Our Lady Of The Attic

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And I promise we won't spam you. And after the episode, we hope you'll stick around because we've got more to the story. A little bonus content, a little conversation, some bloodthirsty stuff right after the episode. The judicial authorities visited the place and found in the top room a woman about 50 years old, whose fearful appearance and loathsome surroundings filled them with horror.

They saw before them a crouching and abject human figure reduced to the state of a skeleton. The figure mumbled and chattered as the law officials approached and then implored them for mercy. A haggard near skeleton found locked in an attic room. It sounds like something out of a Grimm's fairy tale or a horror movie, but this is no dark bedtime story made up to frighten children into behaving.

The pitiful creature police found that day had once been a beautiful, wealthy young woman, the toast of the town, much in demand at every ball, every party, every salon that mattered in the French city of Poitiers, until she made a terrible mistake. She fell in love. Shall I ever regain my freedom or am I to be forever consigned to this living tomb?

And they got a small beam of light again. Truly, Weird Stuff. Love and marriage, love and marriage Go together like a horse and carriage Yes, I tell you brother You can't have one without the other Actually, you can. People do. And until fairly recently in human history, love had very, very little to do with marriage.

Not that romantic love is a new idea. It's always existed. It's just that romantic love wasn't considered essential to marriage, which was more of a practical arrangement, more about consolidating social and financial power than about any notion of true and everlasting love. Marriage itself is a pretty recent development for humanity.

We've been stomping around this planet for about 300,000 years, but the first recorded evidence we have of a marriage between one woman and one man dates back to only 2350 BCE in Mesopotamia. That's less than 5,000 years ago. And the church didn't even get involved in marriage, didn't even start performing marriage ceremonies until the 8th century.

It took the state even longer to poke its bureaucratic nose into things. The 13th century. That's when churches began posting bans, public announcement of a wedding, which was a huge shift away from the tradition of common law practice where two people simply declared that they were now married. Thank you very much. By the end of the Middle Ages, marital contracts entered the chat, forever changing the way we define and think about matrimony.

And in mid-19th century France, where our story takes place, marriage was very much a family matter. Women under the age of 22 and men under the age of 26 were required by law to get permission from their parents to marry. Though if the parents couldn't agree, as long as dad approved, the marriage would be permitted. Pretty heavy-handed, right?

Except back then, marriage was still more of a legal relationship than a romantic one. And questions of power, money, and influence carried far more weight than any lovesick yearning ever could. Not that people were heartless. Love really is the strongest force in the universe, and it's always been a hard one to overcome.

But let's be sensible. Even the Puritans believed that love could grow from the driest, most lifeless arrangement. So make an effort, please, because this man or woman that you're so dead-set against marrying is bringing some incredibly rich farmland to the table and also six fine horses, you spoiled brat. So get over yourself.

French women, though, were kept on a short leash. It wouldn't do to have your daughter being courted by just any old penniless or otherwise socially inappropriate Romeo. No family of means would ever consent to a marriage based strictly on love. What silliness! Grow up! But Blanche Monnier was in love. And when has anyone ever been talked out of that?

Blanche Monnier was born on March 1, 1849 to Charles and Louise Monnier. They were solidly bourgeois, conservative, prosperous, and descended from old French nobility. They already had one son, Marcel, and now a perfect baby girl had arrived to complete their family. Charles was the Dean of Arts at the University of Poitiers.

Louise was a socialite. They were deeply traditional and proudly aristocratic. The couple were devout Catholics who wholeheartedly supported monarchy as the best and most godly form of government. The conflict between those who yearned for a king and those who wanted a more democratic republic would eventually cost Monsieur Monnier his position at the university.

But he'd have other, way bigger problems by then. Madame Monnier, for all her garden parties and society balls, was a fiercely ambitious woman. Not for herself, at least. Not directly. Poitiers may have been four hours from Paris, but the Monniers were very big fish, in that smaller, more provincial pond. Madame Monnier's goals were all aimed at finding the best husband for her exquisite only daughter, Blanche.

Blanche was a tall brunette with a wealth of hair and big, brilliant eyes. She was a belle in Poitiers and was sought by more than one. The mother, however, had far more ambitious plans for her beautiful child. See, Madame Monnier envisioned a life for her daughter that mirrored her own. An advantageous marriage, wealth, power, position, and ideally, all three.

Blanche's beauty was an asset, but a depreciating one, for who knew better than a society matron like Madame Monnier how cruel time could be to the fresh and the virginal. And Blanche was beautiful. Angelic, really. A heart-shaped face, flawless complexion, full lips graced by a single beauty mark, huge eyes and a thick crown of cropped curls, Blanche looked like pure Hollywood.

More silent film star than young debutante. I mean beautiful, like ridiculously pretty. A detail to remember, since what is about to happen to Blanche Monnier will not only destroy that beauty, it'll leave Blanche virtually unrecognizable. Some would go so far as to say, what happened left Blanche barely human. There was no shortage of men clamoring for Blanche Monnier's attention.

She came from an old established family of means. She was as bubbly and vibrant as she was beautiful. But there may also have been a brittle, fragile quality to Blanche's charms. Blanche had a history of what they used to call nervous problems. There were the so-called mystical breakdowns that happened in her teen years.

There were the eating disorders. Anorexia hysterique was what they called it. But of course, back then, any time a woman did anything that pushed against the rigid expectations demanded of her by society, well, they did like to call that behavior hysteria. It was said, though, that Blanche Monnier was sensitive, high-strung, and that may be true.

But it may also be true that Blanche Monnier simply had a mind of her own and didn't care to be controlled. That kind of thing was enough to get a woman labeled as mentally ill. It was enough to land a woman in an asylum. Now, that didn't happen to Blanche, which is too bad, because even a 19th century insane asylum would likely have been the kinder fate for her.

One promising young man after another made a play for Blanche. She had no interest in any of them. The heart will not be forced. I longed for love and would not live as an ornament on some wealthy man's arm. Blanche Monnier had fallen for an attorney who lived nearby, a much older, bankrupt attorney named Victor Calmeil, who was a Protestant and a man opposed to being ruled by a king.

