Almost 40 years ago, the royal family was shaken by a scandal involving the Queen’s first cousins, which caused public outrage and claims of a serious cover-up.
In 2020, Netflix released the fourth season of The Crown. While it focused on the early years of Charles and Diana’s marriage and the political scene during Britain’s first female prime minister, the show also revived interest in a painful chapter of the Windsor family’s past — the tragic story of Queen Elizabeth’s first cousins, Katherine and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon.
These women were the daughters of John Herbert Bowes-Lyon, the Queen’s uncle, and his wife Fenella. The public didn’t even know they existed until an explosive investigation by The Sun newspaper came out in 1987.
Nerissa and Katherine were born with severe learning disabilities, never learned to speak, and were believed to have the mental capacity of a three-year-old. After their father died in 1930, the sisters—then aged 15 and 22—were sent to Royal Earlswood, a state-funded mental health hospital in Redhill, London.
This institution was hardly what you’d expect for members of the royal family. It later faced serious allegations of understaffing, overcrowding, and poor hygiene, eventually leading to its permanent closure.
In 1963, the Bowes-Lyon family announced that Katherine and Nerissa had died in 1961 and 1940, respectively. This was reported in Burke’s Peerage, a reference book for the British aristocracy.
However, the problem was that this information wasn’t true.
A shocking royal ‘cover-up’
Nerissa died in 1986 and her sister Katherine in 2014, but a journalist later revealed both had been hidden away in an institution all along. This caused public outrage and threatened the Windsor family’s reputation.
Harold Brooks-Baker of Burke’s Peerage was shocked, having trusted the royals’ announcement of their deaths.
The public was upset to learn Nerissa was buried in a pauper’s grave marked only by a serial number, with a private ceremony attended only by hospital staff. A campaign later secured a proper gravestone, and Katherine received many gifts.
Buckingham Palace said the Queen knew about the reports but didn’t comment, calling it a family matter.
Lady Elizabeth Anson, their niece, denied a cover-up, saying her grandmother often didn’t complete forms properly. Others disagreed, saying such a big mistake couldn’t have been accidental.
How much did the rest of the royal family really know?
Regarding the extended royal family, it’s unclear how much they knew about the sisters. However, it’s said that the Queen Mother only learned about them in 1982, having believed—like most people—that they were dead before then.
She is said to have sent a cheque that was used to buy sweets and toys for the women, but she never actually visited them. In fact, records indicate the sisters never received family visits or birthday and Christmas presents.
Despite this, she was heavily criticized for apparently not correcting the public story about the sisters, especially since she reportedly learned the truth five years before the scandal became public.
However, alleged financial documents suggest that someone in the royal family was aware of the sisters all along, as they reportedly sent over £125 annually to help pay for their care at the facility.
Nerissa and Katherine ‘never forgot’ their royal ties
Though the royal family seemed to have overlooked them, Nerissa and Katherine clearly never forgot their royal roots.
In the 2011 Channel 4 documentary The Queen’s Hidden Cousins, hospital staff claimed that whenever the royal family appeared on television, the sisters — despite being nonverbal — would stand, salute, and even curtsy
What happened to Katherine after Nerissa died?
After Nerissa died, Katherine remained at Earlswood Hospital, where the sisters had both lived, until the hospital closed in 1997 due to allegations of abuse. She was then transferred to another care facility in Surrey. Katherine lived there quietly for the rest of her life, passing away in 2014 at the age of 87.
Dot Penfold, a former ward sister at Earlswood, later shared in a Channel 4 documentary that it deeply saddened her how the sisters went for years without anyone visiting them. “The impression I had was that they’d been forgotten,” she said.