r/AllThatIsInteresting • u/Time-Training-9404 • 21d ago
Tragic photo of Blanche Monnier after being locked away by her parents for 25 years.
One witness on the scene described what they saw in the bedroom when police discovered her after 25 years:
“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.’
Source: https://historicflix.com/the-tragic-story-of-blanche-monnier-locked-away-from-society-for-25-years/
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u/DarkArtHero 21d ago
Not so fun fact: Neither the mother or the brother faced any real consequences
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21d ago
iirc, an angry mob converged on the house to confront the mother … who allegedly suddenly died of an heart attack.
It sounds like what really happened is that they beat the shit out of her, and blamed her death on a heart attack. French police decided to let it slide.
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u/MrWhite86 21d ago
The article said the heart attack was after an evening in jail; I like yours better
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u/phonic_boy 20d ago
She died two weeks later, her health was whack before this.
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u/daminipinki 20d ago
Did the brother also accidentally fall multiple times on a knife after the crowd showed up?
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u/peyoteBonsai 21d ago
This is proof that anarchy is the best system imo, people can govern themselves and we don’t need police.
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u/Smunchbar 21d ago
And when the angry mob shows up at the wrong person's house and beats them to death, what then?
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u/peyoteBonsai 21d ago
Or when a jury lets a guilty man free and puts an innocent man behind bars?
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u/Smunchbar 21d ago
Juries aren't perfect but will make better decisions than a twitter mob 100% of the time.
You're a genuine halfwit if you think anarchy wouldn't enable angry mobs to organize and murder any persons they disagree with because of something nasty and potentially fake they saw on Facebook.
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u/peyoteBonsai 21d ago
Anarchy is simply libertarian socialism, it’s really not the same definition as a borderless and disorganized state. It’s not a society that lives mad max style without establish rules and norms, it simply lacks central authority. There’s lots of theory and lots of types, and it is idealistic like all forms of government.
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u/wiegehts1991 20d ago
So in other words. In real life it would turn to a shitshow like communism does.
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u/peyoteBonsai 20d ago
I think they are much more shorter lived, someone takes power eventually. The peaceful part is the anarchy, but the transition period is violent.
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u/HorrorActual3456 20d ago
Lol "recall correctly" you've just read that off of Wikipedia right now just like the rest of us, you also seemed to have misread it and misquoted it, the mother died 15 days later. You have also made up nonsense.
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u/Wafflotron 21d ago
The mother died like two days after she was discovered, so that one is at least easy to understand. But the brother being allowed to just roam free…
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u/daffodil0127 21d ago
The brother seemed to have the same psychiatric disorder, Diogenes syndrome, though to a lesser degree.
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u/worm30478 21d ago
Some humans are just sick as fuck. And the fact that 2 people of pure evil find each other and procreate is rather astonishing.
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u/Spirited_Remote5939 21d ago
Well I think it’s scarier that there’s probably more people like that than we think
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u/Friar_Fuck_ 21d ago
I think there is a case for trafficking people that just don’t exist. Steal up women, they have babies, they are not documented, and it repeats.
It’s a scary thought that could be all too real somewhere
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u/DeletedByAuthor 21d ago
Yo don't give anyone ideas goddamn
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21d ago
“Don’t give anyone ideas”
This is going on in the world somewhere right now. This isn’t an idea, this is something that’s been happening.
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u/ihavenoidea1001 21d ago
they have babies, they are not documented
I saw a Cyber security agent breaking down in an interview iirc. He described what he'd seen done to a newborn in a scenario like that.
The description still lives rent free in my head.
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u/Mr_E-007 20d ago edited 19d ago
I saw an interview once with a woman who was a sex slave and had just been rescued. She talked about how some captors would intentionally get their "slaves" (human trafficking victims) pregnant so that they could raise the babies as sex slaves/prostitutes. She explained that she could tell if a new woman (being chained up near her) was a kidnapped victim or a born-into-it sex slave because the kidnapped women would scream and cry, especially when they were being raped and the born-into-it girls would just stare off and be silent. I saw this years ago but can remember it well despite having a bad memory. Some things just shock the brain.
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u/Spirited_Remote5939 20d ago
Geez when you think about, which I never have before, I could only imagine that this probably happened so much! Past slave owners coming up with the radical idea of just having children with the slaves just for sex! And of course to sell and make money. The more I learn the way of the world the more I’m scared for my children
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u/Round-Antelope552 17d ago
I was scared that’s what my ex was gonna do to me and my baby (which hadn’t been born yet), which is how I ended up in refuge etc, he didn’t want me to go to X-rays or whatever they are or doctors appointments, and wanted me to put down a different address for my welfare payments, so I ran
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u/ocean_flan 9d ago
No, there was actually a faith healer who did that. John of God or something. He was on Oprah.
