Charles Moore, 2nd Marquess of Drogheda

Charles Moore, 2nd Marquess of Drogheda (23 August 1770 – 6 February 1837), styled Viscount Moore until 1822, was an Irish peer. He went insane when he was about twenty, and spent much of his life at the private asylum at Greatford, Lincolnshire founded by the renowned physician Francis Willis.

He was the eldest son of Charles Moore, 1st Marquess of Drogheda, and Lady Anne Seymour Conway, daughter of Francis Seymour, 1st Marquess of Hertford.^[1] Some sources give his first name as Edward.^{[note 1]} About the age of twenty he began to show signs of mental illness, which may have been hereditary. He was elected to the Irish House of Commons as member for Queen's County in 1790,^[3] but unseated the following year on foot of a petition that he was disqualified by reason of insanity.^[4] Despite this, he was given the rank of captain-lieutenant in the Royal Irish Artillery in 1793;^[5] Lord Moore's father was colonel of the regiment.

He was placed in the care of Dr Francis Willis at Greatford Hall; Willis had won renown in 1788-9 for curing King George III of what was thought then to be insanity but is now thought to have been porphyria. His treatment involved a regimen of fresh air and manual labour. Whether the treatment had any success in Lord Drogheda's case is unclear, but certainly there was no full recovery as there had been in the case of the King; Drogheda remained at Greatford until his death in 1837.^[4] He was unmarried and his titles passed to his nephew Henry Moore, 3rd Marquess of Drogheda.^[4]

The cause of his mental illness is unclear, but it may be significant that his mother's family had a history of eccentricity and mental instability.^[6] Lord Castlereagh, who committed suicide in 1822 was Lord Drogheda's first cousin and the increasingly strange behaviour which culminated in his death was thought by some to be due to a hereditary mental illness inherited from the Seymour Conway family, to which his mother, as well as Drogheda's, belonged.^[6]

Notes

1. Vicary Gibbs, writing in The Complete Peerage, cites the Countess of Drogheda's 1905 History of the Moore Family in giving the 2nd Marquess's name as Edward, not Charles.^[2]

References

1. Pine, L.G. The New Extinct Peerage 1972 p.108
2. George Edward Cokayne, ed. Vicary Gibbs and H. Arthur Doubleday, The Complete Peerage, volume IV (London, 1916) page 466
3. The London Gazette: no. 13213. p. 398. 26—29 June 1790.
4. Mosley, editor Burke's Peerage 107th Edition 2003 Vol. 1 p.1181
5. The London Gazette: no. 13615. p. 64. 18—21 January 1794.
6. Hyde, Montgomery The Strange Death of Lord Castlereagh William Heinemann 1959 p.157