The Confined Woman of Poitiers: The Story of Blanche Monnier

Blanche Monnier

Warning: This post contains distressing information about the imprisonment of a woman.

Born in 1849 in Poitiers, France, Blanche Monnier had it all. She was a socialite from one of the oldest families in Poitiers, with a gentle aristocratic beauty, dark curling hair and wide eyes. Her beauty attracted troves of suitors all over the Paris of her youth. 

Belle Époque France was an era of peace and optimism, a reprieve between the end of Franco-Prussian war that saw 756,285 French lost, dead, or interned, and the outbreak of World War I. It was the Golden Age of France, the time of refinement and art, of burlesque performances and the Moulin Rouge. Electric light began to supersede gas lighting and the Eiffel Tower would start to be constructed in 1887. 

In 1874, Blanche would have been 25 and deeply in love with a much older man, a lawyer with very little money. Her mother, Louise, didn't approve of the match. Blanche wouldn't have it and rebelled against her mother, remaining true to the man she loved, all the while bearing the brunt of her mother's ire. Louise, incensed by her daughter's growing rebellion, did something unforgivable. She locked Blanche in the small attic of their home, the place where she would spend the next 25 years of her life. 

Paris was confused and worried for the beautiful girl who had dazzled them all. She was missing, and her mother and her uncle, a man named Marcel, seemed to be in mourning for her, though there had been no indication of her passing. She simply disappeared. The man she wished to marry died in 1885, unaware that girl he so loved was still alive, trapped by her family.

In 1901 the Attorney General of Paris received a distressing letter:

"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."

When they arrived they found Monnier locked away, weighing just barely 55 pounds and covered in old food and feces. One policeman described the conditions in which they found her:

"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 odor given off by the room was so rank, that it was impossible for us to stay any longer to proceed with our investigation."

Louise Monnier was arrested immediately but died only fifteen days later after seeing the angry mob that gathered in front of her house. Marcel was put on trial and convicted, only for him to later be acquitted on appeal. He was deemed mentally incapacitated, and the judges, while not agreeing with his choices, decided that a "duty to rescue" didn't exist in the penal code of the time with sufficient rule to convict him. Blanche was never the same again, suffering from both health issues and mental ones. She was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, schizophrenia, coprophilia, and exhibitionism, to just name a few. With no other options, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Blois, France, where she died in 1913, aged only 64.