In Paris 1876, 25-year-old Blanche Monnier was a typical socialite scrambling to find a suitor before it was too late. She fell in love with an older, broke lawyer, who her aristocratic mother disliked, and set her heart on marrying him.
Madame Louise forbade Blanche from seeing the man. Blanche refused, at which point her mother begged her daughter to end to the affair. Blanche once more refused. Realizing that she would never persuade Blanche away from the penniless lawyer, Madame Monnier locked her up in a tiny room.
She told her daughter that the door would remain locked until Blanche agreed to break off the courtship. Madame Louise felt she had found the perfect solution to her problem. Certainly, Blanche would relent. But Blanche did not gave in.
And so, Madame Louise kept her daughter prisoner. For 25 years, Blanche only ate scraps from her mother’s meals. As Blanche withered away, her lawyer lover died in 1885.
Blanche just vanished. Nobody in France saw her in public again. Her mother and brother mourned her, and went on with their daily lives. But behind the appearance, they were hiding a terrible secret.
In May 1901, the Paris Attorney General received scribbled text describing the ghoulish events of a house in Poitiers, France. According to the anonymous letter, a woman had been held captive under horrific conditions at 21 rue de la Visitation for 25 years.
The letter read:
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.
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