Bankrupt, Protestant, Republican. One, two, three strikes, and he was out as far as Blanche's Catholic, monarchist parents were concerned. So, quick sidebar. Republican in 19th century France meant something very different than Republican means now. The French Republicans wanted to get back to the ideals of the French Revolution.

They wanted to restore democracy and put an end once and for all to the notion that any king or queen had the right to govern the people. Now, from Blanche's parents' perspective, she couldn't have made a worse choice. For their daughter to marry a man with nothing, a man who despised royalty and wasn't Catholic on top of it all?

Absolutely not. Blanche held the line. At 27 years old, she knew her own mind. She refused to obey her mother's wishes that she accept a proposal of marriage from a younger, more socially and financially acceptable suitor. Blanche Monnier would marry only for love or not at all. Suitors were numerous for the hand of la belle Mademoiselle Monnier, but Blanche resolved to select a husband for herself and not to take one chosen officially, as it were, by her relatives.

And she had fallen desperately in love with a barrister who had brains but not money and whose prospects in this profession were not very bright. Blanche vainly besought her mother to consent to her marriage to the lawyer, but Madame Monnier was inexorable and tears, supplications and prayers had no effect on her. Madame Louise Monnier would not tolerate her authority being questioned.

Blanche's father, Charles, was a gentle sword who dreaded conflict and so remained silent as his wife concocted a plan to put an end to Blanche's ridiculous romantic notions. Madame Monnier talked the matter over with her son, Marcel, who was at one time a sub-prefect over the Department of Vienne. Translation? Marcel was a pretty high-ranking government official, one with some power.

Vienne is a region in France. The word they use is department. A sub-prefect is a civil servant charged with managing the administrative needs of that department while representing the national government. It was a big job. And together, mother and son determined upon a plan which they felt would prevent the marriage.

One night, the girl was locked in a room in the house. The abrupt disappearance of Blanche Monnier was, of course, the talk of poitiers for some time. No doubt, Madame Monnier despised the gossip. Was it not enough that her husband had lost his position at the university and then her daughter had nearly ruined her own prospects and her family's reputation by making such a selfish, reckless choice of fiancé?

Soon after Blanche's disappearance, the story was circulated that she lost her reason. Perhaps Madame Monnier only intended to keep Blanche under lock and key for a short period of time, a few days, a week or two at most, just long enough for the grieving young woman to calm down. But Blanche wasn't cooperating. It infuriated Madame Monnier that her daughter could dare be so willful, so defiant.

Another day and she'll come around, insisted Madame Monnier. One more day. That was in the spring of 1876. Blanche did not come around. She remained locked away, not in her own bedroom. No, Madame Monnier believed that Blanche had been coddled and pampered and spoiled enough. And look at the result. Madame had her daughter moved to a small windowless room in the attic of the family's home.

Visitors came calling Blanche's friends and acquaintances. The Monnier's lied about their daughter, saying that she was at boarding school and then she's in Scotland, then traveling abroad. As time passed, fewer and fewer questions were asked. People moved on like they do. New gossip pushed the mystery of Blanche Monnier aside.

You know how it is. People have short memories and are caught up in their own life drama. It was tragic, though, what happened to her father. Poor man, the people of Poitiers whispered. That humiliating fall from grace at the university and then the callousness of his only daughter to leave him grieving her absence. What the people didn't know was that Charles Emile knew perfectly well where Blanche was, knew that he could see her at any time by simply climbing the tall staircase that led to the narrow attic where Blanche was imprisoned.

Not that he wanted that fate for his daughter. Charles Emile Monnier was horrified by his wife's actions, horrified, but cowed and unwilling to oppose Louise in any way. In a weird twist, almost symbiotic, with each day of his only daughter's confinement, Charles Emile gradually weakened and faded away a little bit more and a little bit more until he died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1882.

Here rests the body of Mr. Charles Emile Monnier, born on 12 March 1820, died in Poitiers on 9 April 1882 at the age of 62. Honorary Dean of the Letters of Poitiers, Knight of the Legion of Honor, Officer of Public Instruction, pray to God for him. It's unknown if or how Blanche was informed of her father's passing. And then, four years later, Victor Camais, the bankrupt lawyer, the man Blanche loved, he died too.

By this point, Blanche had been imprisoned in the attic of her home for a decade. Surely now, with Camais dead, Madame Monnier's heart would soften. Camais no longer posed any threat to the Monnier family reputation. Why not allow Blanche to make her own slow return to society? Eventually, the endless questions about Blanche became too much for even Madame Monnier to fend off.

So she tried something new. Madame Monnier, tearful and with choking voice, confided to the inquisitive neighbors the awful fate that had befallen her poor Blanche. My daughter is hopelessly insane, she said. I could not bear to take her to an asylum. I kept her here in her own room, and she has all her heart desires.

The tragic insanity of the beautiful Monnier heiress became the talk of Poitiers. How sad it was for dear Madame Monnier, such a devoted mother, and a saint too. Look at the care she lavishes on her daughter, whose mind is so broken that she can't even see the pain she inflicts on that poor woman. Blanche's friends had a rival less for the young eligible bachelors of Poitiers, and by and by the insane girl in the palatial mansion was forgotten.

Back then, it wasn't unusual at all for a person with a mental illness to be kept locked up at home, especially if the family was prosperous. The neighbors sympathized with Madame Monnier, who continued to be her daughter's jailer, with the full knowledge and support of Blanche's brother Marcel, who had married and pursued his career, all while pretending to mourn his absent sister.

Marcel's marriage and work took him away from Poitiers for a number of years. Maybe that made it easier for him to live with his own conscience. Blanche, in her attic cell, out of sight and out of mind, caught up in his own life and his own problems. His sister's fate, an unfortunate and uncomfortable thing to think about.

Wasn't it so much better to pretend that none of it was real? And so the years passed, one after the next. And Blanche was no longer young. 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. The Grand Monnier house continued to be maintained by an entire retinue of servants. It's never been clear how many of those servants knew Madame's terrible secret. The truth of what was being done to the woman kept hidden away in the attic.

