She was buried at Redhill Cemetery, where the plot was marked with plastic tags and a serial number until her existence came to light the following year, when a gravestone was added. My understanding is that Katherine had no regular visitors.’ When Nerissa died in 1986, her funeral was attended only by hospital staff. As a general manager for the East Surrey Health Authority told the Associated Press in 1987: ‘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. There appears, however, to be no factual basis behind this. In The Crown, Princess Margaret is shown sending Dazzle to secretly visit the sisters. Buckingham Palace made no comment on the matter, telling the Associated Press at the time: ‘It is a matter for the Bowes-Lyon family.’ The Bowes-Lyons publicly stressed that the two women were not imprisoned, but were well-treated and able to move freely around the hospital and its grounds. Burke’s Peerage’s publishing director, Harold Brooks-Baker, told the Associated Press they were ‘thunderstruck’ to learn of the mistake. Fenella’s granddaughter, Lady Elizabeth Anson, took a similar view, telling the Guardian in 1987: ‘She often did not fill out forms completely that Burke's Peerage sent her,’ explain that she left some parts of the form blank – which may have led registrars at Burke’s to assume that meant the women were dead. This has been challenged, however, given that Burke’s listed specific dates of death for both sisters. He claimed that it was likely his aunt Fenella (Nerissa and Katherine’s mother) had incorrectly filled out the form for Burke’s, dubbing her a ‘vague person’. When news of the sisters’ existence came to light in 1987, allegations of a royal cover up were dismissed in the press by the sisters’ cousin, Lord Clinton.
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