---
title: "William Garrow Lettsom"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Garrow_Lettsom"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:05:05.311039+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In 1864 and early 1865 Paraguayan forces under the orders of Francisco Solano López seized Brazilian and Argentine shipping and invaded the provinces of the Mato Grosso and Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) and Corrientes (Argentina).  On 1 May 1865 Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay signed the Treaty of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay.  By Article XVIII of the Treaty its provisions were to be kept secret until its "principal object" should be obtained.
One of its provisions concerned the acquisition by Argentina of large tracts of territory then in dispute between it and Paraguay.  Lettsom was not satisfied about this and surreptitiously obtained a copy of the Treaty from the Uruguayan diplomat Dr Carlos de Castro.  He forwarded it to London and the British government ordered it to be translated into English and published to Parliament.  When the text became available in South America there was outrage in several quarters, some because of the Treaty's content, others because it had been published at all.

Lettsom has been cited as an exemplar of the nuance with which a substantial part of the British diplomatic corps saw the Paraguayan War.

== Later ==
Lettsom retired from the diplomatic service in 1869.  He never married.  He died of acute bronchitis on 14 December 1887.

== Notes ==

== References ==
Benét, Laura (1947). Thackeray, of the Great Heart and Humorous Pen. Dodd Mead.
Bindoff, S.T. (1935). "The Unreformed Diplomatic Service, 1812–60". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 18. Cambridge University Press: 143–172. doi:10.2307/3678607. JSTOR 3678607. S2CID 154655198.
Greg, Robert Philips; Lettsom, William G (1858). Manual of the Mineralogy of Great Britain and Ireland. London: John Van Voorst.
Greig, John Young Thomson (1950). Thackeray: A reconsideration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hansard's Parliamentary Debates Third Series 18 & 19 Victoriae 1855. Vol. 138. London: Cornelius Buck. 1855.
Hostettler, John; Braby, Richard (2020). Sir William Garrow: His Life, Times and Fight for Justice. Sherfield on Loddon, Hampshire: Waterside Press. ISBN 978-190-438-0-559.
McIntyre, Michael (2011). "When Hegemony Fails: British Imperialism in India and Brazil from the Nineteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries". Western Political Science Association 2011 Annual Meeting Paper. San Antonio: SSRN. pp. 1–175.
"Obituary: List of Fellows and Associates deceased Lettsom, W.G." (PDF). Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 68: 165. February 1888. Bibcode:1888MNRAS..48R.165.
Proceedings of the Entomological Society of London 1856. London: Entomological Society of London. 1858.
Spencer, L.J. (1958). "Third supplementary list of British minerals". Mineralogical Magazine and Journal of the Mineralogical Society. 3 (240): 78–810. Bibcode:1958MinM...31..787S. doi:10.1180/minmag.1958.031.240.07. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
Thompson, George (1869). The War in Paraguay. London: Logmans, Green. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
Urban, Sylvanus (1817). The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Quarterly. Vol. 87. London: Nichols Son & Bentley.
Vanable, Joseph W Jr (2007). "A History of bioelectricity in development and regeneration". In Dinsmore, Charles E. (ed.). A History of Regeneration Research. Cambridge University Press. pp. 151–178. ISBN 978-0-521-04796-8.
Whigham, Thomas L (2017). Road to Armageddon: Paraguay Versus the Triple Alliance, 1866–70. University of Calgary Press. ISBN 978-1-55238-810-5.