But it's hard to imagine that they didn't know everything, isn't it? Later, it will be revealed that at least one servant was put in charge of Blanche's care. A woman, a housekeeper named Marie Poinet-Fazie, who died in 1891, leaving Madame Monnier, now 71 years old, with an extraordinary problem. The woman tried for a time to look after Blanche on her own, but keeping a captive in one's attic was more strenuous than even the steely Louise Monnier could manage.

Blanche was increasingly neglected, or maybe we should say, more neglected. Things became dire enough that three years later, in 1899, Madame hired two new servants to take on the task, Eugénie Tabot and Juliette Dupuis. It's very hard to believe that Blanche's attic prison managed to stay a secret for as long as it did.

But you know that people are very good at convincing themselves that what they want to do and what is right to do are the exact same thing. How else can you explain why not even one member of the Monnier household ever tried to free Blanche? Why not one member ever spilled the shocking secret of what was being done behind those closed, heavy, ornate doors?

Until someone did. Monsieur Léon Ballot, the Attorney General of Paris, received an anonymous letter in June 1901. Mr. Attorney General, I have the honor to inform you of an exceptionally serious event. I am referring to an old maid who was locked up in Madame Monnier's house, half-starved and living in a putrid litter, in a rotten bed for the past 25 years, in a word, in her own filth.

A similar letter was mailed to Monsieur Boucheton, the Commissioner of Police for the city of Poitiers, and it read, A wealthy lady of the highest position and her son, formerly a sub-prefect, and both connected with several religious societies of the district, had, for the last 25 years, conspired to keep the former's daughter in illegal detention, subjecting her to the most inhumane treatment.

Twenty-five years! How could such a thing be possible? Blanche Monnier had been caged in the attic of her family home for 25 years? Surely this letter was nothing more than a mean-spirited hoax, a cruel trick played on an elderly widow. The official called at the house where the unfortunate woman was said to be imprisoned by her mother, the latter, an old lady, refused to see him and referred him to her son living in another house opposite.

It was a Thursday afternoon, May 23, 1901, when Police Commissioner Boucheton arrived at the Monnier mansion. He was accompanied by three officers and had a warrant signed by the Attorney General of Paris. Marcel Monnier refused to speak to the police. Well, he tried to refuse. Marcel wasn't a man with much in the way of a backbone, and the Police Commissioner finally badgered him into a meeting.

Marcel tried to convince the man that Blanche's whereabouts were not his concern, that Madame Monnier had a physician's authority over her daughter, what we call medical power of attorney, and therefore was not obliged to answer to anyone on the subject. When Commissioner Boucheton informed Marcel that he wanted to see Blanche Monnier at once, Marcel objected, no, absolutely not, that the Commissioner would not be put off, and Marcel had never ever been able to stand his ground, especially not when threatened with legal action.

Marcel caved and led the Commissioner and his officers across the street to his childhood home. He walked them through corridors and up staircases to what appeared to be an unused wing on the third floor of the sprawling house. He gestured toward a hallway door, saying, My sister lives there, in an apartment of her own.

Marcel clearly hoped that this would be enough to satisfy the police. He was mistaken. The Commissioner insisted that he must enter this apartment. Now, immediately, fetch the key. Again, Marcel waffled and wheedled and tried his best to persuade the Commissioner to leave. And again, Marcel failed. Boucheton gave orders to break the heavy door down.

Lighting a lantern, one of the officers revealed a space roughly 13 feet long by 10 feet wide. The only window was nailed shut and draped in a heavy curtain. Not even the faintest sliver of daylight could fight its way through. The Commissioner entered the room, which was in darkness, and throwing aside the curtain, saw, lying upon a straw mattress, which was in the most filthy condition, a woman, naked and like a skeleton.

In appearance, her arms were hardly an inch and a half in diameter. Heaped on the floor, all around that moldering and foul straw mattress, were mounds of rags, scraps of food, and piles of gnawed upon bones. Rats and cockroaches scurried into corners, startled by the sudden light. Murky as it was, coming through the smeared and filthy and heavily covered glass windows, the only light, the light of the lantern.

The air in the room was thick with the stench of excrement and rotting food. And Blanche Meunier, scabbed and emaciated, shielding her face from the sudden light with arms thin as twigs, her hair wild and matted into a nearly solid mass, long and crawling with vermin. Commissioner Boucheton and his officers were frozen in shock, gagging at the smell, unable to comprehend what they were seeing.

When Boucheton tried to question Blanche, she answered in monosyllables, without making eye contact. In fact, she barely acknowledged the strangers in her doorway. Gone was the fresh beauty that had dazzled Poitiers' society. Blanche Meunier now looked more like a child's scribbled nightmare than any privileged debutante.

Rushed to a nearby hospital, it was determined that Blanche was in the last stages of starvation. Weighing just 55 pounds, she wasn't expected to survive. The girl was left in a room for more than 20 years, with the window walled up so that no light or air could get through. Left with all the accumulated dust and filth of years.

She had not had a bath or a wash in all that time. One would suppose that a human being would die within a year of such treatment. The filth and rank squalor of the attic where Blanche had been kept was in stark contrast to the rest of the home, which was bright, immaculate, tastefully furnished, not a speck of dust to be seen, and not an object out of place.

Madame Louise Meunier and her son Marcel were immediately arrested and charged with the unlawful incarceration of Blanche Meunier. Marcel was indignant. The only crime he was guilty of, he insisted, was that of being a most loyal and obedient son. When Marcel Meunier was arrested, he admitted that he had known of the imprisonment of his sister, but he pleaded that he had acted as he had on account of filial piety, which was one of the cherished traditions of his family.

The scandal that Madame Meunier feared would result from Blanche marrying a penniless Protestant lawyer many years her senior was nothing compared to the scandal of being arrested alongside her son. Now, age 75, Madame Meunier still had that same imperious manner, that same air of entitlement. She was bemused by the police and didn't seem to grasp how serious the circumstances were.

Then she appeared before a judge on June 7th, 1901. The judge was blunt. For the first time, Madame Meunier seemed to grasp the magnitude of her actions. She would be charged with manslaughter in the death of her daughter. After the hearing, Madame was returned to her cell, where she promptly died of a heart attack, which feels right on brand for the controlling old socialite.

