Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon were born into a very important British family. Nerissa was born on February 18, 1919, and Katherine was born on July 4, 1926. Their father, John Herbert Bowes-Lyon, was the brother of the woman who became Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. This means Nerissa and Katherine were the first cousins of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret.
Both girls had serious mental disabilities from birth. Doctors at the time said they had the thinking ability of very young children, around three to six years old, and they could not talk normally. Hospital records show that Nerissa could only make sounds that no one could understand and say a few baby words. In 1941, their mother decided to send them to Royal Earlswood Hospital in Surrey. Nerissa was 22 years old and Katherine was only 15 when they went there.
The two girls were born into royalty but lived as if they never existed. The most shocking part of their story came out many years later. A book called Burke’s Peerage, which keeps track of all the noble families in Britain, said both sisters had died. The book claimed Nerissa died in 1940 and Katherine died in 1961. But this was completely false, as per Wikipedia. Nerissa actually lived until January 22, 1986, and Katherine lived until February 23, 2014.
Nobody knew the truth until 1987
The real story came out in 1987 when a newspaper called The Sun wrote about it. This was just one year after Nerissa had really died. A photographer pretended to be a family member so he could get into the place where Katherine was living. The newspaper put her picture on the front page with the words “Queen’s Cousin Locked in Madhouse.” People in Britain were very angry when they found out that two members of the royal family had been hidden away like this.
Life at the hospital was very sad for both sisters. A documentary called The Queen’s Hidden Cousins came out in 2011 and showed what their lives were really like. The nurses who worked there said no family members ever came to visit them during all those years. The sisters never got birthday cards or Christmas presents from anyone in their family.
They were Nerissa & Katherine Bowes-Lyon for those unfamiliar with their story. pic.twitter.com/gfVtzVKDAW
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When Nerissa died in 1986, nobody from the family came to her funeral. Only the people who worked at the hospital were there. Her grave only had plastic tags with a number on it at first. The family only put up a proper gravestone after everyone found out about the story. Similar to other shocking survival stories, the sisters lived through situations that are hard for most people to imagine.
A nurse named Onelle Braithwaite told a touching story in the documentary. She remembered watching Nerissa and Katherine get very excited when they saw the royal family on TV during Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding in 1981. They were waving and saluting at the screen. Braithwaite said she kept thinking about how the sisters would have been guests at that wedding if things had been different.
Nerissa Bowes-Lyon and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, first cousins of Queen Elizabeth, were secretly incarcerated in the Royal Earlswood Asylum for Mental Defectives in 1941. The scandal, uncovered after Nerissa's death in 1986, no one ever went to see them pic.twitter.com/G8nvblRSUd
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Buckingham Palace said it was a “private family matter” when people asked about what happened. They said it was something for the Bowes-Lyon family to deal with, not the royal family. Some family members later said the claims were not completely true.
Lady Elizabeth Anson, who was the niece of Nerissa and Katherine, said their mother Fenella visited them many times until she died in 1966. However, there are no official records that prove anyone visited them. The whole situation shows how families used to deal with difficult problems, similar to other disturbing true crime cases that show the worse side of how people can act.
