The 7th Duke of Leinster sold his future inheritance to a moneylender and died in a London bedsit

Lord Edward FitzGerald was the third son of the 5th Duke of Leinster, Ireland's senior peer. He was not expected to inherit. The Kildare Observer reported that in 1919, short of money, he sold his reversionary rights in the Leinster estates, including Carton House in County Kildare, to Sir Harry Mallaby-Deeley, a London moneylender and MP. The debts are described as gambling debts^†. His eldest brother, the 6th Duke, died in Edinburgh on 2 February 1922, aged 35. The middle brother, Lord Desmond, had been killed in the war. Edward became 7th Duke and found the estates belonged to Mallaby-Deeley for his lifetime. He told the press he had received £67,500 plus an annual sum, and that he had offered to buy the estate back. He went bankrupt in 1918, 1922 and 1936. At the 1936 hearing he said he had gone to America in 1928 to find a rich wife on borrowed money. He married four times. He and his son sold Carton, and Lord Brocket bought it in 1949. He spent his last years in a one-room flat in Pimlico and died of an overdose of pentobarbital, aged 83. In 2026 the dukedom is held by his grandson Maurice FitzGerald, 9th Duke, a landscape gardener in Oxfordshire. Carton is a hotel and golf resort.