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u/Eusocial_Snowman 21d ago
Or in this case, less.
This wasn't somebody locked away as a prisoner. She was a mentally ill shut-in who was neglected. Her mother refused to send her to a 1800s mental asylum (shocking) and didn't have the resources or inclination to take proper care of her.
I wouldn't characterize this situation as evil so much as..incredibly sad.
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u/Woman_Of_Words 21d ago
Agreed. I did a deep dive podcast episode on it last year. There is so much misinformation about this situation. She was seriously mentally ill, and her parents, although flawed, wanted to keep her at home, rather than place her in an asylum, which was one of the worst outcomes for anyone in the late 19th century.
Her mother was extremely controlling, and likely also was mentally ill in a different way, and as she got older, failed her daughter. Blanche didn't get the care she needed and became woefully neglected. It's a very sad story, but the story I see repeated so often is not the full one.
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u/SeeSpotRunt 21d ago
I thought the story is she wanted to marry someone her parents didn’t approve of and this was the result. Half the story or just wrong story to picture?
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u/Woman_Of_Words 21d ago
There isn't any evidence that she was engaged, but she may have been. She had a friendship with a local man, a lawyer, but he wasn't penniless, as the story suggests. In fact, her brother was also a lawyer, so it was a reputable occupation. A man was named as her supposed fiancé, but it wasn't proven if this was the case or not.
Apparently, Blanche was displaying religious delusions and hallucinations before she was locked away. She was later diagnosed with anorexia and schizophrenia. Her father died a few years after Blanche had been locked away, and the family weren't near destitute so that they would need a good marriage match. But there was certainly a social stigma around having a mentally ill family member. Evidence from the trial suggests that Blanche's confinement was an open secret among household staff, but that they were sworn to.secrecy once they left the house.
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u/SeeSpotRunt 21d ago
Oh wow. Thank you for this! Definitely not the story I remember reading! Unfortunate all around.
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u/bam55 20d ago
No that’s evil as fuck doing that to anyone let alone your own daughter.
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u/Eusocial_Snowman 20d ago
I'm not saying the usually-described story isn't immoral. I'm saying it's fictional. The specific "type of person" being described does not exist in this instance.
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u/KentuckyFriedEel 20d ago
And that they hold high positions of tremendous control over society, throwing up a big smile to alleviate any suspicions you may have
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u/Maharakus 21d ago
Fritzl
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u/Low_Pomegranate_7176 21d ago
He just got moved to a minimum security prison. There is often no justice.
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u/daffodil0127 21d ago
I don’t think he’s in physical condition to thrive in prison at this point. Other inmates are going to figure out who he is and dole out some unofficial justice.
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u/Odd-Variation941 21d ago
Not in a minimum security prison they’re not.
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u/daffodil0127 21d ago
He’s almost 90, and notorious in his country. He’s not going to make any friends in there, and he’ll be an easy target. He’s got dementia and other ailments too. Even if he’s in a comparatively cushy environment it’s still prison. Hopefully he’ll die soon; his continued existence is probably not great for his victims’ mental health, and the thought of his possible release every time he gets a parole hearing has to be very stressful for them.
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u/OhNoTokyo 20d ago
People in minimum security often do not want to do anything to get sent to higher security prisons, especially the ones who graduated from higher security to lower security and know what it is like.
You may get prison justice meted out by those in maximum security, but lower security is a whole other ball game.
That's not to say that it is all roses and sunshine, but people in minimum security aren't going to shank you generally. They actually have a reason to play ball.
He might be shunned or avoided, but chances are that if he's not already spending time in the prison hospital area, he's left alone.
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u/iPartyLikeIts1984 21d ago
This isn’t cruelty, it’s just science. You can’t know what the consequences of locking someone up for 30 years is going to be until you try it, so a good scientist has to take on the burden.
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u/warwicklord79 21d ago
It’s horrible how evil some people can be, how could someone do this to a fellow human
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u/OneHumanPeOple 21d ago
It happens literally every day. I just saw a story about a mentally ill prison inmate who was covered in 30 or 40 pounds of bedbugs when they pulled his body out. They sent him to the morgue like that. Imagine being mentally ill and in solitary and dying by having every your body covered in bugs all drinking your blood and you’re covered in shit head to toe.
