ECHO OF TICHBORNE CASE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17347, 30 September 1924, Page 7

ECHO OF TICHBORNE CASE.

“SHOT HIM DEAD DURING A QUARREL.”

WOMAN’S AMAZING STORY OF FATHER’S CONFESSION.

WAS ARTHUR ORTON MURDERER AND IMPOSTOR?

By Telegraph.—Press Association.—Copyright.—Sydney “ Sun ” Cable. (Received September 30. 9.35 a.m.) LONDON, September 29. The newspaper. “ The People,” publishes an amazing story by Theresa Doughty Tichborne, aged 51, who, in October, 1923, was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment for sending threatening letters to George Lewis, the well-known solicitor. The woman is a daughter of Arthur Orton, the Tichborne claimant. She has just been released. Believing herself to be dying in gaol, she wrote to the Home Office revealing her father's alleged secret, which he confided to her in 1885. This secret was the following statement:— “ I am Roger Tichborne. Arthur Orton, whom I am supposed to be, was my confederate in -many exploits in Australia. I shot him dead at Wagga in 1886, during a quarrel in which he threatened to expose me.” She explains that her father's visit to Orton’s relatives at Wapping was for the purpose of discovering if the family had been apprised of the murder. / She adds that she wanted to reveal his secret when she was tried in 1913 pf attempting to shoot a member of the Tichborne family, but her sister dissuaded her. She acted as her father's secretary on a lecturing tour, but left him because she disapproved of some of his habits. Afterwards she became an actress.

Roger Charles Tichborne (1829-1854), whose family name became a household word on account ot an attempt made by an impostor in iS6S to personate him and obtain his heritage, was the eldest grandson of Sir Edward Tichborne, the ninth baronet of a very ancient Hampshire family. Sir John de Tichborne, sheriff of Southampton, was created a baronet by James I. in 1621, and from him liis decendants inherited great wealth and the position of one of the leading Roman Catholic families in the South of England. Roger Charles, born at Paris on the fifth of January, 1829, was the eldest son of James Francis Doughty-Tichborne (who subsequently became tenth baronet and died iii 1862) by Henriette Felicite, natural daughter of Henry Seymour of Knoyle, in Wiltshire. This lad}', who hated England, was intent on bringing her son up as a Frenchman - ; the result was that he got hardly any education until he went in 1846 to Stonyhurst, whence he proceeded in 1849 to Dublin and joined the 6th Dragoon Guards. His eccentricity and his French accent made him a butt in his regiment, ad being disappointed of war service, he sold out in 1852 and in the following year proceeded on a trip to South America. lie sailed in March, 1853, from Havre for ValparaisQ, whence he crossed the Andes, reaching Rio De Janeiro in 1854. In April of that year he sailed from Rio de Janeiro in the “Bella’' and was lost at sea, the vessel foundering with all hands. His insurance was paid and his will proved in July 1855. The baronetcy and estates passed in 1862 to Roger’s younger brother, Sir Alfred Joseph Doughty-Tichborne, who died in 1866. The only person unconvinced of Roger’s death was his mother, the dowager Lady Tichborne, from whom every tramp sailor found a welcome at Tichborne Park. She advertised largely and injudiciously for the wanderer, and in November, 18(55, she learnt through an agency in Sydney that a mac answering to the description of her son had been found in the guise of a small butcher at Wagga-AVagga, in Queensland. As a matter of fact the supposed Sir Roger did not correspond to the lost heir, who was slim with sharp features and straight, black hair, whereas the claimant was enormously fat with wavy, light brown hair. His first letter to Lady Tichborne was not only ignorant and illiterate, hut appealed to circumstances (notably a birthmark and an incident at Brighton) of which she admitted she had no recollection. But so great was her infatuation Avith her fixed idea, that she soon overcame the first qualms of distrust, and advanced money for the claimant to return to Europe.

his steps to Wapping and inquired about the surviving members of his family. It was discovered, too, that Roger Tichborne was never at Melipilla, an assertion to which the claimant, transferring his own adventures in South America to the account of the man whom he impersonated, had committed himself in ail affidavit. These discoveries and the deaths of Lady Tichborne and Hopkins were so discouraging that- the “claimant” would gladly have “ retired ” from the baronetage; but the pressure of his creditors to whom he owed vast sums, was importunate. A number of