Once again, but this time for the last time, Madame Meunier made her daughter's suffering all about herself. Marcel was left to face justice alone. And the public turned on him in fury and disgust. Even Madame Meunier's funeral procession wasn't spared the outrage, as her coffin made its slow journey to the cemetery, where she would be laid to rest beside her husband.

People lined the streets to shout and jeer and hurl insults at the mourners. Marcel was tried before the Poitiers Correctional Tribunal, charged with cruelty toward his sister, and with being an accomplice to acts of cruelty perpetuated against her. The original accusation against him of being a party to the sesquestration was rejected by the Council of Indictment, and he thus escaped trial in criminal court.

Let's translate that. Marcel escaped being tried in what they call a size court in France, the court that deals with the most serious criminal offenses, murder, rape, violent assault. The Poitiers Correctional Tribunal dealt with misdemeanors, the kinds of offenses that are typically punishable with prison sentences of 10 or fewer years.

Marcel showed up in court looking pale and drawn. His wife was by his side. Blanche did not appear in court as she was too ill to leave the hospital. Where she was, just as her devoutly Catholic mother would have wished, under round-the-clock care, nuns. The prosecution may not have had Blanche Meunier herself in the courtroom, but they did bring evidence of her unthinkable confinement.

Among the pieces were the blinds of the room in which the woman had been imprisoned, and the chain and padlock attached to them. The wretched wooden bed, mattress, and other objects from the living tomb were also visible. Crowds gathered outside howling for Marcel Meunier's head. Nothing in Marcel's comfortable, well-padded career as a bureaucrat had prepared him for mobs of people spitting and jeering and shaking their fists at him.

The evidence is highly unfavorable to him. As he was led out by the gendarme, the people in the street wanted to lynch the little weasel-faced man, who looks remarkably inoffensive in spite of his reputation for inhumanity. When he was being conveyed from prison to the courthouse, over 2,000 infuriated people tried to wrest him from the gendarme and tear him to pieces.

It was such a scene that Marcel's defense attorney had to raise his voice in the courtroom just to be heard above the noise. Marcel's defense argued that there was no reason for arresting this man and treating him as a common criminal. Blanche Meunier was known to be demented even when her father was alive, and precautions had to be taken to prevent her from disgracing the family.

Next, the defense produced a pile of letters written by Marcel to his sister Blanche. Letters that showed that Marcel was always affectionately disposed toward his demented sister, and he often expressed his wish that she would leave her room and take the fresh air like other people. Counsel for the defense conveniently left out the part about her attic door not only being padlocked closed from the outside, but also hidden behind a movable panel so the prying eyes wouldn't realize that a door even existed there.

Then Marcel himself took the stand. Under cross-examination, Marcel Meunier told the magistrate that he was in the habit of going to see his demented sister daily, but being short-sighted, he did not notice that she was in filthy condition. Short-sighted? And also lacking a sense of smell? Short-sighted, but not blind.

He didn't see the window nailed shut? Didn't see the heavy draperies blocking out even the narrowest ray of light? And Marcel had an answer for that, too. My sister detested the light and always insisted on her room being darkened. Even as Marcel testified that no one, including himself, would ever dare challenge his mother's authority, his own attorney generously threw the late Madame Meunier a bone.

How, he asked, could the mother be a monster when she had provided for Blanche in her will and even stipulated that Blanche, and Blanche alone, was to share her tomb. There was scattered applause in the courtroom after that speech, but it was clear that the majority of those in attendance were hostile to Marcel, disbelieving his claims that he had no knowledge of the horrifying conditions in the attic, and no knowledge or responsibility for how his sister had come to be held captive there for 25 years.

The case is especially interesting for students of heredity. What? How so? Blanche Meunier herself is shown to have been from the cradle of weak-minded, stubborn will and maniacal. Her father, who is said to have been an amiable and worth man, was obliged, after the unfortunate love affair, to lock her up. He kept her at home, thinking she would get better care there than at an asylum.

During his life, she was well treated, but after death, there shortly followed her loss of mind. I'll tell you this, Madame Meunier was probably relieved to have died before seeing the press gleefully pick apart her family tree, digging for any little clue that would support the argument that Blanche was hopelessly mad, defective from the start, coming, as she did, from defective stock.

The history of her family reads like this. Madame Meunier's mother, who married a first cousin, died in a madhouse. Her father became a misanthrope and lived alone in his room for 10 years. He suffered from melancholia. An aunt was an idiot. An uncle attempted to commit suicide and was five years under restraint. Madame Meunier inherited the portions of all these crazy relations, and Marcel Meunier, the son, is threatened with general paralysis.

Madame was no doubt spinning in her grave from the mortification of it all. What could be worse for a proud society matron than to be the subject of such ugly gossip? The effort that Poitiers' society went to in a pretty desperate attempt to avoid holding either Meunier parent or brother fully accountable for Blanche's quarter-century-long confinement is really something.

The cruelty of it, the depravity, all unfolding behind the stately walls of the Meunier mansion, was something none of them wanted to look at too closely. How had those who'd known Blanche as a young, glowing, vibrant woman accepted the stories of her disappearance so easily? How had the neighbors, who'd heard screams and shouting coming from the house, how had they so easily minded their own business?

And the servants, they knew. Of course they knew. How else do you think the world learned of the heiress in the attic? Scabby little commoners that we are, it's hard for us to even imagine life in an aristocratic household with its hierarchies of power. Hierarchies that extended beyond the family to the servants and hired help.

A person who wanted to keep their position in a prominent house knew the value of discretion. And he or she also knew their place. You kept your head down, and you kept your mouth shut, even as you saw, heard, and knew virtually every intimate secret of your employer's lives. The Meunier household was overseen by a woman named Madame Reynard.

During her reign, not even a whisper about the goings-on in that attic were permitted. Plus, the servants feared the temper of Madame Meunier, whose rare kindnesses were too fickle to be trusted. One of the police officers said that when he asked the maidservant why they allowed Blanche Meunier to be kept there, they replied that they were afraid of Madame Meunier, and especially of her son, who had a long arm.

