Chilling photo of woman in bed hid a horrifying secret
It was early evening on May 23, 1901, when Police Commissioner Bucheton knocked on the doors of one of Poitiers' most prestigious homes.
He'd received a disturbing anonymous letter claiming a 'half-starved' spinster was being kept prisoner inside the grand Monnier family residence, locked away for 25 years and living "in her own filth".
It was an extraordinary claim as the Monniers were one of the most respected families in the French city, they werre wealthy, influential and deeply admited. However, their fine reputation did not dissuade Commissioner Bucheton and his officers, who determinedly made their way to the elegant chateau. What they found there continues to send a chill down spines to this day.
By then, the head of the household, Emile, once in charge of a local arts faculty, had died. But his widow, Louise, was still alive, reports the Mirror.
She was prominent figure in town, she was known for her charity work. Their son, Marcel, had made a name for himself as an upstanding legal official.
They also had a daughter, Blanche, who hadn't been seen in years. She was remembered as "very gentle and good-natured", Blanche had made a striking impression in her youth, with her beauty and lively nature attracting many potential suitors.
However, behind her glamorous life, she struggled. She had a history of eating disorders and a complicated relationship with her domineering mother.
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Then, in her mid-20s, she vanished.
Rumours began to spread that she may have run away to start a new life in Paris, free from the constraints of her conservative family home. All the while, her family were the picture of anxiety as they publicly fretted about the welfare of their lost daughter.
But the truth was something else entirely and far more horrifying.
From the second Commissioner Bucheton arrived, it was clear the officers weren't welcome. But they searched the house top to bottom, eventually reaching a locked door on the second floor.
Behind the door was a skeletal woman in her early 50s, lying naked in filth, her long hair tangled and matted, her body wasting away at just 25kg. The stench was so overpowering that police couldn't stay in the room for more than a moment.
Few who knew her in her youth would have recognised this unfortunate individual as the great beauty Blanche Monnier. Describing the scene at the time, one officer recalled: "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 odour given off by the room was so rank, that it was impossible for us to stay any longer to proceed with our investigation."
The full horror of Blanche Monnier's nightmare came to light after a confession from her own mother who admitted locking her daughter away for 25 years because she fell in love.
As a member of the aristocracy, it had been expected that Blanche would make a match befitting her elite social class.
But instead of doing what was expected, she gave her heart to a penniless lawyer, a man her family considered utterly beneath her.
Rather than let her choose her own path in life, they shut her away from the world completely.
A harrowing article in the New York Times, published on June 9, 1901, laid bare the grim reality: "Time passed, and Blanche was no longer young. The attorney she so loved died in 1885.
"During all that time, the girl was confined in the lonely room, fed with scraps from the mother's table, when she received any food at all. Her only companions were the rats that gathered to eat the hard crusts that she threw upon the floor. Not a ray of light penetrated her dungeon, and what she suffered can only be surmised."
At the time, the case stirred up plenty of emotion, with a mob gathering outside the outwardly elegant family home. Blanche's mother, Louise, was arrested but died just 15 days after her daughter was liberated.
Her brother Marcel was initially sentenced to 15 months behind bars - a fraction of what his sister went through - but was ultimately acquitted after making the audacious claim that Blanche could have chosen to leave at any time.
Sadly, Blanche, once so full of light and promise, was unable to return to the full and sociable life she'd once known, and the lengthy ordeal had taken a toll on her mind as well as her body.
The next 12 years of her life were spent at a psychiatric hospital in Bois, where she died in 1913. She is remembered by the tragic nickname, La Séquestrée de Poitiers - The Confined Woman of Poitiers.
The writer of the letter which afforded Blanche a sliver of freedom in her final years has never been identified.
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