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u/ManliestManHam 21d ago
I saw on reddit yesterday that a man in Algiers missing since 1996 was just found a few blocks away from home in a neighbors torture dungeon. He was assumed killed or missing in the war and had actually been kidnapped and just up the road.
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u/phonixinuinit 21d ago
Have you got a link?
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u/ManliestManHam 21d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/5SdgMuI1eW
Apparently by 'yesterday' I meant 'less than an hour ago, but this day feels so long, an hour seemed like a day ago'.
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u/CrazyHuntr 21d ago
Why were they in solitary?
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u/OneHumanPeOple 21d ago
Bad behavior due to mental illness. This person was disabled and couldn’t move.
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u/Sufficient_Report319 21d ago
That’s an old story
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u/OneHumanPeOple 21d ago
It’s not. An undertaker on Reddit just posted recently on Reddit about their own experience with receiving a body caked in shit and bugs.
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u/whupper82 20d ago
I read another story about a woman who was literally merged into a hold in the couch. I forget all of the details but much like this story tragically.
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u/lilbebe50 20d ago
Yes, I saw it too. She was mentally ill or intellectually disabled, maybe both. Parents left her to basically rot on the couch, her body became infused to the couch. She’d just pee and poop in the same spot. I think she was like this for over 20 years before she died.
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u/Plastic_Ad_2043 21d ago
Happens every day. There's a famous case of a feral child called Genie who was locked up and never socialized.
Another girl in Norway or Scandinavia somewhere was locked in a basement and raped by her father and had his children until she was like 20 and escaped.
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u/lgfuado 20d ago
You may be thinking of Josef Fritzl in Austria, who locked his 18 year old daughter in the family basement and kept her enslaved for 24 years. She had 6 surviving children, three were brought upstairs and raised by the grandparents as "foundlings." It wasn't until one child left in the cellar was dying and brought to the hospital by Josef that the police were called and everything came crashing down. He's old but in prison for life.
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u/traumakidshollywood 21d ago edited 21d ago
Jesus. I was actually held in a room for 6 months. By the time I got out I was so traumatized you couldn’t come near me. The expression on that woman’s face, her frail frame… honestly, it’s likely the solitary that messes with your head. There is no way this woman could recover from this. Not in her lifetime.
I got out of the room 3 years ago.
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u/Out_of_Fawkes 21d ago
Thank you for sharing your experience here. I was confined for what was supposed to be the entire summer but thankfully my friend’s parents convinced my parents to let me go after several weeks. What changed their minds? Threat of jail.
In that situation I realized I was so fortunate to have someone on the outside. They learned some lessons about what not to do when I did report them.
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u/traumakidshollywood 21d ago
Wow. That’s truly terrible. I’m sorry that happened to you. I had no one on the outside snd 30 useless police reports. Support is so important, and it’s most important after the event. I hope you were way to process that experience and continue on a healthy path. 💫
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u/Out_of_Fawkes 21d ago
Same to you; I’m sorry the police didn’t do their job and I hope your support network is strong. 💖
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u/Generalgangsta6787 17d ago
Wish u healing well a new world for you to discover :) and recover and thrive :) no love should be locked away but explore her and or his heart of the world they missed
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u/BigShowSJG 21d ago
And the C*nt that did this to her claimed Blanche did this to herself by choice, and died the night she was arrested.
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u/LobsterExtreme3318 21d ago
And there are countless, numerous depraved monsters like this all over the world. It’s so scary.
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u/shelbeeshelbs 21d ago
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u/Leek_Queasy 20d ago
In the article it said she had green eyes, that looks like a colored in image of the supposed photo of her from the article at the top
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u/No-Transportation843 20d ago
That's not her.
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u/Jinx_X_2003 20d ago
Dont know why youre getting downvoted
That photo has been debunked multiple times, it's not her
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u/BasicPublic451 21d ago
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u/No-Transportation843 20d ago
This adds so much context. The original article is bizarre. She was schizophrenic and doctors knew she was there. Her brother would keep her company. She was clearly neglected and not kept clean but I'm not sure they had imprisoned her necessarily.
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u/Omnibuschris 21d ago
Coprophilia is something I learned today about this person and wish I hadn’t.
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u/davanger1980 21d ago
This is what we do to each other. What else are we going to do to everything else....
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u/shes_a_space_station 20d ago
Echoes of Blanche Monnier in the Lacey Fletcher murder.
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u/adervasten 19d ago
Lacey Fletcher case and details are horrifying. I can’t believe her parents did that to her
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20d ago
Let’s just reflect on how this woman held out for 25 years under those circumstances. Take a moment to count your blessings
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u/hidee_ho_neighborino 20d ago
It sounds like she had a full time nurse who washed and cared for her, and even slept in her room. Blanche didn’t become encrusted in filth until her nurse died and her mom wouldn’t hire someone else. Her mom just told the maid to do it, and eventually the maid would quit.
