THE TICHBORNE TRIAL.

Otago Witness, Issue 1630, 26 August 1871, Page 11

THE TICHBORNE TRIAL.

The following is an extract from a letter dated London, 15th June, 1871, received by the Suez Mail : — We have given up politics, and now talk Tichborne and little else. This trial is now the all-absorbing topic of conversation, and I believe that many a man would give his cars for a day in court. I have been in court several times, and have heard some of the best parts of the claimant's cross-examina-tion. Ail day the court is densely crowded with barristers and friends of the parties. The greater part of the trial has been taken in the Sessions House at Westminster, a miserable little place, the other Courts being occupied with their regular work. Now it is going on in the Court of Queen's Bench, which is a more comfortable place. I shall I never forget the scene in the Sessions House. It was so crowded that several learned members of our profession stood on the wainscoting, which offers a foothold of about two inches, and lashed themselves to the spikes , which guard the side of the dock by nieans of bandannas. For hours we stood packed like dried herrings, in the passages of the steaming airless Court, listening to every word that fell from the lips of the romantic butcher. The first two days of the cross-examination went decidedly in favour of the claimant ; he answered so well, spoke and behaved so naturally, and knew so much, that I, in common, I think, with the majority of those present, felt strongly inclined to think that he was the man. 1 was present when he made that disclosure with reference to Miss Doughty. There was a solemn silence in Court. I could only hear long breaths drawn here and there. Then the first words were whispers. " This must be true — he must bo the man." Then silence was broken by the Solicitor-General's indignant questions, and the next few answers came out far more quickly than the witness's answers generally do. I had, moreover, suspected that what was disclosed had actually occurred, and this tended to strengthen the impression which I had already formed that he is the true man. Since then, he has been breaking up ; forgets everything, and prevaricates ; so that my leaning in his favour is much shaken, if not gone. It is a merry sort of trial for those who do not pay the guinea a minute, which it is sure to cost. Good jokes are made, and smart things said. The other day the Solicitor-! J eneral made a strange blunder. Turning to Scrgt. Ballantine, he addressed him as "brother." This evoked a loud roar of laughter. L fancy I heard some remarks like " not yet, not yet." The laughter started with the bar, and, by sympathy, was taken up by the public— who, however, did not quite see the joke. On one occasion, the claimant bared his arm in order

to show a mark to the jury, then ho turned to the counsel and showed it to them ; the Judge wished to ace it, but stared through his spectacles in vain ; he then stood up and took an opera glass and had a look, when there was some tittering, and some one said, "He has got his wife's opera glass," which produced an explosive guffaw, whereat my Lord looked much annoyed. I forgot to mention that whon the laugh goes against the Solicitor-General he blushes like a boiled lobster. The claimant is an enormously large man, I never saw such another. He weighs 26 stone and 4-lbs., and looks all his weight. All day he sits leaning on the side of his back, as calm as witness ever was, taking his own time about giving his answers, utterly unmoved by the sarcasm of his opponent. I never saw such a wonderful witness. Of late, however, he has been not so calm. He gets out of temper, and becomes very rude at times. At first I heard many remarks that his behaviour compared favourably with that of the Lord Chief Justice, who is not a model judge. Betting was 4 to 1 against the claimant, but once it turned to small odds in his favour. I heard that this week it was ."> to 3 against him, but it must be higher than that. Tichborne debentures are at £30. This seems to me astonishingly high, considering that they are void, and even supposing him to be honest so far, they will not depend on this verdict alone, as the beta do. Betting is rather wild, as partisans give absurd odds both ways. Much has been said about the conduct of the L. C. J., and more about that of Lady B. The L. C. J. is a regular enemy of the claimant, and shows it at every turn. Lady B. sits by his side all day and every day, as "geographical assessor" say some. She smirks and smiles on the princes who go to see the great show, and when there is an interval of ten minutes she stands up on the elevated platform where the great guns j sit, and talks to her daughters and others, and looks as much at home in the presence of the people in Court, as if she were in her own drawing room. We hear all sorts of extraordinary rumours as to what is to be proved both for and against the claimant. Most of these rumours are of such a nature j that they would look better in Dr Taylor's book on Medical Jurisprudence than in my letter. To the above, we are enabled to add a brief extract from a letter from another gentleman, received by the same mail : — To continue what I said in my last about the great Tichborne ease, the claimant is still m the box, undergoing the cross-examin-ation of the Solicitor-General. His demeanour is not nearly so good as it was some time ago. He is constantly saying nasty things to Coleridge, which is of course playing the game of his adversaries. He constantly accuses Coleridge of insolence. Once, when asked about a dress he formerly wore — "Oh!" he said, "'you are very innocent, and your brother a Jesuit. '' His evidence is nearly all now, "I do not remember.'' He does not know Greek from Latin, and says Euclid and algebra have nothing to do ■w ith mathematics. Hundreds of other pieces of ignorance come out, both of things that Roger Tichborne did and suffered, and of things which Roger Tichborne learned. In short, if he be Roger Tichborne, he must have forgotten literally everything which happened and which he learned at Stoueyhurst. Of course all this is greatly in favour of the defence, and people now say that they consider that his evidence is breaking up. Still his believers continue to assert that lie is the man, and endeavour to explain away his forgetfulness in various ways. The case really becomes more and more extraordinary every day. It has now readied, I think, its twenty-fourth day, lasting over the month. It i& not unlikely that it will last until the beginning of the long vacation, and perhaps even until the end. The following is an extract from a letter dated 2ilth June, from the writer of the first of the above letters :—: — There was some talk of passing an Act of Parliament enabling the Court of Common Pleas to sit d<- <(ie in diem until the Tichborne case should be finished ; but Ballantiue said in Court yesterday that none of them could stand it. In fact, all parties are suffering from the continued strain. The Judge looks quite ill, and the Solicitor-General i& quite done up. Only BalLuiune stands it well. Every morning he returns to his work as fresh as ever. It is said that he takes more interest in this case than he has taken in any other. He is in Court all day and every day ;so is the Solicitor-G eneral. The case is wonderfully well got iq>, but the crossexamination is not brilliant. The fact is that the witness is as good a man as any of them, and the Solicitor-General can make no impression upon him. The following is from a letter of the same date, by the writer of the second of the above letters :—: — The Tichborne case, of course, goes on still. The Court will probably adjourn on the 7th or 10th July, until after the long vacation, when it will go on again. It apj tears that there are about 100 witnesses still to be examined for the claimant, and probably as many for the defence. The claimant is still being cross-examined. Some questions ho declined to answer, on the ground that they tended to criminate himself. He was; once charged with horse-stealing, and acquitted. He appears to have had the honour of the acquaintance of Morgan, Esq., bushranger, &c. ; also that of Burgess and M'Namara. The former may or may not have been the Burgess who was hanged for the West Coast murders, and the latter the M'Namara who was hanged when I was in

Sydney some ten or eleven years ago, and took a quarter of an hour to die, according to the newspaper accounts of the time. Whether the claimant be Tichborne or Orton (he went by the name of De Castro in Victoria), it is clear that he has been a maumix »ujrt, and does not deserve to be a Baronet,