John Herbert Bowes-Lyon - Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon

Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon

Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon are two of the daughters of John Herbert Bowes-Lyon and his wife Fenella (née Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis). As John was the brother of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon the Queen Mother, the two daughters are first cousins of Queen Elizabeth II, sharing one pair of grandparents, Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne and Nina Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne.

In 1987, it was revealed that Nerissa and Katherine had been placed in Earlswood Hospital for the mentally disabled in 1941. Although Nerissa died in 1986, and Katherine is still alive (as of 2012), both had been listed in Burke's Peerage as being dead since the 1963 edition. Suggestions of a royal cover-up were rejected in the press by Lord Clinton, who thought that his aunt Fenella (the mother of the two daughters) had completed the form for Burke's Peerage incorrectly due to 'vagueness'; however, Burke's Peerage included specific dates of death for both sisters. According to a 2011 television documentary about the sisters, "throughout their time at the hospital, there is no known record that the sisters were ever visited by any member of the Bowes-Lyon or royal families, despite their aunt, the Queen Mother, being a Patron of MENCAP" (the charity for people with a learning disability). Nurses interviewed on the documentary said that, to their knowledge, the family never even sent the sisters a birthday or Christmas gift or card. When Nerissa died in 1986, none of her family attended the funeral. She was buried at Redhill Cemetery. Her grave was only marked with plastic tags and a serial number until her existence was revealed in the media, after which the family added a proper gravestone.

Three other mentally disabled cousins also lived in Earlswood Hospital. Nerissa and Katherine's mother, Fenella, had a sister Harriet Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis (1887–1958) who married Major Henry Nevile Fane, and together had seven children; three of them who lived in Earlswood Hospital were Idonea Elizabeth Fane (1912–2001), Rosemary Jean Fane (b. 1914) and Ethelreda Flavia Fane (1922–1996). Prof. David Danks, then director of the Murdoch Institute, thought that a genetic disease may have killed male members of the family in early childhood.

In 1996 the surviving cousins were moved to Ketwin House care home in Surrey, and after it was closed in 2001, on to another care home in Surrey.