The Hidden Cousins of Queen Elizabeth II: The Tragic Story of Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon
- Feb 21, 2025
- 7 min read
In 1963, the editors of Burke's Peerage, the definitive reference work on British aristocracy, published a listing that stated Nerissa Bowes-Lyon had died in 1940 and her sister Katherine in 1961. Both women were, in fact, very much alive, living in a Surrey institution where they'd been placed in 1941. The 1963 entry could only have come from a family source. Nobody corrected it. It would take another 24 years for a tabloid journalist to discover the truth, by which point Nerissa had genuinely died, alone, attended only by hospital staff, and been buried under a plastic tag with a serial number instead of a headstone. Her cousin was Queen Elizabeth II.
Who Were Nerissa and Katherine?
Nerissa Jane Irene Bowes-Lyon was born on 18 February 1919. Her younger sister Katherine Juliet followed on 4 July 1926. They were the daughters of John Herbert Bowes-Lyon, the second son of Claude Bowes-Lyon, the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. That made John the brother of Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the woman who would become Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. Nerissa and Katherine were therefore first cousins of Princess Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth II.
Both sisters were born with a severe developmental disability, the genetic origin of which has since been traced to the Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis family on their mother's side rather than the Bowes-Lyon side. They never learned to speak beyond a few basic words and were assessed as having a mental age of around three to six years old. Their father John died in 1930 of pneumonia, aged 43, leaving their mother Fenella to care for their four children alone.
Fenella managed for eleven years. In 1941, she made the decision to have both sisters placed in institutional care. On the same day, Fenella's sister Harriet had her three daughters, Idonea, Rosemary, and Etheldreda Fane, who had the same condition, admitted to the same institution. Five cousins, all severely disabled, all placed on the same day. The institution was the Royal Earlswood Hospital in Redhill, Surrey.
Royal Earlswood Hospital
Earlswood was opened in 1847, purpose-built as the first facility in Britain specifically for people with learning disabilities. By the time Nerissa and Katherine arrived in 1941, it housed around 230 men and women. Contemporary accounts and a 2011 documentary drew on the testimony of former nurses and relatives of residents to describe what life there was like. The picture wasn't one of deliberate cruelty, but it wasn't one of comfort either. Wards of up to 40 people were looked after by just two nurses. One former ward sister said simply: "You gave them a bath, cut their nails, fed them if they needed help." Earlswood was also criticised over the years for sanitation problems, overcrowding, and chronic understaffing. Those who worked and lived there remembered it as "regimented and devoid of fun."
The family's financial contribution to the sisters' care was £125 per year, paid to Earlswood. That was all.
Listed as Dead
The 1963 edition of Burke's Peerage listed Nerissa as having died in 1940, four years before she was admitted to hospital, and Katherine as having died in 1961. The entries included specific dates of death, which meant the information came from a source who provided deliberate details, not a blank form. The family's explanation, given years later, was that the sisters' mother Fenella was "a vague person" who had filled the forms in incorrectly, or not at all, and the publisher had filled in gaps somehow. Burke's Peerage's own publishing director said he was "thunderstruck" to learn the 1963 entry had been wrong. The entries went uncorrected for 24 years.
What those 24 years looked like for Nerissa and Katherine is difficult to establish. According to hospital staff, the sisters didn't recognise visitors other than their mother, becoming distressed by strangers. Fenella visited them regularly until her death in 1966. After that, the visits became increasingly sparse. A general manager for the East Surrey Health Authority said later: "Both sisters had regular visits from their families up until the early 1960s, when one of their closest relatives died. Since then, they have had few visitors." A former ward sister at the hospital was more direct: "The impression I had was that they'd been forgotten."
There was no known record that any member of the Bowes-Lyon or royal families visited the sisters during their decades at Earlswood. The Queen Mother, who was a Patron of Mencap, the learning disability charity, was apparently unaware of their existence until 1982, when she was informed. After that, she sent money for sweets and toys on their birthdays and at Christmas.
The Sun Reveals the Truth
In 1987, a photographer from The Sun posed as a relative of Katherine Bowes-Lyon and gained access to the hospital. The resulting story ran under the headline "Queen's cousin locked in madhouse." It revealed that Nerissa had died the previous year, in 1986, aged 66, with only hospital staff in attendance at the funeral. Her grave at Redstone Cemetery near the hospital had been marked with a plastic tag and a serial number. Katherine was still alive, frail but living at Earlswood. The public reaction was immediate: people across Britain sent flowers to Katherine at the hospital. The family later organised a proper headstone for Nerissa's grave.
The family's response to the story was to reject any suggestion of deliberate concealment. Lord Clinton, a cousin, said the Burke's Peerage error had been Fenella's honest mistake. Lady Elizabeth Anson insisted many relatives had visited over the years. Lady Elizabeth Shakerley, Fenella's granddaughter, said gifts and cards had been sent regularly. The hospital records told a different story, and the competing accounts have never been fully reconciled.
