Royal family and revolting cruelty

The Working Class Self Organisation blog looks at the Royal family's treatment of its own members with mental illnesses before the screening of a new Channel 4 documentary on the same subject.

Submitted by working class … on November 13, 2011

The Queen is said to be ‘deeply distressed’ at a Channel 4 documentary that is due to be screened next week. Join the fucking club! I am sure other people will also be distressed.

The documentary tells the story of the Queens’s cousins, Katherine and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon. The two sisters were born with severe learning disabilities and locked away in an asylum from a very young age. The programme contains interviews with people who claim that the Royal family shunned the sisters, never visited, etc.

The Queen has responded by claiming that it is all ‘lies’. Clearly someone is lying, and I know where my money is. A palace spokesman claims that they did receive visits, they did receive presents, and the family were involved and interested.

When Nerissa died in 1987, no member of the Royal family attended her funeral. In fact the Royal family denied that the sisters even existed until 1987, one of the sisters was listed as ‘dead’ in a who’s who book of the aristocracy. The Royal family cannot explain why it happened.

They have form for this kind of behaviour. Idonea Fane, the Queens cousin died in 2002, locked away in a care home after a lifetime in asylums. Her existence was also denied by the Royal family. She died the same week as that slobbering Nazi, the Queen mother. No announcement, a shit headstone in a council run cemetery. A bit different that the Queen mother’s then, and the only people at the funeral were the care home staff.

“An 'out of sight, out of mind' approach to family members troubled with "embarrassing" problems, like mental illness, is nothing new in the royal household. In 1905, George V and Queen Mary had a son, Prince John. Until the age of four, he was as much a central figure at the court as Prince William and Harry were when they were born in the 1980s. But then Prince John suffered his first epileptic fit, and his mother and father were appalled.

Thereafter John was excluded from official family photographs and was not even allowed to attend his own father's coronation in 1911. Early in 1917, the risk of the public discovering John's illness was dealt with permanently when he was removed - along with a nanny and two male attendants charged with holding him down when he had fits - to Wood Farm, set in a secluded corner of the Sandringham estate. He never saw his parents again and died two years later in his sleep.”

Three other sisters--Edonia Elizabeth, RosemaryJean and Etheldreda Flavia Fane, cousins of Queen Mother Elizabeth--were placedin the same mental institution south of London on the same day in 1941.

Whilst the Royal family may argue over the minutiae of who did what, and occasional visits, or Christmas cards, the facts are clear. They Royal family despite their huge wealth and sprawling states and palaces locked away at least three members of their own family in state run mental asylums for over seventy years. When these asylums were closed, they then moved to care homes and left to rot. They denied their existence for over fifty years, and listed them as dead in ‘who’s who’. The ones that have died were buried in council cemeteries in graves marked with plastic tags, a far cry from the extravagant bullshit we see for members of the Royal family who do not have severe learning disabilities.

What an absolutely revolting way to treat members of your family who have an illness. The Queen claims that the documentary is not in the public interest, I disagree, it shows the cruelty that lies behind the mask of respectability that they try and portray.

Comments

Choccy

12 years 4 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Choccy on November 13, 2011

Yes! One of my favourite blogs!

batswill

12 years 4 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by batswill on November 14, 2011

Very disgusting monarchist behavior. Eww!