That is to say, he would prevent them from ever getting another job if they blabbed. And then, in early 1901, Madame Reynard passed away and took the ironclad secrecy that had long hung over the Meunier house with her. In her absence, household discipline rapidly grew lax, and one of those new hires, Juliette Dupuis, took advantage of the situation.

She had a lover, a young lieutenant in the French army, and she began sneaking him into the house at night. In May 1901, Juliette finally told him the secret that had been so carefully guarded for two and a half decades. She told him about Blanche and her imprisonment in the attic above. And it was just five days later, May 23, 1901, that that anonymous letter arrived on the desk of the prosecutor in Paris, which is why that lieutenant, Jean-Luc, has often been credited with being the catalyst for Blanche's liberation.

Though some defenders of Marcel Meunier insisted that it was he, the devoted brother, who finally found the courage to help his sister by writing that anonymous note. But please, oh, I'm so sorry, I should say, mais s'il vous plaît, Marcel had 25 years to grow a conscience and didn't. It's a bit too much of a coincidence, isn't it, that the letter shows up just five days after Lieutenant Jean-Luc learns about Blanche?

And in that same exact time frame, Marcel suddenly decides to do the right thing? Unlikely. And now the servants were talking. An absolute scandal for a noble family. And what a delicious peek into their private business. Madame Gant, formerly a cook of the family, said that Blanche walked about undressed and used to hide herself with fear and disgust when she saw her mother.

Asked if Madame Meunier was a good mother, Gant answered that it was impossible she could be so, as she was horrible towards her servants. She gave them bread only fit for dogs and complained that they ate too much. A male servant called to the stand to testify, declared that Madame Meunier was a crusty and cantankerous person who fell out with her son as well as with Blanche.

He expressed his opinion that Marcel Meunier was incapable of acts of cruelty to his sister. The supportive testimony of one servant wasn't much help to Marcel Meunier. He was convicted on all charges and sentenced to 15 months in prison. A conviction he appealed, and shockingly, an appeal that he won. Marcel appealed his conviction on the grounds that his sister Blanche could have left her attic cell at any time.

She didn't, he claimed, because she didn't want to. Spending her life in a small, filthy, locked attic room deprived of daylight for more than two decades was, Marcel suggested, his sister's choice. And since there was no duty to rescue laws on the books at that time in that region of France, it was his word against hers.

And Blanche's word had never meant anything to her family. It meant even less now, now that she'd been rendered all but feral from her long years in the dark. Blanche Meunier is like a child, and may never be able to give an explanation. She is 52 years of age, but is practically beginning life. When she was removed from their mother's house to the hospital, she almost lost the use of her tongue.

She could only stammer a few words and could not frame a complete sentence. Little by little, the power of speech has begun to return to her. She recognizes flowers, birds, and articles that were once familiar to her. She lives in continued enchantment of the new life to which she has been born. Doctors diagnosed Blanche with a whole list of disorders, from schizophrenia to coprophilia, none of which seemed a good fit.

But in those early days of the 20th century, psychiatry and psychology were new, and no benchmarks existed to measure the mental health of a person who'd been kept in darkness and filth for a quarter century. In June 1902, Blanche was transferred from the hospital in Poitiers to a psychiatric asylum roughly 100 miles away.

She lived out the remainder of her life there, never fully recovering, not physically and not mentally. But she was clean, and when the sun shone, it flooded her room with its warm light. She had enough to eat and warm baths, which must have seemed the most decadent of luxuries for a woman who'd gone unbathed for at least 20 years.

Blanche died in that asylum at age 64 on the 13th of October, 1913. She was an orphan at the time of her death. Her brother Marcel had passed away, far from home and in disgrace despite his acquittal, just four months earlier that same year. The entire Monnier family, all gone now. The elegant home, emptied and sold. All of the glittering and exclusive parties, forgotten.

All of the reasons for every decision, every choice, every moment that led to Blanche finding herself behind a padlocked door, it all seemed meaningless in the end. Because it was. The Monnier family was as much a prisoner to appearances as their daughter was in that cramped attic. No one in that family was ever, ever free.

But it was Blanche who paid the steepest price. Paid with her liberty. Paid ultimately with her life. What Blanche dreamed was her future, her family saw as rebellion, as ingratitude. Louise and Charles Emile Monnier essentially murdered their own daughter, but left her body alive. And for what? For the sin of falling in love.

Love and marriage, love and marriage Go together like a horse and carriage Death was told by mother You can't have one, you can't have none You can't have one without the other Next time on True Weird Stuff He was found in the forest, a wild child, unwashed, unloved, unable to speak, a mystery that remains unsolved. But that wild boy inspired something amazing, something that may have changed your life or your child's life.

Meet Victor in the next True Weird Stuff. And we are very excited to tell you that this is an episode that was written by one of our true weirdos, Matthew Benton, the wild boy on the next True Weird Stuff. Special thanks to our voice talents on this episode, Erin Cox, Sam Moore, Kary "Doc" Bowser, Don Morgan, and singing from Elizabeth Jordan.

Sherry, when I was listening to you tell this story, there are some similarities with the Rosemary Kennedy story. You had a daughter who was brought up in society, a debutante, but maybe had some sort of an emotional problem, maybe a mental problem of some kind that they tried to fix with the ice pick, the lobotomy. It reminded me a little of this situation where this wealthy family was so concerned about how things look, they did something that was really desperate.

It makes me so sad to think, because everyone's dead now. The house is gone. You never even heard of the Monniers until today. It's not like, oh, the scandalous Monniers. The way that human beings will steal another person's life for the pettiest of reasons, because that's what happened here. They stole Blanche's life. They stole it.

And for what? Seriously, for what? This fixation on controlling outcomes, your children and your family's reputation and your good name and all, that was really important in that world at that time. But there are plenty of people walking around right now with zero aristocratic or noble anything that have experienced that kind of heavy-handed control in their family or maybe guilty of inflicting it.