In 2011, Channel 4 broadcast a documentary called The Queen's Hidden Cousins, directed by Kelly Close, which drew on testimony from nurses and fellow residents at Earlswood to paint a picture of what life there had actually been like. The film stated plainly that there was no known record of any member of the Bowes-Lyon or royal families visiting the sisters throughout their time at the hospital. The Daily Express reported ahead of broadcast that the Queen was said to be "hugely distressed" by it. Lady Elizabeth Shakerley, the sisters' niece, responded at length disputing the programme's characterisation of family abandonment. The documentary also noted that the Queen Mother had been a Patron of Mencap, the learning disability charity, throughout the period the sisters were at Earlswood.
Katherine's Final Years
Katherine outlived her sister by 28 years. When Earlswood closed in 1997, she was moved to Ketwin House Care Home in Surrey, along with her cousin Idonea Fane, the only other of the five cousins still living. When Ketwin House also closed in 2001, both women were moved again. When Earlswood had been preparing to close, the administrator reported that neither the Queen nor the Queen Mother had agreed to meet to discuss Katherine's future care. A representative for the Palace said simply: "It's a matter for the Bowes-Lyon family."
Katherine Bowes-Lyon died on 23 February 2014, aged 87. She had lived at Earlswood and its successors for 73 years.
The Crown and the Wider Context
The story was dramatised in the Netflix series The Crown, which depicted a fictionalised Princess Margaret discovering the cousins' existence and confronting her mother. The show's version of the Queen Mother delivers a speech about the need to hide "tainted" bloodlines to protect the monarchy. The reality, characteristically, is messier and harder to read as a simple conspiracy. The disability was genetic, originating in the Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis family rather than the Bowes-Lyons. There was no risk of it appearing in the direct royal line. The decision to institutionalise the sisters was made by their mother, not by the Palace. The Burke's Peerage error was almost certainly not a Palace decision.
The Bowes-Lyon case wasn't unique in its broader cultural context. In 1941, the same year Nerissa and Katherine were admitted to Earlswood, Joe Kennedy arranged for his 23-year-old daughter Rosemary to undergo a lobotomy, after which Rosemary was quietly institutionalised in Wisconsin and largely written out of the Kennedy family narrative for decades. The parallels are striking: prominent families, disabled daughters, institutional placement in the same year, and a public silence that lasted until journalists started asking questions. The difference is that Rosemary's story eventually became part of the Kennedy family's public reckoning with disability. Nerissa and Katherine's never quite did.
No member of the royal family has ever publicly acknowledged Nerissa and Katherine by name. When The Sun broke the story in 1987, the Palace's only response was a single line from a representative: "It's a matter for the Bowes-Lyon family." The Queen never commented. The Queen Mother, who had been a Patron of Mencap for decades and who was informed the sisters were alive in 1982, made no public statement in the five years between that discovery and the story breaking. After the 2011 Channel 4 documentary, the Daily Express reported the Queen was "hugely distressed" by it, but that came from an unnamed source rather than any official statement. When Earlswood was preparing to close in the mid-1990s and Katherine's future care needed arranging, the hospital administrator reported that neither the Queen nor the Queen Mother agreed to meet to discuss it. The total public royal acknowledgement of two first cousins who spent 73 years in institutional care amounts to: nothing.
What's harder to explain away is the decades of near-invisibility that followed, the £125 annual contribution to their care, the lack of any documented royal visit across 45 years, and the specific dates of death recorded in Burke's Peerage where a blank might have been left instead. The monarchy has had a complicated relationship with those who don't fit its public image. Michael Fagan broke into Buckingham Palace in 1982 and sat on the Queen's bed before anyone noticed; the institution's capacity for oversight failures runs in more than one direction. What happened to Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon wasn't spectacular. It was quieter and sadder than that. They were simply left behind.
Sources:
1. Wikipedia: Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerissa_and_Katherine_Bowes-Lyon
2. Unofficial Royalty: Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon. https://www.unofficialroyalty.com/nerissa-and-katherine-bowes-lyon-queen-elizabeth-iis-hidden-cousins/
3. Community Living Magazine: Hidden Royal Relations. https://communitylivingmagazine.com/hidden-royal-relations/
4. Disability Throughout History: The Bowes-Lyon and Fane Cousins. https://disabilitythroughouthistory.squarespace.com/posts-1/the-bowes-lyon-and-fane-cousins
5. The Daily Telegraph: Neglected, hidden away, registered dead: the tragic true story of the Queen's disabled cousins.
6. Channel 4 documentary: The Queen's Hidden Cousins (2011), dir. Kelly Close.
