TICHBORNE CASE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1937, Page 18

TICHBORNE CASE

CLAIMANT RE-TRIED

A story more absorbing than any novel, and one which illustrates once again that truth can be stranger than fiction, is that provided by the famous Tichborne case which intrigued the whole world some seventy years ago. Under the comprehensive title of "The Tichborne Case" (published by Hodder and Stoughton), Lord Maugham includes the whole legal drama which began with the filing of a Bill in Chancery on June 27, 1867, on behalf of the claimant and reached its final scene on February 28, 1874, when he was convicted of perjury and sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude. In a sense even this was not the last word, for the power of the Court of trial to impose two consecutive terms of seven years each was questioned on the expiry of the first term; and it was not until 1881 that the House of Lords dealt finally with the matter. Meanwhile, the plaintiff's claim had occupied 102 days before a Judge and a special jury; the question of his guilt or innocence had been debated for 188 days before three Judges and a jury; snorthand notes had been taken covering 5213 pages m ciyil and 4835 pages in the criminal trial. The defendants in the civil trial had incurred costs amounting to over £91,000, and the costs of the Crown in the criminal trial are estimated at about £50,000. Before the civil trial there had been an examination of the claimant in Chancery and commissions to Chile and to Australia. It is no wonder, remarks a reviewer in "The Times Literary Supplement," that Lord Maugham found that "the growth of material became almost alarming" and "wrote the final paragraph not without a sigh of relief." There was no Court of Criminal Appeal in those days, or else the proceedings might have been more protracted still. In this masterful summary, the student of history will find a microcosm of many phases of English life in in the middle years of Queen Victoria. Roger Charles Tichborne was born in 1829, the elder son of James Francis Tichborne and of Henriette Felicite his wife. James Francis was the third son of Sir Henry Tichborne, seventh baronet, and, after the deaths of his elder brothers, succeeded as tenth baronet to the great estates of the Tichbornes and Doughtys. Henriette Felicite was the natural daughter of an English country gentleman and of a French lady of very distinguished ancestry. Roger 'was brought up for the most part in Paris and spoke French more easily than English. The family was Roman Catholic, and such education as he possessed was acquired in three years at Stonyhurst. In 1849 he received a commission in the Carabineers, which he resigned as from February, 1853. Meanwhile, he had fallen in love with his cousin, Kate Doughty. In March of that year, he sailed for the west coast of South America. In 1854 he crossed the Andes and made his way to Rio. On April 20 he sailed thence for New York in a.ship named the Bella. Neither she nor, save as hereinafter appears, anyone on board was ever heard of again.

THE CLAIMANT APPEARS. Sir Edward Doughty died in 1853; Sir James Tichborne, Roger's father, in 1862. Alfred, Roger's youngest brother, who had succeeded as 11th baronet, died in 1866, and, at "the time of the suit, the estates and the title had devolved on Henry Alfred, Alfred's infant son, the 12th. baronet. Meanwhile, Henriette Felicite, Lady Tichborne, had not lost hope of the reappearance of her elder son. In 1866 she wrote to a man named Cubitt, who conducted a Missing Friends Agency in Sydney, New South Wales. He advertised in the local papers. His advertisement was answered, through one Gibbes, a local attorney, on behalf of one Castro, a butcher, who was in financial difficulties. This man was in truth Arthur Orton, the youngest son of a Wapping butcher. Lord Maugham thinks that Gibbes was honest, but simple-minded. Orton did not in any ,way resemble Roger. He was of gigantic bulk.' He could not speak a word of French. He showed a complete ignorance of Roger's family circumstances and history. He could read and write, but his' grammar and spelling were those of Wapping; and he had a most retentive memory and an unblushing impudence. At first he can hardly have understood his difficulties. But he got into touch with a negro named Bogle, Sir Edward) Doughty's former body-servant. From him he acquired family stories. Lord Maugham thinks, and Cockburn, L.C.J., seems to have thought, that Bogle also was honest. Thus the fraud began. Lady Tichborne sent out money for her supposed son's passage home. When he reached England the thing grew like a snowball, each person whom Orton met being struck by the knowledge that he had gained from Bogle or from his last interviewer, and, when himself entrapped, providing fresh information and helping to make fresh converts. Lady Tichborne saw the claimant and accepted him. Some of those who supported him must have been rogues. The majority were merely examples of the amazing depths of human credulity. The sequel was the two trials which have been already mentioned, in which almost every detail in the life of Roger Tichborne and many curious facts in the life of Arthur Orton were discussed over and over again, and I reported for an interested and wildly excited people. Passion ran high. [Elections were fought on the issue i—Tichborne or Orton. Fortunes and ! reputations at the Bar were made and lost.

Lord Maugham condenses the whole story into a reasonable compass, and so treats it that the reader's attention is held throughout. As it is also an authoritative commentary on the art of advocacy, his fascinating book is indeed a high achievement.