Why can't we just leave each other the hell alone? I guess that's my question. This Blanche Monnier, I cannot even describe to you. This was... When I first saw a picture of Blanche Monnier before her captivity, I felt like... What's that movie with Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve, Somewhere in Time? Oh, yeah, yeah.

I was so mesmerized by this image of a person from the past. One of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. And then you see the photographs of Blanche cowering in her attic the day she was found by police. And you are looking at a Halloween decoration. There's just no other way to put it. Yeah, I think there is no way you can adequately describe how stunning she was when she was younger and then what had happened to her because of her confinement and what a horrifying existence that she had.

You hear about these stories every once in a while where people are kept in rooms and locked up for many years at a time. But you have to wonder with the son, her brother, Marcel, despite his acquittal, when he was talking about his mother, I was reminded of what the men said at the Nuremberg trials. You know, well, I was just following orders.

It's just what Hitler wanted us to do. Well, it's just what mom wanted me to do. But you have to take responsibility for being able to see what the situation is and to be able to take the proper actions as a human being. Marcel was a very weak man. He was a very weak man. Whatever else you want to say about him, he was weak.

He was weak and spineless and lacked both conviction and courage because he not only did nothing to help his sister, he never even really took accountability for what had happened to her. I find Marcel, her mother is a monster, but Marcel takes after his father. A pleasant man, a man with some success, but weak, weak.

And, you know, we have to, it's so hard to be a person. I can see why some people choose to reincarnate as giraffes or dogs or whatever because it's really hard to be a person. But, you know, very often in life we think that the behavior we have to dodge is our own active choices to do harm. But there's another kind of harm, and that's the harm that stands by and does nothing while pain is being inflicted.

Right. The inaction is its own action. Yeah, and that inaction, it can play out in very small intimate ways and it can play out, you know, on the battlefield, right? But we are called sometimes to act in such incredibly brave and selfless ways. And we fail a lot of the time because it turns out that it takes incredible bravery to be brave and selfless.

And a lot of us just, we just aren't, you know. We want to believe we are. We want to believe that we're just exploding with righteous courage and moral conviction. But then we get a test, like the test that Marcel had, and we fail it. Do you know how easy? Marcel was a man, so being a sub-prefect of the Department of Vienne, that was a really big thing.

I don't know what the equivalent would be in our political system because they're so different, but let's just say he was a great big freaking deal. Are you telling me that Marcel did not have the capacity to save his sister? Not at year 25, but maybe at year two, when it became clear to him that she was in the attic.

I mean, the guy was like a powerful government official. He was embedded in the French bureaucracy. Are you telling me, Max, that he couldn't have discreetly and carefully without tipping his own hand? Had somebody show up at that house and discover Blanche Monnier years before she was discovered? And would that not bother you?

I mean, I would think that every day of my life, it would be in the back of my mind that my sister was chained in the attic. And was living in the most squalid of conditions because certainly despite whatever he said about being short-sighted, he knew what the situation was. He absolutely knew what the situation was. In fact, he probably avoided the situation so as to not be confronted with it and to be able to find a way to live with himself about it.

Weak and spineless and lacking in courage. That's Marcel Monnier. There's a part of this, there's a detail in this story that makes it almost Shakespearean. And it's so perfect and poetic and karmic that I got to call it out. So Blanche is imprisoned and her life is taken from her because she's fallen in love with a man that is not appropriate.

I will remind you that the only reason Blanche was saved is because Juliette Dupuis sneaked her lover into the house and told him about Blanche. So one woman was taken from her romantic love and imprisoned and it was another young woman in the flush of her own romantic adventure who ultimately set in motion the events that would free Blanche.

Isn't that kind of awesome that it worked out that way? It is interesting that it worked out that way. And you can certainly understand why the servants didn't say anything. They're struggling to get work. And you can certainly understand that they will be concerned that an affluent family like this would prevent them from getting any kind of work if they said anything.

Oh, Madame Louise Monnier would have blackballed any member of that staff. They would have never been able to work in Poitiers. And who knows how far they'd have to go. It's terrible. Louise Monnier is guilty of great evil, I think, here. And her son and husband are also guilty of great evil although they would never want to think of themselves as evil men.

But when you stand by and do nothing while evil is perpetrated, there's a word for that, and that word, describing you, is evil. There's the evil of wicked actions and the evil of wicked inaction. They're evil men. Yeah, there's no question because it also makes you wonder. So they decided that they wanted to have her not be involved with this man.

And the way they would do that is keeping her stuck in this room. Okay, that's what you want to do. But not only are you doing that, but you're treating her so deplorably when it comes to the most basic of things like being able to bathe or being able to have proper nutrition or any of those things. That part of it is truly astonishing.

I mean, there's controlling behavior and then there's cruelty. Evil. Louise Monnier was guilty of great evil. And Blanche, had the police not come when they did, it would have been her corpse they found in that attic. She was so close to death. 55 pounds. I think it's a miracle that those nuns were able to get her healthy enough to send her to an insane asylum.

And Madame Monnier was told by the judge, If your daughter dies, you're going down. We're going to get you for at minimum manslaughter. And she went back to her jail cell and had a heart attack and died. Like the bitch that she was. Like, don't even stand for justice, Louise. How convenient, yeah. So it just makes you kind of glad.

Let me just say, I come from an absolute trash family. And what a relief that is. I don't have anything to live up to. I don't have my family's. The only way I could do anything to my family's reputation is improve it. So there's a freedom in that. Think about the sort of golden handcuffs that money and position and privilege put on you when you're expected to live up to whatever.

And that's still true today. You don't have to be an aristocratic family in France back then. I mean, we both know in the city where we live, a handful of prominent families where, oh, let one of them get popped for DUI and the whole town's talking about it. Oh, yeah. There's a weight of expectation. And we won't name names, but when Max was just starting his radio career, he dated a woman from an incredibly prominent family.

So you had a little up-close peek at what it means to come from a family where image is very important. It was incredibly important to them. And I was the bad choice that she had brought to the family. I can remember going to a dinner and I ended up, I was in the kitchen with the kitchen staff, and we were laughing and having a good time.

