Thomas Chatterton (20 November 1752 – 24 August 1770) was an English poet whose precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17.
He was an influence on Romantic artists of the period such as Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge.
On 24 August 1770, he retired for the last time to his attic in Brook Street, carrying with him the arsenic, which he drank after tearing into fragments whatever literary remains were at hand.
He was 17 years and nine months old.
There has been some speculation that Chatterton may have taken the arsenic as a treatment for a venereal disease, as it was commonly used for such at that time