“ Tichborne bonds ” to defray the expenses of litigation were taken up by the dupes of the imposture, and an ejectment action against the turstees of the Tichborne estates (to which the heir was the twefth baronet, Sir Henry Alfred Joseph Doughty-Tkfli-borne, then two 3’ears old finally came before Chief Justice Bovill and a special jury at the court of common pleas on the eleventh of May, 1871. During a trial that lasted over one hundred days the claimant exhibited an ignorance, a cunning and a bulldog tenacity in brazening out the discrepancies and absurdities of his depositions, which have probably never been surpassed in the history of crime. Over one hundred persons swore to the claimant’s identity, the majority of them —and they were drawn from every class—being evidently sincere in their belief in his cause. It was not until Sir John Coleridge in a speech of unparalled length laid bare the whole conspiracy from its inception that the result ceased to be doubtful. The evidence of the Ticfibornes finally convinced the jury, who declared that They wanted no further evidence and on the fifth of .March, 1872, Sergeant Ballantine who led for the claimant, elected to be non-suited. Orton was immediately arrested on a charge of perjury and was brought to trial at bar before Chief Justice Cockburn in 1873. The - defendant showed his old qualities of impudence and endurance but the indiscretion of his counsel Edward Kenealy’ the testimony of his former sweetheart and Kenealy’s refusal to put the Orton sisters in the box proved conclusive to the jury who on the one hundred a*nd eighty-eighth day of the trial found the claimant was Arthur Orton.

Found guilty of perjury on two counts, he was sentenced on February 28, 1874, to fourteen years’ penal servitude. t The costs of the two trials was estimated at £200,000 and the Tichborne estates were mulcted of £90.000. The claimant’s better-class supporters deserted him before the second trial, but the people who had subscribed for his defence were staunch, while the populace were convinced that he was a persecuted man, and that the Jesuits were at the bottom of a deep-laid plot for keeping him out of his own. There were symptoms of a riot in London, in April, H 875, when Parliament unanimously rejected a motion for referring the Tichborne case to a Royal Commission, and the military had to be held in readings. But the agitation subsided, and when Orton emerged from gaol in 1884, the fickle public took no interest in him. The

Like all pretenders, this one was impelled by his entourage, who regarded him in the light of an investment. He himself was reluctant to move, hut the credulity of persons under the influence of a romantic story soon came to his aid. Thus an old friend of Sir James Tichborne’s at Sydney though puzzled by the claimant’s answers, was convinced by a resemblance to his supposed father. Ajb Sydney, too, he made the acquaintance of Bogle, a negro servant of a former baronet. Bogle sailed with him from Sydney in the summer of 1866 and coached him in the role which he was preparing to play. On reaching London on Christmas Day, 1866, the claimant paid a flying visit to Tichborne House, near, Alresford, where he was soon to obtain two important allies in the old family solicitor, Edward Hopkins, and a Winchester antiquary, Francis Baigent, who was intimately acquainted with the Tichborne family history. He next went over to Paris, where, in an hotel bedroom on a dark January afternoon lie was promptly “ recognised ” by Lady Tichborne. This “ recognition” naturally made an enormous impression upon the English public who were unaware that Lady Tichborne was a monomaniac. That such a term is no exaggeration is shown by the fact that she once acquiesced in her supposed son’s absolute ignorance of French, she allowed the claimant £IOOO a year, accepted his wife, a poqjr illiterate girl, whom he had married in Queensland, and handed over to him the diary and letters written by Roger Tichborne from South America. From these documents the claimant now carefully studied his part; he learnt much, too, from Baigent and from two carabiniers of Roger’s old regiment whom he took into his service. The villagers in Hampshire, a number of the county families and several of Tichborne’s fellow-officers in the 6th Dragoons became eager victims of the delusion. The members of the Tichborne family in England, however, were unanimous in declaring the claim- 11 ant to be an impostor and they were soon put on the track of discoveries which revealed that Tom Castro, as the claimant had been called in Australia, was identical with Arthur Orton (1938-1898). the son of a Wapping butcher who had deserted a sailing vessel at Valparaiso in 1850, and had received much kindness at Melipilla, in Chili, from a family named Castro, whose name he had subsequently elected to bear during his sojourn in Australia. It was shown that the claimant on arriving in England from Sydney in 18(36, had first of all directed

sensation of ten years earlier could not be galvanised into fresh life either by his lectures or his alternate confessions of imposture and reiterations of innocency, and Orton sank to poverty and oblivion, dying in obscure lodgings in Marylebone on April 2, 1898.