User:Bodnotbod/Mental illness and the British Royal Family

A number of members of the British Royal Family have suffered from mental illness. The way that such an important family handles the illness of one of its members tends to follow a pattern or tradition.


 * Katherine Bowes-Lyon
 * Nerissa Bowes-Lyon
 * Prince John of the United Kingdom
 * Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester
 * Idonea Fane
 * Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence - mildly retarded


 * George V of the United Kingdom - manic depression?

Robert III of Scotland - "This undermined his authority and increased his depression, which became so acute that he spent his reign as an ailing recluse. Discussing his funeral with his wife, he asked to be buried in a dunghill, beneath the epitaph: 'Here lies the worst of kings and the most miserable of men.' "


 * George III of the United Kingdom


 * Princess Andrew of Greece

interbreeding - Prince Philip and the Queen were both descendants of Queen Victoria, and George V and Queen Mary were great-great granchildren of George III. These are the two I can remember offhand.

See alo Habsburg jaw

Monster of Glamis
garrick92 - 04:21pm Aug 11, 2004 BST (#57 of 58)

OK, this should set you straight -- or, at least, as straight as it can get. My earlier account, from memory, was a bit confused abouts dates and things. Having checked my own sources I find the following:

The alleged "monster" of Glamis was Thomas, rightful Lord Glamis, the first child of Charlotte Grimstead, later the Dowager Lady Glamis.

Thomas was recorded in Douglas's Scots Peerage as "born and died, October 21, 1821".

The legend of his survival appears to have started in local villages as the result of an account by the midwife (whose name has not been recorded). The deformed child was alleged to have been in rude health when the midwife left, causing suspicion when his death was announced a day or two later. The child Thomas has no gravestone, a matter which tends to support the initial rumours. (Thomas had been baptised as a Christian on birth).

He was said to have been nursed through infancy in secret and later confined in one of Glamis Castle's many (and several are known) secret rooms.

This part of the story of Thomas did not become current until the 1960s, when family accounts were first published (see below).

The entrance to his chamber, which is recounted as measuring 10ft by 15ft, was off the chapel. There is no known account of how the room was accessible, but presumably it would have been through a removable panel or somesuch as there is no visible entrance from the chapel. In 1969, the Queen Mother's biographer Michael Thornton visited Glamis and was told by the sixteenth Earl that the entrance had been bricked up after Thomas's death.

The details of Thomas's appearance -- "His chest an enormous barrel, hairy as a doormat, his head ran straight into his shoulders and his arms and legs were toylike" -- come from James Wentworth-Day's The Queen Mother's Family Story, (Robert Hale, London, 1967). They are attributed to "a member of the Queen Mother's family." Wentworth-Day's account is the first in which the information was gathered direct from members of the Queen mother's family, even though they were understandably reluctant to be named. I suspect that on several occasions, the QM herself was the source.

Thomas was fed daily through an iron grille in his cell door by one trusted servant.

It is not believed that Thomas ever left this cell, but some associated rumours claim that he was occasionally exercised by being taken for a walk, like a dog, on the battlements on moonless nights.

The account of the discovery of the passage by a workman, the summoning of the thirteenth Earl from London, and the subsequent way in which the man and his family were "subsidized and induced to emigrate" also comes from Wentworth-Day.

(Also from Wentworth-Day comes the story of QM's mother, the Countess of Strathmore, trying to get the Glamis factor Andrew Ralston to tell her the truth about the family secret. Only the Earl and his heir were ever fully in the know, the latter let into the grim secret on his 21st birthday.)

It is claimed that the workman event happened in the 1870s. This would indicate that Thomas was in his fifties at the time. The circumstances and date of his death are unknown. Thomas's mother, Charlotte Grimstead, died in 1881.

I do not have a source for the "towels-from-windows" story, which I believe to be apocryphal.

Nor do I see any reason to believe that Thomas was "evil" -- although I can believe that he may have been mentally disabled, and his lifelong confinement and deprivation would hardly have encouraged anything other than animal-like behaviour. Perhaps this is how the "evil" claim began.

A second son, Thomas George, was born on September 28, 1822 and he was entirely normal and eventually became the 12th Earl.

From here:

GEORGE BOWES LYON, LORD GLAMIS, born February 6th., 1801, married, December 21st., 1820, Charlotte, daughter of Joseph Valentine Grinstead, Esq., and died, in his father's lifetime, January 27th., 1834, leaving, with daughters, two sons, who succeeded him, namely,

THOMAS GEORGE BOWES LYON, twelfth EARL OF STRATHMORE AND KINGHORNE, born September 20th., 1822, an officer in the First Life Guards, and a Representative Peer. He married, April 30th., 1850, Charlotte Maria, eldest daughter of William Keppel, sixth Viscount Barrington, but dying without children, his brother succeeded him, -

CLAUDE BOWES LYON, thirteenth EARL OF STRATHMORE AND KINGHORNE, born July 21st., 1824, an officer in the Second Life Guards, married, September 28th., 1853, Frances Dora, daughter of Oswald Smith, Esq., of Blendon Hall, Kent, and had a large family, of whom the eldest son,

CLAUDE BOWES LYON, LORD GLAMIS, D.L. for Forfarshire, Lieutenant in the Second Life Guards, was born March 14th., 1855.