Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton Part 16

Amidst much that was vague in the Claimant's account of his past life, there were, at all events, two statements of a precise and definite character. These were, first, that he had been at Melipilla, in Chili, and had there known intimately a man named Thomas Castro, whose name he had afterwards a.s.sumed; and, secondly, that in 1854, he had been engaged as herdsman to Mr. William Foster, of Boisdale, in Gippsland, Australia. If he were an impostor, these statements were undoubtedly imprudent. But they served the purpose of establis.h.i.+ng the ident.i.ty of his career with that of the man whom he claimed to be, for Roger Tichborne had, undoubtedly, travelled in Chili; and, according at least to the tramping sailors' story, embodied in the Dowager's advertis.e.m.e.nt, he had been carried thence to Australia. The importance attached by his supporters to these apparent tokens of ident.i.ty sufficiently explains the Claimant's explicitness on these points.

Melipilla is a long way off; and Boisdale is still further. It may have been supposed that witnesses could not be brought from so far; but vast interests were at stake, and the defendant in the Chancery suit speedily applied for Commissions to go out to South America and Australia to collect information regarding the Claimant's past history. The proposition was strenuously opposed as vexatious, and designed merely to create delay, but the Court granted the application. Then the Claimant asked for an adjournment, on the ground that he intended to go out and confront the Melipilla folks, including his intimate friend Don Thomas Castro, before the Commission; and also to accompany it to Australia. The postponement was granted, a large sum was raised to defray his expenses, and he finally started with the Commission, accompanied by counsel and solicitors, bound for Valparaiso and Melipilla, and finally for Victoria and New South Wales. When the vessel, however, arrived at Rio. the Claimant went ash.o.r.e, declaring that he preferred to go thence to Melipilla overland. But he never presented himself at that place, and finally the Commission proceeded to examine witnesses and to record their testimony, which thus became part of the evidence in the suit. The Claimant had, in fact, re-embarked at Rio for England, having abandoned the whole project; for which strange conduct he made various and conflicting excuses. Even before he had started, circ.u.mstances had occurred which had induced some of his supporters to express doubts whether he would ever go to Melipilla. When the Commission had become inevitable, the Claimant had written a letter to his "esteemed friend, Don Tomas Castro," reminding him of past acquaintance in 1853, sending kind remembrances to a number of friends, and altogether mentioning at least sixteen persons with Spanish names whom he had known there. The purpose of the letter was to inform Don Tomas that he had returned to England, was claiming "magnificent lands," and in brief to prepare his old acquaintances to befriend him there. This letter was answered by Castro through his son Pedro, with numerous good wishes and much gossip about Melipilla, and what had become of the old circle. But to the astonishment and dismay of the Claimant's attorney, Mr. Holmes, Pedro Castro reminded his old correspondent, that when among them he had gone by the name of Arthur Orton. A Melipilla lady named Ahumada then sent a portion of a lock of hair which the Claimant acknowledged as his own hair, and thanked her for. But this lady declared that she had cut the lock from the head of an English lad named Arthur Orton; and the Claimant thereupon said that he must have been mistaken in thanking her, and acknowledging it as his. In the town of Melipilla--sixty or seventy miles inland from Valparaiso--everyone of the sixteen or seventeen persons mentioned by the Claimant as old acquaintances--except those who were dead or gone away--came before the Commission, and were examined. They proved to have substantially but one tale to tell. They said they never knew any one of the name of Tichborne. Melipilla is a remote little towns far off the great high road, and the only English person, except an English doctor there established, who had ever sojourned there, was a sailor lad who, not in 1853, but in 1849, came to them dest.i.tute; was kindly treated; picked up Spanish enough to converse in an illiterate way; said his name was Arthur, and was always called Arthur by them; declared his father was "a butcher named Orton, who served the queen;" and said he had been sent to sea to cure St. Vitus's Dance, but had been ill-used by the captain, and ran away from his s.h.i.+p at Valparaiso. This lad, they stated, sojourned in Melipilla eighteen months, and finally went back to Valparaiso and re-embarked for England. Don Tomas Castro, the doctor's wife, and others, declared they recognised the features of this lad in the portrait of the Claimant; and being shown two daguerreotype portraits of Roger Tichborne, taken in Chili when he was there, said that the features were not like those of any person they had ever known. Searches were then made in the records of the consul's office at Valparaiso, from which it resulted that a sailor named Arthur Orton did desert from the English s.h.i.+p "Ocean" in that port at the very date mentioned, and did re-embark, though under the name of "Joseph M. Orton," about eighteen months later.

