In 2020, the Netflix series The Crown included an episode called The Hereditary Principle. In it, a fictionalised Princess Margaret discovers she has two cousins installed at the Royal Earlswood Hospital, about whom she knew nothing. Earlswood was a long-stay asylum for people with learning disabilities.
When Margaret angrily confronts her mother, she is met with a vitriolic speech about how these cousins had to be hidden away to protect the “hereditary principle”, already under threat since the abdication crisis and not strong enough to withstand any hints of a “tainted” bloodline.
The reality is likely more pedestrian. The cousins in question were Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, nieces of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. They were born to her sister-in-law, Fenella, with an unnamed genetic disability which meant they never talked save for a “few babyish words”, and were reported to have a “mental age” of between three and six.
Five put away
Fenella’s sister Harriet had three daughters with a similar condition, and all five were sent to Earlswood on the same day in 1941, where they were reportedly diagnosed as “imbeciles”. Nerissa was 22 and Katherine just 15.
The reasons for their institutionalisation remain obscure. Eugenics was yet to be discredited, so the argument espoused by the fictional Queen Mother in The Crown could have played a part.
However, it may just have been that, having been widowed in 1930, Fenella was struggling to cope with four young daughters and resorted to Earlswood after consultation with her sister, believing this to be the best course of action – something many parents at that time would have done.
Fenella and Harriet continued to visit their daughters in Earlswood for as long as they were able.
What complicates their story is the fact that both Nerissa and Katherine were wrongly listed as dead by Burke’s Peerage (in 1940 and 1961 respectively). This information could only have come from a relative, and it helped form a narrative that the family – including the royal family as a whole – had placed them in Earlswood and treated them as if they were dead.
When The Sun broke the story in 1987 that Nerissa had in fact died in 1986 and Katherine was still alive, it was headlined “Queen’s cousin locked in madhouse”. Media coverage at the time referred to Katherine as “lunatic” or similar rather than learning disabled.
The public was shocked at the apparent callousness of the situation; many responded by sending Katherine flowers. This perception was not helped by reports that Nerissa’s funeral was unattended and her grave marked only by a plastic tag (her family later rectified this).
Worse still was that Buckingham Palace refused to comment on the revelations, saying that it was a matter for the Bowes-Lyon family.
Fenella’s descendants claimed she was very “vague” and terrible at filling in forms correctly or completely, resulting in the incorrect death dates in Burke’s. Others have argued it was a deliberate act to afford her daughters privacy.
The Queen Mother apparently found out her nieces’ whereabouts only in 1982. She then sent money to Earlswood, described variously as a small amount for sweets and toys or a large amount for Christmas and birthday presents.
Hospital records do not show any visits after Fenella’s death in 1966.
Staff claimed Nerissa and Katherine did not recognise any visitor other than their mother, becoming distressed by “strangers” visiting. They also asserted that they never received any presents or cards either and, of course, the records show no attempted visits.
When Earlswood was closing in 1996, the administrator claimed that neither the Queen nor the Queen Mother would meet to discuss Katherine’s care. She was eventually moved and died in 2014 aged 87.
Further reading
- Disability Throughout History. The Bowes-Lyon and Fane cousins – hidden away. 29 September 2023
- Goldsbrough S. Neglected, hidden away, registered dead: the tragic true story of the Queen’s disabled cousins. The Daily Telegraph. 15 November 2020.
