The Crown Series 4

[Housewife2010]

Anyone else getting excited? The Diana trailer looks great. It's on Netflix on 15th November.

I can’t get over the bowes Lyon story. Absolutely shocking!!

How many more skeletons are in the closet of the RF. No wonder they don’t like this show bringing sordid details like this out in the open.

Riveting stuff

That was how impaired people were dealt with. If it was in your family, it was a source of shame.

In Lady Anne Glenconnor’s book Lady in Waiting she writes about being engaged to Johnny Spencer, who she fell madly in love with, and how his father Jock , warned him off Anne due to her having “ mad blood” as she is also related to Trefusis family , just as the Queen mother was. It’s a interesting read.

To be fair the past was as they say a foreign country & they did things differently then.
Any form of mental illness/disability was seen a terrible shock/embarrassing, through a mixture of fear/weakness & people took stock in what other people would think.
There simply was not the understanding back then (except in a few cases) that the brain is a physiological organ & mental disabilities & mental illness are also physical illnesses too.
Unfortunately you do still get a bit of that now.
Before the advent of anti-convulsants to manage epilepsy & the discovery that it was (to put it very simply) the misfiring of neurons causing abnormal electrical signalling, most people with epilepsy would be thought of as an idiot or lunatic & many put in an asylum.

At the other extreme, even worse as in hitler's Germany you'd be put in a Nazi death camp along with those who had bipolar, schizophrenia, etc.
If any of my grandparents had been born & living in 1930's Germany then I would not be here now.

I'm struggling to understand how anyone can consider Claire Foys performance in wolf Hall as bad... She was simply brilliant.

@Pinkrabbits1

I can’t get over the bowes Lyon story. Absolutely shocking!!

How many more skeletons are in the closet of the RF. No wonder they don’t like this show bringing sordid details like this out in the open.

Riveting stuff

This came out into the open many years ago, it was in all the papers

@Bubbletrouble43

I'm struggling to understand how anyone can consider Claire Foys performance in wolf Hall as bad... She was simply brilliant.

I agree.

I agree about Claire Foy in Wolf Hall, she was amazing.
Horrifying but true, Tracy. It's only recently that those with impairments were treated as people deserving of care and support.

CaptainMyCaptain Mon 23-Nov-20 22:06:45
Pinkrabbits1

I can’t get over the bowes Lyon story. Absolutely shocking!!

How many more skeletons are in the closet of the RF. No wonder they don’t like this show bringing sordid details like this out in the open.

Riveting stuff

This came out into the open many years ago, it was in all the papers
.........

Yes, I remember it in the papers when it came out. It was very sad but at the time, nobody thought that much of it because right up until the 1970s, people like those unfortunate cousins were 'put away' in institutions. Lots of people of that generation knew someone or knew somebody who had a relative in one of those places. Where the Bowes Lyon cousins lived with a good place as far as it could be, people were treated kindly, but some were dreadful. If you watch 'Call the Midwife' you will see some of that and, as time went on in the series, it showed how such institutions adapted, some closed, and the law changed regarding vulnerable people (and children).

We definitely live in a better world now.

Just finished season four. Wow.

Locking impaired people away into institutions was everyday practice up to the late 70s. There were many State institutions which housed people for their whole lives and many knew no other way of life. Along came Mrs Thatcher, handbag swinging, saving money like a thrifty housewife. Closed dozens of them in favour of 'community care'. The sight of many of the bewildered and abandoned wandering the streets looking for their home is one I won't forget.

Yes, I remember Glenda Jackson at Margaret Thatcher's tributes in parliament. "They called it 'care in the community' - when it fact it was absolutely no care whatsoever in the community!"

m.youtube.com/watch?v=XDtClJYJBj8&t=40s

There's a channel 4 docu called The Queen's Hidden Cousins. Watched it a couple years back. May be still around?

This is a heartbreaking but really interesting documentary about institutions in this era, for those with all sorts of difficulties. I have a son with complex needs and it’s just horrendous to think children were treated like this.

I don't think the cousins were institutionalised because of their proximity to the RF because iirc even at that time, it was realised it was a different bloodline . It seems like more dramatic license from the writers to make the RF seem bad.

I'm not a monarchist at all but I hate that so much of this season is partial or false. The 80s should have provided lots of material without having to resort to a soap opera study of C&D; and a false interpretation of the fate of their cousins.

@TheCrowsHaveEyes

I don't think the cousins were institutionalised because of their proximity to the RF because iirc even at that time, it was realised it was a different bloodline . It seems like more dramatic license from the writers to make the RF seem bad. I'm not a monarchist at all but I hate that so much of this season is partial or false. The 80s should have provided lots of material without having to resort to a soap opera study of C&D; and a false interpretation of the fate of their cousins.

Great post

Yes - the Michael Fagan storyline was terrible.

Even the scene where the Queen hadn't realised it was Falklands victory parade day was ridiculous: Prince Andrew saw active service as a helicopter pilot in the conflict so she would have known from a personal perspective, never mind a political one!

@Bubbletrouble43

I'm struggling to understand how anyone can consider Claire Foys performance in wolf Hall as bad... She was simply brilliant.

I think perhaps because her Ann Boleyn wasn't the feisty, largely likable Ann as portrayed by Natalie Dormer in The Tudors?

Foy was portraying Ann Bolyen as she was imagined by Hilary Mantel, and did so brilliantly. Mantel's Ann was fascinating but not likable at all. The director himself said that Foy did a fantastic job of portraying a character who was a total bitch (he didn't use that word!) most of the time, yet she still made you feel desperately sorry for her at the end. When I first saw Foy, I thought she was too pretty to play Ann - who was no great beauty - but she really won me over.

The Bowes-Lyon sisters were in Earlswood which was our local mental hospital when I was a child. It was actually one of the first hospitals to pioneer education for the learning disabled. The sisters were there with their cousins who suffered from the same genetic disability. I think the decision was taken by their parents and I am not sure what the royal family had to do with it. Would it be appropriate to interfere in arrangements made for your brother's children? The idea of putting prople into institutions for life was clearly wrong and it was absolutely correct that it ended, butI agree with people who say how disastrous the ill-funded "care in the community" was.
Are services for the mentally ill really so wonderful these days?

I was a support worker in the nineties when the transition was happening; we called it "Couldn't Care Less In The Community".

It's one thing putting people into institutions, all families did. But recording them as dead? Not one record of a family visit. When it became public the Queen Mother gave money for presents. Fucks sake they could have given so much money for education and care. The eldest girl was buried in the institution unmarked grave. Until it was made public and RF paid for . Frankly they could have visited or at least pumped money into an NHS institution. Shows them as totally uncaring.

I think it's particularly cruel that the young women were placed in the institution in 1941 at the ages of 15 and 22, presumably they lived with family before then and were sent away never to see their parents or siblings again.

The Queen was also 15 at that time, had she never met or heard about her cousins of a similar age?

I don't see why they couldn't be looked after at home with nurses/carers with the vast amount of property and money the family had.

I think they were definitely hidden away, it wasn't just a matter of the best care available at the time. Their very existence was denied.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerissa_and_Katherine_Bowes-Lyon

Let's not kid ourselves. Katherine only died in 2014, not a generation ago.

wasnt the QM president of Mencap