A CHANNEL 4 film will portray the Royal Family as callous and neglectful in their treatment of five “hidden cousins” of the Queen who were locked away in the same mental asylum for decades.

At the heart of The Queen’s Hidden Cousins is the emotional story of two royal relatives, Katherine and Nerissa BowesLyon, nieces of the Queen Mother, who were never visited by the Royal Family nor invited to any royal event at Buckingham Palace.

Indeed, the Bowes-Lyon family, into which the Queen Mother was born, announced in Burke’s Peerage that Nerissa had “died in 1940″, even though she was alive in the asylum; the same publication also published that Katherine had died. The family would later put these errors down to “vagueness”.

Nerissa did die in 1986 but her sister Katherine is still alive in a Surrey nursing home. She is 85, the same age as the Queen.

The scandal of the Bowes-Lyon sisters is all the more striking given that for many years the Queen Mother had a special interest in mental health as the patron of charity Mencap.

Katherine and Nerissa were two of five children born to John “Jock” Bowes-Lyon, the 12th Earl of Strathmore and the Queen Mother’s brother.

Glamis Castle, the seat of the Bowes-Lyon family, was famous for the alleged “Monster of Glamis”, the “deformed” Thomas Bowes-Lyon who was said to have been kept there in seclusion in the early 19th century.

Almost 100 years later it became apparent that the young Katherine and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon were also severely handicapped and were virtually unable to speak.

Both Katherine, then 15, and Nerissa, 22, were diagnosed by doctors as “imbeciles”. They had a mental age of six.

The Channel 4 programme interviews several nurses who worked at the Royal Earlswood and who directly treated the Bowes-Lyon sisters.

Dot Penfold walked the wards for 20 years. She has one early memory of Nerissa.

She says: “I decided to take them all for a picnic. Nerissa came running down the front stairs [of Earlswood], she knew we were going out.

“She came barging down them and the coach was pulling up outside. I dived out to grab her and I missed the last three steps.

I injured my ankle. So I will never forget her, bless her heart.

“I didn’t see any visitors [for the sisters]. I never saw birthday cards or Christmas cards, not while I was there.” An academic specialising in mental health tells the programme: “They [asylums like Earlswood] were convenient places to put inconvenient people.

“There was a belief that if you had someone in your family like that there was something wrong.”

The two sisters were well liked and “endeared themselves” to staff. Katherine even-earned the nickname of “Tinky”.

Another nurse, Theresa Gainsford, says: “It was a bit of a shock when we found out who they were. No one could quite believe it. And they did look like Margaret and Elizabeth.”

There were wards of up to 40 people with beds side by side. Two staff cared for each ward.

One was Bridey Tingly. She says: “You gave them a bath, cut their nails, fed them if they needed help. You had to dress them prior to that. That was all in a day’s work but there was no connection with royalty. At Christmas time they never got a sausage but, do you think, that’s no great credit to the royalty?” Gainsford says: “The sisters were lovely,” and adds: “They would pootle off down the corridors or walk around the grounds. Sometimes one of them would clear off and we would have to catch her.

“They never spoke. They just used to make noises. They couldn’t hold a conversation or say hello to you, just probably come up and give you a hug if they felt like it. Nerissa was the distant one.”

All three nurses agree, “they got few if any visitors”. The BowesLyon family say the sisters’ mother Fenella “visited occasionally” until the early Sixties but Bridey insists: “I never saw a visitor. I’m not condemning the family but I don’t think the royalty played their part.”

Nurse Onelle Braithwaite tells the programme: “They would have loved a visit. You only had to look at how they reacted when their family was on the television.

“She [Katherine] would stand there for a good few minutes and salute. She was really listening to what the Queen had to say.

“When it came on they would both walk up to the television, curtsey very nicely.

“We were quite surprised that they recognised the Queen Mother was a relative, even with their disability. If things had been different they would have been present at the occasions.”

The sisters’ reaction to the royals was emphasised in 1981. “They were all keen to watch the wedding of Charles and Diana and, of course, Katherine and Nerissa couldn’t contain their excitement.

“When the Queen’s car came on the TV and the Queen got out, Katherine and Nerissa were waving back, no curtsey then, because they were older, just waving. It was a nice morning to see the excitement on their faces.”

Not only weddings would prompt their attention, says Dot Penfold. “Any time there was anything royal Nerissa would stand up and salute. It was quite amusing.

“Nerissa would only have to hear the national anthem on the radio and she would stand up and salute.”

The staff were very affected when Nerissa died in 1986.

Nurse Onelle Braithwaite says: “I felt very sad about it. It’s like a member of your family has gone.”

Bridey explains: “They could have given her a lavish funeral but they gave her a pauper’s grave. It just had Nerissa’s name on it.”

Another carer Sheila Rule adds: “At the funeral Katherine was quiet. She must feel there was something not quite right.

“Katherine would just look around for Nerissa. We would tell her that she was resting. They were very close.

“Their beds were next to each other. After a while Katherine was back to normal.”

THE death of Nerissa brought the shocking revelation that not only was her sister Katherine in Royal Earlswood but three sisters from the Fanes family lived at the hospital. They were connected to the Bowes-Lyons on mother Fenella’s side.

At the same time a private detective then infiltrated the home, taking secret footage of Katherine which is shown on the programme.

Nerissa now has a proper headstone, although the rumours are that the “grave was dug deep enough for two”. The eventual gravestone was paid for by their niece Lady Elizabeth Anson.

Katherine was moved to Ketwin House in Surrey where patients were charged only £770 a year at the time of its closing after allegations of physical abuse.

She is now resident in another nursing home in Surrey where “she has been taken on holidays around Britain by the staff”.

To this day, however, she has never been visited by a member of the Royal Family.

Neither Buckingham Palace nor Glamis Castle wished to contribute to the Channel 4 programme.

The Queen’s Hidden Cousins, Channel 4, Thursday, 9pm

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