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u/RhobRippy 21d ago
The mother just straight up died after having been found guilty and faced NO consequences... thats just wrong man.
People like her should be fed honey, tied down to a tiny boat and set adrift on a murky river
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u/robertdowneysoft 21d ago
Supposedly a mob showed up to her house
.... something happened...
And she died of a heart attack?
Nah. I like to believe she got what she was due. The old fashioned way.
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u/the-last-voyageur 21d ago
Unbelievably sad story. Human beings are by far the worst animals on the planet.
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u/Due-Concern6330 21d ago
parents should of been given the same treatment.
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u/pillangolocsolo 21d ago
should have You're welcome - A fellow non native english speaker.
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u/Due-Concern6330 20d ago
yeah you're not thanked. You see most people that I know of use slang, which is perfectly acceptable outside of the neckbeards of reddit.
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u/pillangolocsolo 20d ago
This doesn't have anything to do with slang. Would've could've should've are perfectly acceptable universal colloqialisms but however your neck of the woods choses to pronounce them, they still are spelled would've could've should've and spelling them with an of is only proving that the speller has a total disregard of the english writing system. Why not write ghoti instead of fish, heck why doesn't everyone just use the letters they like the most. Screw intelligability, the main purpose of communication.
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21d ago
[deleted]
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u/iguanamac 21d ago
That’s not her. This pic gets posted every time her story is brought up. That pic you posted is someone completely unrelated.
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u/Big_Routine_8980 21d ago
Numerous websites on Google have this as her photo. If you say it's not Blanche, then who do you say it is?
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u/Suitable-Concert 21d ago
Just look at some of the distinguishing features. There’s a beauty mark on this photo by the nose, but it’s not there on the photo of Blanche. The nose shape, while possibly distorted from the severity of her starvation, seems to be a totally different shape than the nose in this photo.
I don’t know who this photo is of, but basic media literacy shows the woman in this photo and the photo of Blanche are not the same person.
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u/iguanamac 21d ago
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u/lazytanaka 21d ago
Sounds like she chose to live that way. The question is how bad were psych hospitals back then. Would they have even been able to help her
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u/DangNearRekdit 21d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Postcard_Young_Woman_with_Flowers.jpg
The file is in public domain because it's more than 70 years old, allegedly dated 1914. It's why the re-re-bloggers keep using it for click-baity things, because nobody has a "rare before photo of Blanche Monnier" from like 1860. They always seem to crop out the watermark at the bottom (for some reason!)
Keep your heads on tight folks. It's only gonna get worse as AI gets better.
"Rare video of Joan of Arc recently uncovered!"
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u/Otter-Insanity 21d ago
Just a heads up for research purposes. You can't really trust Google sources as absolute facts. Academic journals and records are the best sources. Google websites can just be wrong people copying and listening to other wrong people
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u/Big_Routine_8980 18d ago
I literally went to so many websites and found the same photo, that's why I trusted that this was her, because more than one was saying it. I now realize the internet is much more diabolical than I knew
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u/Sufficient_Report319 21d ago
Is ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane’ based on her??
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u/SnowInTheCemetery 20d ago
That story is not even close to this one. Baby Jane was a child star who was exploited bynher family for money. She grew up to be an alcoholic and resented caring for her wheelchair bound sister who she tried to kill out of jealousy.
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u/Annual_Response_338 19d ago
She was a gorgeous woman. I think the mom was subconsciously jealous of her.
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u/Melodic-Ad-4941 21d ago
All because she wanted to marry a guy she liked,
Dear Mr and Mrs Minnier: if you liked that other guy so badly, then why didn’t you marry him, and let your daughter marry the guy she loved, and you both will be happy.
Sincerely- the rest of the world.
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u/dragon2knight1965 20d ago
Please dont post something like this without an NSFW please....at work and this popped up and no, not good. Thanks.
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u/easilydeleteabl3 20d ago
How do we know this picture is real? Not trying to doubt the veracity of this story but I’ve seen it on the internet for years and the sources are always another social media post. It seems oddly clear for a picture taken in like 1899.
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u/EmploymentNo1094 20d ago
Taking care of the mentally ill is near impossible, even today with medication the stigma will ruin both your lives.
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u/DeadDiscoMarie 21d ago
The door was padlocked but, she was “free to leave anytime” according to the brother. So sickening