To Boisdale, in Australia, the Commission then repaired, and though this is many thousands of miles from South America, but here similar discoveries were made. Mr. William Foster, the extensive cattle farmer, was dead, but the widow still managed his large property. In reference to the Claimant's statement that in July, 1854, the very day after he was landed by the vessel which he believed was named the "Osprey," at Melbourne, he was engaged by Mr. William Foster, and went with him at once to Gippsland, under the a.s.sumed name of Thomas Castro, the lady declared that her husband did not settle at Boisdale, or have anything to do with that property till two years later than that date, and that they never had any herdsman named Thomas Castro. The ledgers and other account books of Mr. Foster were then examined, but no mention of any Castro, either in 1854 or at any other time, could be found. On the other hand, there were numerous entries, extending over the two years 1857 and 1858, of wages paid and rations served out to a herdsman named Arthur Orton, whom the lady perfectly well remembered, and who had come to them from Hobart Town.

All these discoveries were confirmed by the registers of s.h.i.+pping, which showed that Arthur Orton embarked for Valparaiso in 1848, re-embarked for London in 1851, and sailed again for Hobart Town in the following year. But there were other significant circ.u.mstances.

The s.h.i.+p in which Arthur Orton had returned from Valparaiso was called the "Jessie Miller," which was the very name which the Claimant in his solemn declaration, prepared by Mr. Gibbes, gave as the name of the vessel in which he came out to Australia. In the same doc.u.ment he had stated the date of his sailing from England as the "28th of November, 1852," and this was now discovered to be the very day, month, and year on which Arthur Orton embarked in the vessel bound for Hobart Town. Mr.

Foster's widow had specimens of Arthur Orton's writing, and other mementoes of his two years' service among them, and she unhesitatingly identified a portrait of the Claimant as that of the same man. Among other witnesses, a farmer named Hopwood deposed that he had known Arthur Orton at Boisdale under that name, and again at Wagga-Wagga under his a.s.sumed name of Thomas Castro. At Wagga-Wagga the will executed by the Claimant, and already referred to, was produced, and it was found that amidst all its fict.i.tious names and imaginary Tichborne estates, it appointed as trustees two gentlemen residing in Dorsets.h.i.+re, England, who have since been discovered to have been intimate friends of old Mr. Orton, the butcher. The testimony on the Claimant's behalf before the Commission threw but little light. It consisted chiefly of vague stories of his having spoken when in Australia of being ent.i.tled to large possessions, and of having been an officer in the army, and stationed in Ireland. Such testimony could, of course, have little weight against the statements of the Claimant in writing, made just before embarking at Sydney, with a view of satisfying capitalists of his ident.i.ty, and betraying total ignorance of Roger Tichborne's military life.

While these exposures were being made abroad, matters at home began to look very bad for the Claimant. Charles Orton, the brother of Arthur, called upon the solicitors for "the other side," and volunteered to give information. In the presence of Lord Arundel and other witnesses, this man then stated that the Claimant of the Tichborne estates was his brother Arthur, that he had been induced by him to change his name to Brand, and to remain in concealment, that in return the Claimant had allowed him 5 per month; but that, since his departure for Chili, the allowance had ceased. Letters of Charles Orton to the Claimant's wife, asking whether "Sir Roger Tichborne, before he went away, left anything for a party of the name of Brand,"

