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The Netflix drama series is now back on television and computer screens and delivers an embarrassing scandal: Sisters Katherine and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon, daughters of Queen Elizabeth, have been abandoned and forgotten by everyone for decades.
In 1941, at the ages of 15 and 22, girls who were unable to speak due to a congenital disorder were secretly admitted for parental detention at the Royal Earlswood Medical Center for the Mentally Handicapped in Redhile, Earl County.
Psychiatric hospital where Isabel II’s cousins were treated
In this institution, derisively called a “national lunatic for idiots,” they have spent most of their lives declared dead and virtually unvisited, reports dailymail.co.uk.
Psychiatric hospital where Isabel II’s cousins were treated
Although Queen Elizabeth knew that the entry in Burke’s Peerage’s genealogical publication that both relatives had died was false (Katherine and Nerissos’s mother provided false information), she did not visit any of her cousins and was not ashamed to support Mencap. . , speaking out against families who place their children with mental retardation in the care of the state.
Nerissa died in 1986 at the age of 66, and Katherine stopped taking anapiline six years ago at the age of 87. It is probably not surprising that the character of actress Helena Bonham Carter (the brave Princess Margaret) is ardently disgusted by the treatment. so terrible of the members of the royal family. Outraged at her mother, Queen Elizabeth (played by Marion Bailey), she exclaims: “Locked up and abandoned. After all, they are your daughters, the daughters of your favorite brother. Such behavior is incredibly wicked, cruel and cruel, but I myself have found it in this family. If you do not act in accordance with generally accepted traditions, if you have an individual personality, have individual needs or, God forbid, a fickle temperament, you will be spit on or hidden, or worse still: pronounced dead. You should be very ashamed. “
The creators of The Crown seem to distort the facts a bit by retelling the Bowes-Lyon sisters’ story, as there are indications that Queen Elizabeth was involved in the scandal from the beginning.
However, in 1996 an article appeared in a newspaper in which it said that the monarch did not know anything about his daughters until 1982, when he received a letter from the sponsors of the medical institution. Then he allegedly sent a four-figure sum for the unfortunate sisters’ Christmas and birthday gifts, but there is no evidence that members of the royal family visited them.
Queen Elizabeth (Queen Mother) during her wedding
The Netflix drama series also gives the impression that the Queen believed the information that the sisters were dead. It’s unclear when she learned the truth, but in 2012. A Channel 4 documentary recounted that Elizabeth was saddened by hints that her daughters had been practically left to their own devices.
It is also difficult to know exactly if Princess Margaret found out about her mother’s cousins and pinned her against the wall. It is true that the doctor barely told him this fact, as shown in the series.
And indeed the story is like that. Nerissa was born in 1919 and Katherine in 1926. Her father was John Bowes-Lyon, one of Queen Elizabeth’s older brothers, son of Erlo of Strathmore. Bowes-Lyon died in 1930 and the girls’ mother, Fenella, died in 1966.
The sisters were extremely unlucky: they were born at a time when mental disability was considered a threat to society and was associated with adultery, irresponsible childbirth, as well as petty crime and the poor class.
This view was reinforced by the popular science of eugenics, the main ideas of which were soon followed by the Nazis.
For the Bowes-Lyons family, this was a stigma that threatened social status and the chances of a third daughter being successful. Nerrisa and Katherine’s beautiful and healthy sister Anne became princess of Denmark for the second time, and during her first marriage she was Viscount Anson and had a son, Lord Lichfield, who loved to pursue social photography.
The need to incarcerate girls born with disabilities turned insane in 1923, when their aunt Elizabeth married the future King George VI. The shocking story of the incarceration came to light shortly after Nerissa’s death, when reporters discovered that she was buried in a grave marked only with a plastic card bearing her name and serial number.
Bowes-Lyon cotton
Still, the scandal that led the unknown person or persons to build the tombstone had virtually no effect on her sister’s life.
No one visited Katherina in the madhouse. Enjoying the joys of a privileged life for her aunt Queen Elizabeth, Katherine did not even have her own underwear (at least until the last years of her life) and had to settle for shared clothing.
Katherine Bowes-Lyon
In the Crown series, Queen Elizabeth tries to justify the atrocities and tells Princess Margaret: “The wife of the Duke of York, who leads a relatively normal life, has become queen. At the same time, my family, Bowes-Lyons, went from insignificant Scottish aristocrats to people directly related to the queen, for which my brother’s children paid a terrible price. “
“His disability, his imbecility, his professionally diagnosed dementia would make people question the purity of the royal lineage. Can you at least imagine what the headlines would be if this information came out? The very fact that a single family has an automatic birthright to the throne is already difficult to justify, so their genes must be 100%. quality, ”he continues. “Windsor’s side alone is full of examples that can make people anxious … Add in Bowes-Lyon’s disability, and there’s a danger that he won’t defend himself from criticism.”
The sisters’ mental disability is believed to be caused by a genetic disorder inherited from the mother. Three cousins of Katherine and Nerissos, Edonea, Rosemary and Etheldreday, were also closed at the Royal Earlswood Hospital. They were daughters of Fenella’s sister, Harriet, and had the same congenital disorders.
When Charles and Diana were married in July 1981, Katherine and Nerissa are said to have watched the wedding ceremony with enthusiasm on television. Many years later, one of the nurses caring for the sisters, Onelle Braithwaite, said, “I remember talking to my coworker that they would have attended the wedding under different circumstances.”
Death certificate of Nerrine Bowes-Lyon
In a Channel 4 documentary, the nurse added: “Today, they would probably be in speech therapy and the sisters would learn to communicate better. They perceived more than might appear at first glance. Very sad. Think of the life they could have had. Such wonderful sisters. “
The Royal Earlswood Medical Center closed in 1997.
At least one former nurse claimed that the staff had mistreated patients. Finally, luxury apartments were installed in the huge building.
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