THREAT TO MURDER

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8483, 18 July 1913, Page 7

THREAT TO MURDER

ARTHUR ORTON’S DAUGHTER SENTENCED. By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright LONDON, July 16. Theresa Tichborne, who represents herseif to be a daughter ei Arthur Orton, the claimant to the Tichborne estates, appeared in the King’s Bench Division of the High Court, on a charge of having sent to the Earl of Granard a letter threatening to murder Miss Denise Greville on the eve of the latter’s marriage with Sir Joseph Dough-ty-Tichborne. She was found guilty, and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in the second division. Counsel for the prosecution stated that accused had for years annoyed the Tichhomes with begging letters, some verging on blackmail. Twenty-five pounds had been charitably given to ner by the late Sir Henry DoughtyTichborne, and she had accepted it as an acknowledgment of a family connection. She had asked Sir Joseph to give her £IO,OOO, and she would not worry him further. Other letters accused lady Doughty-Tichborne of concealing or destroying Sir Henry’s will. When the case was called on at the Bow street Police Court on Juno 25th, the accused, who calls herself Theresa Doughty-Tichborne, protested that she did not intend to do any harm to Miss Greville, her only motive in writing to the Earl of Granard being to attract attention to her ease. In the course of her letter to the Earl, the accused referred to the approaching morriage of "my cousin, Sir Joseph Doughty-Tichborne." and continues, “I have asked you to use your influence to make them give me some of the money they stole from ns, but you do nothing. It is nothing to you if I starve, as long as you and your wife can give parties and flaunt about with people, who. if they knew the truth, would be ashamed to know you. You cannot hide any more, for J am making you an accessory before jhe fact by telling you that lam going to shoot that girl rather than Sir Joseph should marry her, or they will live on my money. As there is a God in Heaven, I am going to do it."—lt was in the late ’sixties, after the death of the eleventh baronet. Sir Alfred Joseph Tichborne, that the famous Wagga butcher Thomas Castro, otherwise Arthur Orton, came forward to personate Sir Boger Tichborne, the presumptive heir to the family estates in England. Sir Roger had sailed for Bio do Janeiro from New York in April, 1854, hy the ship Bella, which was lost at sea. The impostor’s case collapsed completely, and the "claimant." as he was called, was sentenced to fourteen, years' imprisonment for perjury. Orton died in 1898.