And they were in the formal dining room going, where is the DJ? Where is he? Mildred, where is the disc jockey? And they were counting the spoons after he left. I'm sure they were. Yeah. And you know what's interesting for a lot of those families, and of course there's no hard and fast rules, but there's also a certain eccentricity that goes with high wealth and a lot of those families.

And what would pass for normal for you and me does not pass for normal for them at all. No, they're playing a whole different game in a whole different league, and we are outsiders. Money does a weird thing to people. Money tricks people into thinking that they're better than they are, that they're just better people.

They're more virtuous. They're more industrious. They're more hardworking. They're more deserving. And this is true even of people who didn't earn that money, like people who inherit this wealth, right? Right. People who marry this wealth. There is, men and women, because it does go both ways, there's this weird effect that money has on your mind and on the way you perceive the world, and this expectation that because you have this wealth and this privilege and this quote-unquote good name that the rules are different for you.

How else do you account for Louise Monnier just locking her daughter up in the attic for 25 years? The rules didn't apply to her. No. The rules don't apply to me. I'm Louise Monnier. And apparently the husband and the son were bought in on that as well. And, I mean, the idea of her being a disgrace because she is with this older man who doesn't have any money and that that's the, well, we've got to prevent this from happening, not because they were trying to protect her from a place of love, but because they were more concerned about what their image was because of what was happening with her.

And who knows really what all was going on with her? I mean, you know, obviously she had some sort of challenges emotionally and mentally, but at the same time, I would say today, those are things that probably would be easily fixable with therapy or medication, something like that. Well, it's impossible to know now which version of Blanche was the truthful version because, of course, Marcel and Louise were going to say in their own defense that she was always nuts and that they were just trying to protect her.

Now, the portrait that we have of Blanche Monnier, I don't mean the photograph, I mean like the picture that we have of this dazzling, charismatic, compassionate, lovely woman that literally lit up every room she came into, right? That doesn't really jive with what we hear Louise and Marcel say. But, you know, we all have many faces and maybe Blanche, she certainly had some episodes in her teen years that raised eyebrows in her family, but, God, don't we all?

Who in their teens doesn't have episodes? I think everybody has some kind of episodes of things that happen through the course of time, something that happens that, you know, you're a teenager. And let me just say, I mean, I'm surprised no one in my house locked me in the attic for 25 years. I could be a right handful, you know?

I feel like we, you know, right? There's another layer to this that I debated how much of this to put in the episode, but it's very, very important. One of the critically important things in this story is that the Monnier parents were Catholic monarchists and that the man their daughter loved was a Protestant Republican, which again, I'll remind you, does not mean the same thing in this story that it means today.

So that was a hill the Monnier's were willing to die on. And the people of France were also like, yeah, we kind of do not want a king. So they were, you know, her dad lost his job because of his political leanings. That was a big part of how he sort of quietly got swept out of that university position. So there was this whole deep religious and political undercurrent here that you can't, it's not meaningless.

It's everything for the Monnier's. It wasn't just that the lawyer that she loved was older because that would not have been a problem had he been rich, Catholic and into kings. Am I right? And selected by them. Yeah. It wasn't just that he was older. It wasn't even just that he was bankrupt because families could lose their wealth and it would be an embarrassment.

But, you know, it was understood that a family could still be very genteel minus their fortune. It was the fact that he was a Protestant and he was anti-monarchy. And that was so that was such a big deal that the world in that at that time in that place was as divided as the world we're in right now. And it was ugly. And Louise Monnier would not be challenged on this.

It simply would not happen. She and here's what's kind of sad. And you really can kind of zoom out and look at it like this. And this is a dynamic that plays out in families throughout time and also today. Louise loved her religion and politics more than she loved her daughter. She loved the idea of a monarchy more than she loved Blanche.

Fight me. I'm going to put, you know, fight me. Prove me wrong on that. No, I mean, I would say her love of the monarchy, her love of money, her love of status, her love of how things looked. And if they looked a certain way, I think all of that was far more important than any love she had for her daughter, which makes you wonder whether she was not.

And I loved at the end where we sort of dissected what had gone on in her family, how she would have been spinning in her grave at that point. The the idea. And I see. So I read a ton of posts that I don't engage with. I don't comment or interact with. But I read them because I'm just so curious about like, where are the people today?

Let's see what the people are thinking about today. And I've seen a lot of posts. They break my heart, you know, because it'll be well. I had my last conversation with my dad today. He told me that as long as I'm going to vote this way, he doesn't have a son. You know this. You've seen it, too. I've seen it. I think everybody listening right now has seen at least one post like that.

Well, do you see that? You see how sad that makes you and how trivial and petty it seems. That's what was happening in the money family for Blanche. That was a big part of it. This division over religious practices. And even beyond, they may have forgiven him for being a Protestant, although it seems unlikely. But even beyond that, if he had been a Protestant that was like, yeah, I'm a Protestant, but I'm a fan of a king.

They may have found their way somehow toward him. But that that triple whammy of bankrupt, not Catholic, not a monarchist, did them in. And those are the reasons when if you believe in any kind of a God and any kind of a judgment, when Louise Monnier rolled up to the pearly gates, they just shook their head and said, girl, you got some spleen in.

So we need you to look at your daughter, your precious daughter. People grieve their whole lives for the want of a daughter that they can't have and don't have or maybe had and was taken from them. Let's show you St. Peter. Play the clip. Let's take a look at what you did to your daughter and let's look at why you did it.

Huh? Those are pretty shabby reasons, don't you think, Louise? Do you do you remember? We both read a book called The Sociopath Next Door and we talked about sociopathic behavior, which is generally the difference between psychopathic and sociopathic. Correct me if I'm wrong. Sociopathic. You're kind of you. You're born that way.

Sociopathic. You learn to be that way. Am I close on that? Yeah. Yeah. But one of the things that they one of the things they talked about in that book was an example of a guy who had a dog he was taking care of and the decisions he was making about what was happening to that dog because the dog wasn't going to tell anybody if it was mistreated or not fed or whatever it is and how a sociopathic person very easily can say, yeah, hell with the dog.

