Suicide of Londonderry, Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, in 1822

Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh and from 1821 Marquess of Londonderry, had been British Foreign Secretary since 1812 and in 1822 was to have represented his country at the Congress of Verona, had it not been for an unfortunate incident. One of the minister's ill-wishers learned of his visit to a brothel in the company of a man dressed as a prostitute. To escape disgrace and grave accusations of sodomy, Londonderry took his own life by cutting his throat. Emperor Alexander I, in a letter to his sister Maria Pavlovna, quite diplomatically called the incident "the Londonderry catastrophe". Well, a most fitting definition