disorders including schizophrenia, anorexia nervosa, exhibitionism and coprophilia.  Despite attempting to reintegrate into society after her abuse and imprisonment Blanche would eventually be committed permanently to a psychiatric hospital in Blois, France where she would die in obscurity at the age of sixty-five in 1913.

Blanche Monnier in Hospital in Blois ca. 1910

Most of what we know today about the torture and imprisonment of Blanche Monnier comes from the details that emerged during the trial of her older brother Marcel.

Marcel Monnier’s trial for complicity in the abuse of his sister began on October 7, 1901 and lasted a full five days.  During the trial details about Blanche’s condition began to emerge that differed substantially from the story being told by the French press.

It came out at Marcel’s trial that a great many people, had in fact, worked at the Monnier house during Blanche’s imprisonment and that almost all of those caretakers were aware of Blanche Monnier’s condition. 

Most likely, it had been one of these caretakers who had written the anonymous note to the Paris Attorney General in May of 1901 that alerted the French authorities to Blanche’s existence.

 Marcel claimed that his sister was mentally ill and that many of the people whom his mom had hired over the years to care for Blanche were simply not up to the task.  He claimed that neither he, nor his mother, abused Blanche, but rather that they sought help for her mental condition but the situation simply became too out of control for them to handle and that is why police found the fifty-two year Blanche Monnier in such a horrific state and vile condition.  Marcel even testified that he read the newspaper to his sister every night and that he personally looked after her well-being.

In the end, the court acquitted Marcel Monnier of all wrongdoing because the Judge found that since Marcel didn’t technically live in the residence at the time of Blanche’s imprisonment, a so-called “Duty to Rescue” did not exist as a statute according to the law and therefore, Marcel Monnier, could not be charged with any crime.

The Recluse of Poitiers: French Newspaper 1901

Most individuals directly involved with the abuse and imprisonment of Blanche Monnier passed away not too long after her discovery based on an anonymous tip.  Unfortunately, the truth behind the heinous crime perpetrated on the young socialite by her own family will probably never be fully known and will forever remain one of history’s most horrific mysteries.  

Famed French author Andre Gide, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, would go on to publish a book nearly fifty years later called Le Sequestree de Poitiers or The Locked Away Woman in Poitiers in which he changed the names of the characters but little else concerning the abuse and imprisonment of Blanche Monnier.

Today, the case of Blanche Monnier is still renowned throughout France for its horrific nature and for the unsolved mysteries that it has left behind to posterity.