HOW COULD A MOTHER NOT KNOW HER OWN SON? — THE TICHBORNE CLAIMANT CASE (1870s)
1. Punch — ‘TICHBORNE V. MUDIE’S! — A BAD LOOK-OUT FOR THE CIRCULATING LIBRARIES' (25 Nov. 1871);
2. Daguerreotype of the real Roger Tichborne, taken in South America, 1854;
3. Comic of the beggarly Arthur Orton in 1872, before the decision against him in the criminal ‘claimant’ case was reached.
The Tichborne ‘Claimant’ case of 1866-1875 (though claims and campaigns continued until 1898) was a famous identity/inheritance case in Victorian Britain and Australia, in which a man — whether truly or falsely remains unknown — claimed to be Roger Tichborne, lost son of an Anglo-French Catholic lineage and rightful 11th Baronet of Tichborne.
As the Punch cartoon above shows, the case captivated at times incredible public interest — in the picture, including everyone from working men to young ladies to children — including much support for the claimant and his lawyer. Sales of newspapers, cartes-de-visite, ‘Tichborne bonds’ (below), and other paraphernalia rivaled even Mudie’s Circulating Library, the subscription bookseller of the most popular and important novels and books of the day.
In 1863, Lady Henriette Tichborne — a year after the death of her husband, the 10th Baronet — began to search for her lost eldest son, Roger, who had last been seen in South America in 1854. Based on his own correspondence and other sightings, Roger was last seen alive in Rio de Janeiro planning to board the Bella on passage to Jamaica. But the Bella sank, pieces of the ship found in Brazil in April 1854 just days after she had set off; bodies were never recovered.
Lady Tichborne never gave up hope that her son was alive, and so advertised internationally for her information about her son, who had been declared officially ‘dead’ and whose place as baronet had been taken by his younger brother, Alfred.
The Tichborne ‘Claimant’ case picked up in earnest when, in 1866, a man, Arthur Orton, from Wagga Wagga, Australia, claimed he was Roger Tichborne, having been picked up from the shipwreck by an Australia crew. According to records, Orton suffered from the same hereditary genital malformation as Roger (x), which personal detail encouraged the hopeful Lady Tichborne to invite Orton to England.
Legally, Orton had to prove his identity in court before being allowed to take up the baronetcy. The case, which might have been open and shut had Lady Tichborne not died in 1868, though the initial civil trial faltered from the beginning even without Roger’s mother’s death. Hampshire City Council reports that, ‘In order to raise funds for his legal fees, the Claimant began selling ‘Tichborne Bonds’; effectively a gamble on the outcome of the trial, which although they sold for between £40 and £60, were worth £100 out of the Tichborne estate if the case was won’ (x).
The case dragged on for years, with Orton unable — despite support in Australia, France, and England — to convince a jury of his identity. Nevertheless, Orton became a minor celebrity even when a second, criminal trial began for perjury, of which he was eventually convicted in 1874, and sentenced to fourteen years’ hard labor; his lawyer, Edward Kenealy, also suffered from the case, during which his conduct (particularly towards the reputation of Katherine Doughty, a noblewoman, whom ‘Roger’ had allegedly seduced and impregnated in the 1850s) caused him to be disbarred.
After serving just over ten years — throughout which supporters formed the Magna Carter Association to continue to petition Orton/Tichborne’s claim — Orton was released in 1884, after which his life became one of increasing poverty. He remarried (though never technically divorced from his first, Australian wife), attempted to keep a shop, and momentarily admitted he was not Roger Tichborne, only to recant his statement shortly after. His funeral, in a pauper’s grave in Paddington Cemetery, in 1898 was — somewhat impressively — attended by 5,000 people. Most interestingly, the Tichborne family allowed Orton’s headstone — whether out of kindness or another motive — to read, ‘Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne’.The baronetcy had continued, throughout the long, drawn-out case, through Alfred Tichborne and, at his early death, his infant son, Henry Alfred, until it finally became extinct upon the death of the 14th Baronet, Sir Anthony Joseph Doughty-Tichborne, in 1968.
[More: Hampshire City Council; images: Punch, Nov. 25, 1871; wikipedia.]
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