THE TICHBORNE CASE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3842, 4 December 1936, Page 9

THE TICHBORNE CASE

A FAMOUS TRIAL. Lord Maugham, a judge of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of England, has written an interesting book reviewing the Tichborne case. The material concerning this case in all its ramifications is so voluminous that Lord Maugham confesses it was “not without a sigh of relief” that he reached the final paragraph of his book. In many ways the Tichborne case made legal history. There was a civil action and a criminal trial, and each of them broke the previous record in regard to length. In the civil action the Tichborne claimant, as he was called, instituted proceedings in the Chancery Court for the ejectment of the trustees of the Tichborne estate. This action lasted 102 days, between 11th May, 1871, and sth March, 1872. The cross-ex-amination of the claimant by Sir John Coleridge (afterwards Lord Chief Justice of England), which was very damaging, lasted twenty-two days. The shorthand notes of the evidence filled 5213 pages. The jury stopped the case after a few witnesses had been heard for defendants, and the Chief Justice (Sir William Bovill), who presided, took the unexpected course of ordering the immediate arrest of the claimant on charges of perjury. The claimant was sent to Newgate until bail for £lO,OOO was obtained, but it was not until thirteen months later that he was placed in the dock. His trial lasted 188 days, between 22nd April, 1873, and 28th February, 1874. The shorthand notes of the trial filled 4835 pages. The jury deliberated only half an hour before bringing in a verdict of guilty, and the prisoner was sentenced to fourteen years. He was released on 19th October, 1884, and endeavoured to revive public interest in his case, but there was no response, even on the part of that section of the public which had believed in the genuineness of his claim to be Sir Roger Tichborne. On 9th April, 1895, a London weekly newspaper, the People, published a signed confession by the claimant, in which he explained the inception of his fraud, and the means by which it was carried out. Subsequently he retracted this confession, and when he died on 2nd April, 1898, in poor lodgings in Marylebone, London, the name placed on his coffin was not his real one, Arthur Orton, but Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne. In the civil action the defendants incurrent costs amounting to £91,000, and the costs of the Crown in the criminal trial were about £50,000. It is difficult for the present generation of readers to realise how widespread in the sixties and seventies was the belief in the genuineness of the claimant to the Tichborne estates. Whenever he appeared in public while the civil action was proceeding he was cheered. Thousands of people waited in the streets outside the court to see him and cheer him. Many people testified to their belief in a practical way by subscribing for “Tichborne bonds,” by means of which a substantial fund was raised to enable the claimant to prosecute his claim to the estates. An appeal was made to religious bigotry by the suggestion that there was a conspiracy organised by the Jesuits (the

Tichbornes were a Roman Catholic family) to deprive the rightful heir of his estates. Not only had Roger Tichborne’s mother, the Dowager Lady Tichborne, testified to her conviction that the claimant was her son, but for a time his claim had the support of many of the former friends and comrades of the real Sir Roger Tichborne. THE CLAIMANT. The real name of the claimant was Arthur Orton. He was the son of a butcher, and spent his early years at Wapping, London. At the age of 14 he ran away to sea. He deserted his ship at Valparaiso, Chile, and lived with a Chilean family named Castro. He returned to England in 1851 at the age of 17, and emigated to Tasmania in the following year. He drifted about Australia, working as a stockman and mail driver, and, if his enemies are to be believed, he was also a horse thief and bushranger. In 1864 he settled at Wagga (N.S.W.) under the name of Thomas Castro, and carried on business as a butcher. He was five years younger than Roger Tichborne, the elder son of Sir James Tichborne, the tenth baronet. The Tichbornes were a Hampshire family, possessed of large estates and considerable wealth. Roger was educated at Stonyhurst College, a Catholic school of very high standing, and on leaving it he went to Paris, where he remained at school for some years. He returned to England in 1849, and obtained a commission in the- Sixth Dragoon Guards. After serving three years in the army he abandoned his military career, and in March, 1853, sailed for South America. He wrote home constantly until 20th April, 1854, on which date he sailed from Rio Janeiro for Jamaica in the ship Bella. Nothing more was heard of him as the Bella did not reach port. Her longboat and other wreckage were picked up, and it was believed she had foundered at sea with all hands.

Lady Tichborne refused to believe that her son Roger was dead, and for years she had advertisements inserted in English and colonial newspapers asking for news concerning him. A solicitor at Wagga, who had lived in Hampshire, drew Castro’s attention to an advertisement for the missing Roger Tichborne, and expressed the opinion that in some respects Castro answered the description of Roger given in the advertisement. In the days when his claim to the Tichborne estates was before the public it was generally admitted that the claimant’s features had some resemblance to members of the Tichborne family, though not to Roger, who took after his mother — a small, dark French woman. But the physical disparity between Roger and the claimant was more marked than the resemblance of Castro to other members of the Tichborne family. Roger had been slight and delicate, with narrow, stooping shoulders, a long, narrow face, and thin, dark, straight hair. The claimant, though about the same height as Roger, was a big-framed, burly man, with a large, round face, and abundance of fair hair. When he was living in Wagga his weight was about 16 stone, but before he brought his claim into court he had increased his bulk to the unwieldly extent of 24 stone.