I'll go and do what I want to do and the dog will live. And I just wonder whether she didn't have some sort of that that she was a sociopath or a psychopath. In order to because when I think about what happened with her daughter and I think about I worry if I'm out at the store too long, if Mojo needs to go out, you know what I mean?

Because, I mean, I'm worried about I'm worried about what's going on with him. If I'm a half hour late feeding him dinner, I'm concerned about what's going on with that. So the idea of leaving your daughter in a room to waste away is just something that just so beyond anything that I ever could imagine doing. So I agree with you.

You try to pick it apart and you go, how could somebody become this twisted that they would allow this to happen? Well, I think you're I think you're really nailing it because when you look at Louise Monnier, do you see a person with functional empathy, remorse or a conscience? No, no. I mean, even the servants and listen, not one person gave a toasted damn that the service were not being fed properly.

OK, like the servants getting up on the stand and going, she gave us bread that was fit for dogs to the elite of parties. They were like, you were lucky to get it. So if you look at the fact that the mother has no capacity for love, the father, I don't know whether he had a capacity for love. But should we be surprised that the son seems to be devoid of that as well?

I mean, it's what he grew up with. It's what he it's what he learned. What he knew, you know, it's like I look at that family and I see Louise as being cold and there's something missing. There's a chip missing there. Yeah. And her husband as being sweet and kindly and very brilliant, but weak is just weak as a noodle.

And Marcel, who got the worst of both parents. Yeah, if you think about it like this, you got the absolute worst. And somehow in this family, we have this extraordinary, incandescently beautiful, charismatic, delight, delightful human being. And I know that we always like to speak as someone dies and we're immediately like, you know what?

That was a good person. And I even though we're often full of shit, like this person was not good. I sort of love the human impulse to try to slap some frosting on that turd, you know, at the end. And that's why it's shocking and and like funny, like I shouldn't be laughing at this. But when you'll come across an obituary online where it's like Ellen went to be with her maker and we're all glad about it because she was a monster.

You've seen those. Right. And it's shocking because the social convention is to not speak ill of the dead. So I realized that after all of this, people were tripping over themselves to celebrate Blanche for her exquisiteness. But the truth is, Blanche was 24 years old when this happened and had a whole life. And there were people that had known Blanche for a long time who came forward and said, no, she was delightful.

She was a really good person. You know what I'm saying? Like I think I think Blanche might have been the best that family had to offer. And they put her in the attic. Sherry. So my reaction to Blanche's. How can I save you? Oh, you would have been the best thing for her. Hey, hey, Louise. Louise, you don't like the penniless Protestant Republican lawyer.

Let me present to you a penniless lapsed Catholic content creator. Here you go. Who doesn't have a window? How's that sound? There you go. And you know what? Louise would have loved it. Yeah. Louise would have said, oh, yeah, Blanche doesn't like a window. Give her to Max. I work in a windowless room. So and this and there you go.

That is the story of the tragic, utterly tragic. You get this one life, y'all. And then somebody takes it from you and makes you a prisoner living in your own filth, surrounded by vermin, starving to death in your own home. That's how you got to spend your one precious life. It pisses me off that Louise kicked of a heart attack before she could get some trial time and some justice.

Doesn't that make you mad when that happens? Maybe they say she committed. She had a heart attack, but maybe she committed suicide. Or maybe one of the servants from her house that was ticked off about getting bad bread came and put a pillow over her head. And you know what? If that. Well, I couldn't blame. We don't know.

Yeah. Couldn't blame them for the feeling. So a story that began with young love ends with young love coming in at the very last minute to save the beautiful maiden imprisoned in the tower. This has all the ingredients of a fairy tale. Or a story. It's got it all. And the saddest part is, is that this isn't a story. This is real life.

And that was Blanche's real life. And that's how she got to live it. So, yeah, next week, if we can get if we can get our true weirdo who wrote this episode to join us, we will. I know this story. I had to study this story when I was like in fourth grade. The wild boy named Victor. I'm very familiar with this story. You guys out of the blue, we get an email and it's hi, I'm Matthew.

I'm a fan of true weird stuff and I've written an episode. You don't have to use it. I just thought I would give it a try. So I opened the file. He's written the episode. It sounds like me. He's cast the voice parts. Oh, no. Yes, he has. He's like, I think Don would be good for this. I, Matthew, if you're listening right now, I have never been so shocked and delighted.

I mean, I was giggling like a villain reading your email. So we are going to produce Matthew's episode. You'll hear that next week. And if we can, if his schedule permits, he'll join us on that. Listen up. If any of y'all want to write a true weird stuff episode, take a shot. And Max is over there thinking, if any of y'all want to produce a true weird stuff episode.

Because you'll be making as much money as we are doing this. Which is nothing, but you'll have love. You'll have our love and our love. Ask our family. Our love isn't worth much, but it's not nothing. It's not nothing. It's more love than poor Blanche Monnier ever had. So next week on True Weird Stuff, it's the story of a wild boy.

Here's what you may not know about this wild child that they found in a forest. And to this day, we don't know where he came from, how he got there, what happened to him. But I can tell you that that boy inspired something that is a worldwide phenomenon now. And your kid, if you have one, may be benefiting from it as we speak.

It's an incredible plot twist to an incredible life and a very strange tale. So that's next week on True Weird Stuff. We sure do appreciate your listening. Thank you. Thank you so much. And if you've kind of got a family member and you kind of don't like how they're living, don't put them in the attic. That won't end well.

We'll see you on the next True Weird Stuff. And if you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, hit the plus button in the top right corner. And now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered. And we really appreciate it if you subscribe, rate and review True Weird Stuff. Hit our website TrueWeirdStuff.com for show notes and photos and videos when we have it and bonus content.

Everything True Weird is waiting for you at TrueWeirdStuff.com. And follow True Weird Stuff on Instagram. True Weird Stuff is a Now! Media production. Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia. The show is written and hosted by me, Sheri Lynch, along with my deeply weird director, Max Sweeten. Our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser.

Additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call. Our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr. Original graphics by Kevin Nash. Original artworks by Olivia Axland. True Weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and Zane Nash. Copyright 2025 Now! Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs remembered.