‍IN MAY 1901 a story broke in the newspapers that shocked the world.

‍

‍French beauty Blanche Monnier who had been missing for 25 years, was finally found … locked in a filthy, small bedroom of her home.

‍

‍Her bed was covered with vermin and her own toilet; the room was perpetually dark with no light; cold and bare. She was so emaciated that her skin hung from her body.

‍

‍She had survived for 25 years on scraps of food left on the family’s plates and was near death all because of a love affair with a man who was poor.

‍

‍He was not good enough for her mother, The Times reported, and so she was punished. Newspapers across the world picked up the stories from Reuters and other news agencies and she became known as: ‘The Prisoner of Poitiers (La Séquestrée de Poitiers’).

‍

‍Blanche, 25, had everything going for her. Born in 1849 into a respected bourgeois family in Poitiers, France. Known for her beauty and grace, she was vivacious and charming and her prospects seemed bright. She attracted many men who proposed marriage – but she fell in love with only one, a penniless lawyer.

‍

‍Blanche's enraged mother, Louise Monnier, seeking a more advantageous match with a rich man decided to lock Blanche away until she changed her mind. But Blanche never did.

‍

‍She was confined to the small, dark room in the family home, where she would languish for 25 years chained to her bed with the curtains drawn and only one other person knew, her brother Marcel. And he did nothing.

‍

‍Mother and brother told people she had run away and they got on with life, participating in social events and upholding their reputation within the community.

‍

‍At first, they lied they were worried sick about her wellbeing and after a while people forgot her. The lawyer she loved died and no one missed her.

‍

‍Life went on for 25 years as Blanche grew older in the soiled attic room.

‍

‍And then, one day in 1901, the Paris Attorney General received an anonymous letter, whose sender remains a mystery to this day.

‍

‍It read: “I have the honour 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 25 years — in a word, in her own filth.”

‍

‍Police barged into the Monnier home and were met with a sight that would remain ingrained in their minds for the rest of their days.

‍

‍Blanche, 51, was laying naked on her bed, and covered in excrement, enshrouded in long, dirty hair that hadn’t been cut or washed since the door was bolted on her. Bugs infested the room. There was no toilet and the air was stale and filled with the odour of putrid food and human waste.

‍

‍Blanche’s mother died 15 days later, not surviving long enough to be charged with her unspeakable crime. Her brother, Marcel, was convicted at first but was acquitted on appeal, because he was not legally obliged to rescue his sister from the danger of death or injury, according to the French penal code.

‍

‍The former beautiful socialite never recovered and suffered from mental disorders the rest of her short life. She died alone in a psychiatric hospital. Aged 64.

‍

‍God bless her.

‍

‍‘COME ON KIDS, GO OUTSIDE FOR A

‍BREATH OF FRESH AIR … AT 150FT’

‍

‍

‍Baby window cages were all the rage in Britain and America in the early 1930s.

‍

‍The Birmingham News covered an early prototype on September 14, 1913, detailing the practice of hanging infants outside for fresh air and sunlight at heights of up to 100ft. 

‍

‍The publication highlighted this practice, based on medical advice of the era, as a method to improve infant health and strengthen immune systems. It was called a ‘health crib’ and was two ft high, and two ft long with a padded bottom. The whole box was screened to keep the baby in and insects out. And a solid top kept the baby free of pigeon poop. What would Health and Safety experts say today, I wonder.

‍

‍A BULLET, A THUMB, AND EVEN A HEAD WERE WATERLOO SOUVENIRS

‍

‍EMPEROR Napoleon’s historic defeat at Waterloo on June 18, 1815, was closely followed by a second invasion, The Times reported – British and French souvenir hunters.

‍

‍The victory was immediately canonised into national myth, and everyone wanted to see the plain of Britannia’s triumph. Thackeray wrote that ships were “sailing every day, filled with men of fashion and ladies of note … going not so much to a war as to a fashionable tour.”

‍

‍French skulls were sold to British buyers, and ‘British’ or ‘Prussian’ ones to the French.

‍

‍Most people took home stray bullets and buttons, but one poet claimed to know “one honest gentleman, who has brought home a real Waterloo thumb, nail and all, which he preserves in a bottle of gin.”

‍

‍Sir Walter Scott “made off with the skull of one poor fellow a deceased corporal named John Shaw,” it was reported

‍

‍CHILLING CASE OF LIFE AND DEATH

‍

‍A PEASANT woman named Lavrinia Merli died from a fit of hysterics that brought on a heart attack and on Thursday July 3, 1890, she was placed in a coffin and taken to a vault to await burial, The Undertakers’ Journal reported.

‍

‍When they opened the coffin up to prepare her for burial, undertakers were shocked to find that she had gained consciousness at some time. Her grave clothes were torn and the coffin had heavy scratch marks on the side where she turned over … and gave birth to a child, also found dead.

‍

‍A NEWSPAPER SHORT OF NEWS?

‍From The Muncie Evening Press,

‍Indiana December 27, 1943.

‍“Knoxville, Tenn.—(AP)—Caretaker R. Huse Rutledge of Tyson Park said he saw a squirrel run down a patch with a bun in its mouth, dig a hole and bury it.

‍

‍A second squirrel, watching from a tree, went to the spot and dug up the bun. The first squirrel returned in time to catch the thief and …

‍‘It was worse than any cat fight I’ve ever seen,’ Rutledge related. ‘That thief got the beating of its life’.”

‍

‍BY GEORGE, WHAT A FAREWELL!

‍HOW CAN those of us who watched him ever forget Dixon of Dock Green, the TV series based around good copper George Dixon played by Jack Warner in the 1950s until the 1970s. He was the epitome of decency and everything Britain stood for.

‍

‍Dixon stood by the blue lamp of his police station and introduced each story, starting: “Evening all!”

‍

‍But did you know that when he died of pneumonia in the Royal Masonic Hospital, Ravenscourt Park, Hammersmith, in 1981, the Press reported he was held in such high regard that police officers from Paddington Green Constabulary bore his coffin at his funeral?

‍

‍TERRY MANNERS

‍10 August 2026

‍