have been found and published; and this same Charles has, since the conviction of the Claimant, put forth a statement of the whole matter, so far as he was concerned. Under these circ.u.mstances, Mr. Holmes withdrew from the case, and the county gentlemen who, relying in great measure on Lady Tichborne's recognition, and the numerous affidavits that had been made, had supported the Claimant, held a meeting at the Swan, at Alresford, at which, among other doc.u.ments, certain mysterious letters to the Orton sisters were produced. These letters were signed, "W.H. Stephens," and they contained inquiries after the Orton family, and also after Miss Mary Anne Loader, who was an old sweetheart of Arthur Orton's, long resident in Wapping. They enclosed as portraits of Arthur Orton's wife and child, certain photographic likenesses which were clearly portraits of the Claimant's wife and child; and though they purported to be written by "W.H. Stephens," a friend of Arthur Orton's just arrived from Australia, it was suspected that the letters--which were evidently in a feigned hand--were really written by the Claimant. They manifested that desire for information about Wapping folks, and particularly the Ortons, which the Claimant was known to have exhibited on more occasions than one; and they indicated a wish to get this information by a ruse, and without permitting the writer to be seen. But the correspondence showed that the sisters of Orton had discovered, or at least believed that they had discovered, that the writer was in truth their brother Arthur. The Claimant, however, being called in and questioned, solemnly affirmed that the letters were "forgeries," designed by his enemies to "ruin his cause." Nor was it until he was pressed in cross-examination, three years later, that he reluctantly confessed that his charges of forgery were false; and that, in fact, he, and no one else, had written the Stephens' letters. The Claimant's solemn a.s.surances did not convince all his supporters at the meeting at the Swan, but they satisfied some; and funds were still found for prosecuting the Chancery, and next the great Common Law suit which was technically an action for the purpose of ejecting Col. Lus.h.i.+ngton from Tichborne house, which had been let to him. Col. Lus.h.i.+ngton was then a supporter of the Claimant, and had not the least objection to be ejected. But the action at once raised the question whether the Claimant had a right to eject him. Of course that depended on whether he was, or was not, the young man who was so long believed to have perished in the "Bella;" and accordingly this was the issue that the jury had to try on Thursday, the 11th of May, 1871, that Sergeant Ballantine rose to address the jury on behalf of the Claimant, and it was not until the 6th of March, 1872, that the trial was concluded--the proceedings having extended to 103 days. On both sides a large number of witnesses were examined, many being persons of respectability, while some were of high station. The military witnesses for the Claimant were very numerous; and among them were five of Roger Tichborne's old brother officers, the rest being sergeants, corporals, and privates. There were Australian witnesses, and medical witnesses, old servants, tenants of the Tichborne family, and numerous other persons. With the exception of two remote connexions, however, no members of the numerous families of Tichborne and Seymour presented themselves to support the plaintiffs claims; and even the two gentlemen referred to admitted that their acquaintance with Roger was slight, and that it was in his youth; and finally, that they had not recognised the features of the Claimant, but had merely inferred his ident.i.ty from some circ.u.mstances he had been able to mention. The plaintiffs case was almost entirely unsupported by doc.u.mentary evidence, and rested chiefly on the impressions or the memory of witnesses, or on their conclusions drawn from circ.u.mstances, which often, when they were inquired into in cross-examination, proved to be altogether insufficient.

But the cross-examination of the Claimant himself was really the turning-point of the trial. It extended over twenty-seven days, and embraced the whole history of Roger Tichborne's life, his alleged rescue, the life in Australia, and all subsequent proceedings. Besides this, matters connected with the Orton case were inquired into. Much that was calculated to alarm supporters of the Claimant was elicited.

He was compelled to admit that he had no confirmation to offer of his strange story of the rescue, and that he could produce no survivor of the "Osprey," nor any one of the crew of the "Bella" alleged to have been rescued with him. The mere existence of such a vessel was not evidenced by any s.h.i.+pping register or gazette, or custom-house record.

It was moreover admitted that he had changed his story--had for a whole year given up the "Osprey," and said the vessel was the "Themis," and finally returned to the "Osprey" again. All the strange circ.u.mstances of the Wagga-Wagga will, the Gibbes and Cubitt correspondence, the furtive transactions with the Orton family, the curious revelations of the commissions in South America and Australia, were acknowledged, and either left unexplained or explained in a way which was evasive, inconsistent, and contradictory. His accounts of his relations with Arthur Orton were also vague, and his attempts to support his a.s.sertion that Castro and Orton were not one and the same, but different persons, were unsatisfactory, while by his own confession his habitual a.s.sociates in Australia had been highway robbers and other persons of the vilest cla.s.s. With regard to his life in Paris he admitted that his mind was "a blank," and he confessed that he could not read a line of Roger Tichborne's letters in French. He gave answers which evidenced gross ignorance on all the matters which Roger's letters and other evidence showed that he had studied. He said he did not think Euclid was connected with mathematics, though Roger had pa.s.sed an examination in Euclid; and that he believed that a copy of Virgil handed to him was "Greek,"

which it doubtless was to him. He was compelled again and again to admit that statements he had deliberately made were absolutely false.

