I can’t stop thinking about the sisters. Their names were Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, first cousins to Queen Elizabeth II. They were essentially hidden from the world in 1941 when their family – their own flesh and blood – sent them to the Royal Earlswood Institution for Mental Defectives.
The tragic, true story of the Queen’s cousins locked away in an institute features in an episode of The Crown season 4. It opens with Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) preparing for a date with a friend. Meanwhile, two women at the Royal Earlswood are avidly watching the Queen (Olivia Colman) on TV. When the national anthem is sung, the sisters stand and salute the Queen.
I can’t talk for others, but I didn’t know who they were at this point.
Then about halfway through the episode, Margaret seeks out a therapist after falling into a depression. Her therapists asks her if anybody else in the family has experienced mental health issues before.
“I only ask because I am aware, through professional colleagues of… the sisters,” the therapist says.
Margaret has no idea who she’s talking about, neither does Elizabeth when asked later on in the episode. While we don’t know for sure if this is how Margaret found out about the sisters, this is The Crown‘s version of events.
Nerissa and Katherine were born in 1919 and 1926 respectively, both with severe developmental disabilities. Their father was John Bowes-Lyon, the Queen Mother’s favourite elder brother.
Three cousins from their mother’s side – Idonea, Etheldreda, and Rosemary – also had similar disabilities and were committed to the same institution.
According to The Guardian, Nerissa and Katherine – then aged 15 and 22 – were secretly placed in the institution and practically abandoned.
There is reportedly no record of either woman receiving a family visit.
In fact, according to an edition of the Burke’s Peerage – a British genealogical publisher that records birthdays and deaths of royals and alike – the records show that Nerissa died in 1940 and Katherine in 1961.
As we find out, this is absolutely not true.
Nerissa actually died in 1986, aged 66, and was buried in a grave marked with just a name tag and serial number.
The Crown, though inspired by real events, is ultimately fiction. But that still doesn’t take anything away from Nerissa and Katherine’s story. You could Google them right now and learn about their story, they’re not a secret – not anymore.
But The Crown did have to take some poetic licence and fill in the gaps. For example, it used the Queen Mother (Marion Bailey) to explain that the sisters’ conditions were a threat to The Crown’s leadership.
“Their professionally diagnosed idiocy and imbecility would make people question the integrity of the bloodline,” she says.
This is fiction, but the stigma surrounding their disabilities isn’t.
In 2011, British network Channel 4 released a documentary about the sisters.
Onelle Braithwaite, a nurse who cared for Nerissa and Katherine, said their story was common knowledge around the institution.
“If the Queen or Queen Mum were ever on television, they’d curtsy, 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.”
