Mr. Carttar’s Inquest: A Study of the Inquest Into the Death of Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh, 1822

Among the most well-known ‘facts’ in British history is that Lord Castlereagh, the foreign secretary, committed suicide on August 12, 1822, by severing his carotid artery with a pen knife at his country residence, North Cray Cottage, near London. The following day, an inquest was held into Castlereagh’s death. Presided over by Mr. Joseph Carttar, Coroner for the Western Division of the County of Kent, the inquest deposed only two witnesses and sent the rest away unexamined. The court’s chief finding was that Castlereagh must have killed himself because no one else could have. This book, the first that has ever been written about Mr. Carttar’s inquest, challenges the idea that Castlereagh committed suicide, showing that from start to finish the inquest was an exercise in manipulation and deceit. Its purpose was to obfuscate the true circumstances of Castlereagh’s death. The author, James Paterson, Ph.D., lives in Sydney, Australia.