When questioned with regard to that most impressive of all episodes in Roger's life, his love for his cousin, now Lady Radcliffe, he showed himself unacquainted not merely with precise dates, but with the broad outline of the story and the order of events. His answers on these matters were again confused, and wholly irreconcilable. Yet the Solicitor-General persisting for good reasons in interrogating him on the slanderous story of the sealed packet, he was compelled to repeat in Court, though with considerable variations, what he had long ago caused to be bruited abroad. Mrs. (she was not then Lady) Radcliffe, by her own wish, sat in Court beside her husband, confronting the false witness, and they had the satisfaction of hearing him convicted, out of his own mouth, and by the d.a.m.natory evidence of doc.u.ments of undisputed authenticity, of a deliberate series of abominable inventions. It was during the course of this trial that the pocket-book left behind by the Claimant at Wagga-Wagga was brought to England. It was found to contain what appeared to be early attempts at Tichborne signatures, in the form "Rodger Charles t.i.tchborne," besides such entries as "R.C.T., Bart., Tichborne Hall, Surrey, England, G.B.;" and among other curious memoranda in the Claimant's handwriting was the name and address, in full, of Arthur Orton's old sweetheart, at Wapping--the "respectiabel place" of which he had a.s.sured his supporters in England that he had not the slightest knowledge. The exposure of Mr. Baigent's unscrupulous partisans.h.i.+p by Mr. Hawkins, and the address to the jury by Sir John Coleridge, followed in due course, and then a few family witnesses, including Lady Radcliffe, were heard, who deposed, among many other matters, to the famous tattoo marks on Roger's arm; and, finally, the jury declared that they were satisfied.

Then the Claimant's advisers, to avoid the inevitable verdict for their opponents, elected to be non-suit. But, notwithstanding these tactics, Lord Chief-Justice Bovill, under his warrant, immediately committed the Claimant to Newgate, on a charge of wilful and corrupt perjury.

Those who fondly hoped that the great Tichborne imposture had now for ever broken down, and that the last in public had been seen of the perjured villain, were mistaken, as, after a few weeks in Newgate, the Claimant was released on bail in the sum of 10,000--his sureties being Earl Rivers, Mr. Guildford Onslow, M.P., Mr. Whalley, M.P., and Mr.

Alban Attwood, a medical man residing at Bayswater. Now began that systematic agitation on the Claimant's behalf, and those public appeals for subscriptions, which were so remarkable a feature of the thirteen months' interval between the civil and the criminal trial.

The Tichborne Romance, as it was called, had made the name of the Claimant famous; and sightseers throughout the kingdom were anxious to get a glimpse of "Sir Roger." It was true his case had entirely broken down, but the mult.i.tude were struck by the fact that he could still appear on platforms with exciteable members of Parliament to speak for him, and could even find a lord to be his surety. It was not everyone who, in reading the long cross-examination of the Claimant, had been able to see the significance of the admissions which he was compelled to make; and owing to the Claimant's counsel stopping the case on the hint of the jury, the other side of the story had really not been heard; and this fact was made an argument in the Claimant's favour.

Meanwhile, the propagandism continued until there was hardly a town in the kingdom in which Sir Roger Charles Tichborne, Bart., had not appeared on platforms, and addressed crowded meetings; while Mr.

Guildford Onslow and Mr. Whalley were generally present to deliver foolish and inflammatory harangues. At theatres and music halls, at pigeon matches and open-air _fetes_, the Claimant was perseveringly exhibited; and while the other side preserved a decorous silence, the public never ceased to hear the tale of his imaginary wrongs. _The Tichborne Gazette_, the sole function of which was to excite the public mind still further, appeared; and the newspapers contained long lists of subscribers to the Tichborne defence fund. This unexampled system of creating prejudice with regard to a great trial still pending was permitted to continue long after the criminal trial had commenced. There had been proceedings, it is true, for contempt against the Claimant and his supporters, Mr. Onslow, Mr. Whalley, and Mr.

Skipworth, and fine and imprisonment were inflicted; but the agitation continued, violent attacks were made upon witnesses, and even upon the judges then engaged in trying the case, and at length the Court was compelled peremptorily to forbid all appearances of the Claimant at public meetings.

The great "Trial at Bar," presided over by Sir Alexander c.o.c.kburn, Lord Chief-Justice of the Queen's Bench, Mr. Justice Mellor, and Mr.

Justice Lush, commenced on the 23d of April, 1873, and ended on the 28th of February 1874--a period of a little over ten months. On the side of the prosecution 212 witnesses gave their testimony; but the doc.u.mentary evidence, including the enormous ma.s.s of Roger Tichborne's letters, so valuable as exhibiting the character, the pursuits, the thoughts, and feelings of the writer, were scarcely less important.

