06/09/2026
THE PAPIN SISTERS: A CRIME THAT SHOCKED FRANCE
On the evening of 2 February 1933, behind the respectable doors of a bourgeois home in Le Mans, France, a crime of extraordinary violence took place. At its centre were two quiet domestic servants: sisters Christine and Léa Papin.
For almost seven years, the sisters had worked as live-in maids for the Lancelin family. Christine, the elder and more dominant of the two, worked as cook, while Léa assisted with the household duties. By all outward appearances they were diligent, obedient and reserved. Away from their employers, however, the sisters lived an intensely private and isolated existence, spending much of their free time together and having increasingly little contact with the outside world.
On that February evening, Madame Léonie Lancelin and her daughter Geneviève returned home. What happened next has never been completely understood. An electrical failure in the house, apparently caused by a faulty iron, may have prompted a confrontation between mistress and servants. Whatever was said, the result was sudden and devastating.
Christine and Léa attacked the two women with extraordinary ferocity. Both victims were beaten and stabbed; most notoriously, their eyes were torn from their sockets. Afterwards, the sisters washed themselves and the weapons, changed into dressing gowns, retired to their bedroom and climbed into bed together.
When Monsieur Lancelin returned and found the house locked and dark, the police were summoned. Inside they discovered the bodies of his wife and daughter. Upstairs, behind a locked door, Christine and Léa were found together. They offered no resistance and confessed.
France became obsessed with the case. Were the sisters cold-blooded murderers? Mentally ill? Victims of an oppressive domestic system? Or had years of isolation, dependency and resentment finally erupted into violence? Psychiatrists appointed to examine them declared both women sane and responsible for their actions, although this conclusion was fiercely challenged.
Their sensational trial opened in Le Mans in September 1933. After a remarkably short hearing, Christine was found guilty and sentenced to death. Léa received ten years' hard labour. Christine's sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment; separated from Léa, her mental state deteriorated dramatically, and she died in an asylum in 1937.
Yet the question at the heart of the Papin case has never entirely been answered:
What happened inside that house to transform two apparently devoted servants into the perpetrators of one of France's most infamous crimes?
It is within the claustrophobic world behind those closed doors — of sisters and servants, mistresses and daughters, intimacy, class, repression and dependence — that Wendy Kesselman's My Sister in This House finds its inspiration.
Catch Heartfelt Productions September 16th - 19th as they bring the play to life in a thrilling rendition of the award winning play!
BOOK NOW
www.ticketsource.com/huntingdon-commemoration-hall