He was in financial difficulties at Wagga, and when it was suggested to him that he resembled the longlost Roger Tichborne he decided to try to make some money out of Lady Tichborne. He began to tell people he was Sir Roger Tichborne, and he wrote an illiterate letter' to Lady Tichborne claiming to be her longlost son, and asking for money to be sent to him to enable him to return to England. Publicity was given in the Australian newspapers to the alleged discovery at Wagga of the missing Roger Tichborne, and Castro, to his surprise, received offers of money from Various people in Australia to enable him to go to England and claim his estates, which were then in the possession of Roger’s younger brother, Alfred, as the eleventh baronet. When Castro, or Orton, to give him his real name, reached Sydney on his way to England, he was brought into contact with Andrew Bogle, an elderly West Indian negro, who had been a servant in the Tichborne family for many years. After some hesitation, Bogle identified Orton as Roger Tichborne. By skilfully pumping Bogle, Orton obtained a great deal of information about the Tichborne family and their home in Hampshire. SUCCESSFUL IMPOSTURE. Orton reached England on Christmas day, 1866, and one of his first acts was to make a hurried visit to Hampshire and have a look at Tichborne House (from the outside) and its surroundings. His first meeting with the mother of Roger, the Dowager Lady Tichborne, took place at an hotel in Paris. Naturally, he was doubtful about the result, and when Lady Tichborne saw him he was in bed in a darkened room, pretending to be ill. But the self-deluded woman had no doubt that he was her son, and her faith in him never wavered until her death. No other member of the Tichborne family (with whom the Dowager had quarrelled) gave any support to his claim, but she made him an allowance of £lOOO a year and accepted as her daughter-

in-law the servant girl the claimant had married in Australia. No claim to the Tichborne estates was made by Orton until after this allowance of £lOOO a year ceased with the death of the Dowager Lady Tichborne, in April, 1868. In the meantime, Sir Alfred Tichborne, the younger brother of Roger, had died, leaving a posthumous heir, Sir Henry Tichborne. The estates were being administered by trustees on behalf of this child. Among people who believed in the genuineness of Orton’s claim were professional men who had been familiar with the Tichborne family for years. These included Mr Hopkins, an old family solicitor, and a Winchester antiquary named Baigent. Their adherence to the cause of the claimant had a powerful effect on public opinion in Hampshire. The claimant took into his service two old soldiers who had been servants of Roger Tichborne when he was an officer in the Sixth Dragoon Guards, and by pumping them he made himself master of the details of regimental life. By making skilful use of this information he won the support of more than a dozen of Roger Tichborne’s brother officers, and many private soldiers who had served under Roger. When Orton’s claim to the Tichborne estates came before the Chancery Court more than a hundred witnesses gave evidence in support of the contention that he was Roger. They were drawn from every class, and with few exceptions they were quite honest in their belief. THE COLLAPSE. But the cross-examination of the claimant in the witness-box by Sir John Coleridge turned the tide of public opinion against the imposter. Striking disparities between the claimant and Roger Tichborne were brought out. Roger was born in France, and had been partly educated there; he spoke and wrote French with fluency; but the claimant did not know a word of French, and his letters in English were “monuments of vulgar illiteracy.” In opening the case for defendants, Sir John Coleridge, whose speech was continued for days, laid bare the real facts of Orton’s life. After several members of the Tichborne family had given evidence, the jury decided that they did not want to hear any more witnesses, and claimant’s counsel elected to be non-suited. The criminal trial of the claimant on charges of perjury began thirteen months later, on 22nd April, 1873. Any chance he might have had of being acquitted was ruined by the way in which his case was conducted by his counsel, Dr Kenealy. The position of Orton was reversed from what it had been at the civil trial, where the onus had rested on the claimant to prove his case. In the criminal trial it was incumbent on the prosecution to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that he was not Roger Tichborne. But Dr Kenealy undertook to prove that he was Roger. “He conducted the case in a manner so violent, and to himself so disastrous, that his mind may almost be supposed to have become unsettled in the course of it,” states the Dictionary of National Biography.” “He made groundless imputations against witnesses, and against various Roman Catholic bodies, and insulted and trifled with the bench. The jury appended to their verdict a censure of the language he had employed. He then started a scurrilous newspaper called the Englishman, which attained an enormous circulation, to plead the cause of Orton, and menaced the Chief Justice, Sir Alexander Cockburn, and the . SolicitorGeneral, Sir John Holker, with threats of revelations affecting their private lives and morals. His conduct during and after the trial was brought before the professional tribunals. He was expelled from the mess by the Oxford Circuit, dispatented by the Lord Chancellor, and disbenched and disbarred by Gray’s Inn.”