Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2059831/The-Queens-hidden-cousins-They-banished-asylum-1941-left-neglected-intriguing-documentary-reveals-all.html#ixzz45HdfsIi9
By
Mary Greene Updated: 22:58 GMT, 11 November 2011
The date was 29 July, 1981,
Prince Charles and Lady Di’s wedding day, and as the Queen arrived at St Paul’s
Cathedral and waved to the crowds, two women in late middle-age, in shapeless,
baggy dresses, shuffled with clumsy gait up to the television and waved and
saluted back to her, unable to articulate speech but making excited noises.
It was a poignant moment, recalls
Onelle Braithwaite, one of the nurses who cared for them. ‘I remember pondering
with my colleague how, if things had been different, they would surely have
been guests at the wedding.’
The two women were Nerissa
and Katherine Bowes-Lyon – nieces of the Queen Mother and first cousins to the
Queen – who had been incarcerated since 1941 in the Royal Earlswood Asylum for
Mental Defectives, at Redhill in Surrey.
The Queen Mother with Princess
Elizabeth and Princess Margaret in 1937
Their last reported visitors were in
the 1960s, and although it was an open secret at the Royal Earlswood, and in
the local community, that the asylum housed close relatives of the Royal
Family, to the wider world their existence had been obliterated.
Burke’s Peerage had declared
them both to be long dead, on misinformation supplied by the family. In fact, Nerissa
did not die until 1986, aged 66, and Katherine is still alive; at 85, she is
the same age as the Queen.
Their
shocking story came to light shortly after Nerissa’s death, when journalists
discovered she was buried in a grave marked only by a plastic name-tag and a
serial number.
Nerissa (pictured) was born
in 1919, and Katherine in 1926 - their father was John Bowes-Lyon, one of the
Queen Mother's older brothers
The ensuing scandal, which prompted an
anonymous source to provide a gravestone for Nerissa, made little difference to
her sister’s life. Katherine received no visitors at the asylum, and as her
aunt, the Queen Mother, lived on into cosseted old age, she did not possess
even her own underwear – at least untilher final years there – and had to dress
from a communal wardrobe.
Now a Channel 4 documentary tells the
story of the Queen’s hidden cousins, born in an era when children with learning
disabilities were a family’s shameful secret.
They were no problem to
look after but they were mischievous, like naughty children. Katherine was a
scallywag.
Photographs of Katherine Bowes-Lyon
show a distinct resemblance to the Queen, and Onelle Braithwaite says the
sisters’ story was common knowledge when she arrived at the asylum as a
20-year-old nurse in the mid-1970s.
‘If the Queen or Queen Mum were ever on
television, they’d curtsey – very regal, very low. Obviously there was some
sort of memory. It was so sad. Just think of the life they might have had. They
were two lovely sisters. They didn’t have any speech but they’d point and make
noises, and when you knew them, you could understand what they were trying to
say. Today they’d probably be given speech therapy and they’d communicate much
better. They understood more than you’d think.’
Former ward sister Dot Penfold, now
retired from nursing, also has fond memories. ‘They were no problem to look
after but they were mischievous, like naughty children. Katherine was a
scallywag. You could scream at her and she’d turn a deaf ear.’
Katherine, 85, is still alive and is
believed to be living in a care home in Surrey
Nerissa was born in 1919, and Katherine
in 1926. Their father was John Bowes-Lyon, one of the Queen Mother’s older
brothers and a son of the Earl of Strathmore. John died in 1930 and was
survived, until
1966, by the girls’ mother, Fenella.
1966, by the girls’ mother, Fenella.
The sisters were unfortunate to have
been born in an era when mental disability was seen as a threat to society and
linked to promiscuity, feckless breeding and petty crime, the characteristics
of the underclass; associations encouraged by popular belief in the science of
eugenics, soon to be embraced by the Nazis.
‘So the belief was if you had a child
with a learning disability, there was something in your family that was suspect
and wrong,’ explains Jan Walmsley, the Open University’s professor in the
history of learning disabilities.
For the Bowes-Lyons, this was a stigma
that could threaten their social standing and taint the marital prospects of
their other children. (Nerissa and Katherine’s beautiful and healthy sister
Anne became a princess of Denmark by her second marriage; by her first
marriage, she was Viscountess Anson and mother of the society photographer, the
late Lord Lichfield.)
The imposing Royal Earlswood was the
country’s first purpose-built asylum for people with learning disabilities.
Nerissa and Katherine were 15 and 22 respectively when they were admitted.
Nerissa’s medical records categorise her as ‘imbecile’. ‘She makes
unintelligible noises all the time,’ stated a doctor. ‘Very affectionate… can
say a few babyish words.’
Judy Wilkinson, 67, from Godalming,
Surrey, recalls her apprehension when visiting the Royal Earlswood as a young
girl in the 1950s, when her elder sister Nicola, who was brain-damaged at
birth, was consigned there. ‘I’d get that gripping feeling of dread,’ Judy
explains, and she remembers feeling puzzled that her sister was always wearing
the same green coat, which never seemed to wear out.
Now she realises that the inmates wore
their own clothes only if they had visitors. But for Nerissa and Katherine,
there were few if any visitors. ‘I never saw anybody come,’ says Dot Penfold.
‘The impression I had was that they’d been forgotten.’
From
the late 1960s, a wave of scandals exposed conditions in institutions that were
severely understaffed and overcrowded. The Royal Earlswood was closed in 1997;
at least one former nurse has alleged patients were abused. The grandiose
building has since been converted into luxury apartments, while Katherine is believed
to be living in a care home in Surrey. Her relationship with her family remains
unchanged. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2059831/The-Queens-hidden-cousins-They-banished-asylum-1941-left-neglected-intriguing-documentary-reveals-all.html#ixzz45HdfsIi9