The entire Tichborne and Seymour families may be said to have given their testimony against the defendant. Lady Doughty had pa.s.sed away from the troubled scene since the date of the last trial; but she had been examined and cross-examined on her death bed, and had then repeated the evidence which she gave on the previous occasion, and declared that the Claimant was an impostor. Lady Radcliffe again appeared in the witness-box, and told her simple story, confirmed as it was in all important particulars by the correspondence and other records. Old Paris friends and acquaintances were unanimous. Father Lefevre and the venerable Abbe Salis, Chatillon the tutor and his wife, and numerous others, declared this man was not Roger Tichborne, and exposed his ignorance both of them and their past transactions.

When questioned, the defendant had sworn that his father never had a servant named Gossein; but the letters of Sir James were shown to contain numerous allusions to "my faithful Gossein," and Gossein himself came into the witness-box and told how he had known Roger Tichborne from the cradle to his boyhood, and from his boyhood to the very hour of his going on his travels. On the Orton question, nearly fifty witnesses declared their conviction that the defendant sitting then before them was the butcher's son whom they had known in Wapping.

The witnesses from Australia and from South America unhesitatingly identified the defendant with Orton; but it is more important to observe, that their testimony was supported by records and doc.u.ments of various kinds, including the ledgers of Mr. Foster of Boisdale, letters under the defendant's own hand, and writings which it could not be denied were from the hand of Arthur Orton.

On the other side, the witnesses were still more numerous. They included a great number of persons from Wapping, who swore they did not recognise in the defendant the lad whom they had known as Arthur Orton. Many others swore they had known both Orton and the defendant in Australia, and that they were different persons, but their stories were irreconcilable with each other, and were moreover in direct conflict with the statements of the Claimant on oath, while several of these witnesses were persons of proved bad character, and unworthy of belief. Great numbers of Carabineers declared that the defendant was exactly like their old officer; but while ten officers of that regiment appeared for the prosecution, and positively affirmed that the defendant was not Roger Tichborne, only two officers gave testimony on the other side; and even these admitted that they had doubts. Eight years had elapsed since Mr. Gibbes fancied he had discovered Sir Roger at Wagga-Wagga, but still no Arthur Orton was forthcoming; nor did the sisters of Orton venture to come forward on behalf of the man who had been compelled to admit having taken them into his pay. Not only was the Claimant's story of his wreck and rescue shown to be absurd and impossible, but it was unsupported by any evidence, except vague recollections of witnesses having seen an "Osprey" and some s.h.i.+pwrecked sailors at Melbourne in July, 1854; and it was admitted that if their tale were true the phantom vessel and the fact of its picking up nine precious lives must have escaped the notice of Lloyd's agents, of custom-house officers, and of the Australian newspapers. More, the Claimant's "Osprey" must have escaped the notice of such authorities in every port which she had entered from the day that she was launched. So, indeed, the matter stood until the witness Luie, the "pretended steward of the 'Osprey'" swore to his strange story, as well as to the defendant's recognition of him by name as an old friend. The Luie episode, terminating in the identification of that infamous witness as an habitual criminal and convict named Lundgren, only recently released on a ticket-of-leave, together with the complete disproof of his elaborate "Osprey" story, is familiar to the public. It was a significant fact, that other witnesses for the defence were admitted to be a.s.sociates of this rascal; while one of the most conspicuous of all--a man calling himself "Captain" Brown--had pretended to corroborate portions of Luie's evidence which are now proved to be false.

Some allowance may perhaps be made in the defendant's favour for the singularly unskilful and damaging character of his counsel Dr.

Kenealy's two addresses to the jury, which occupied no less than forty-three entire days. This barrister not only made violent personal attacks on every witness of importance for the prosecution, without, as the judges observed, "any shadow of foundation," but he a.s.sailed his own client with a vehemence and a persistence which are without parallel in the case of an advocate defending a person against a charge of perjury. He gave up statements of the defendant at almost every period of his extraordinary story as "false;" declared them to be "moons.h.i.+ne;" expressed his conviction that no sensible person could for a moment believe them; acknowledged that to attempt to verify them in the face of the evidence, or even to reconcile them with each other, would be hopeless; set some down as "arrant nonsense,"

denounced others as "Munchausenisms," and recommended the jury "not to believe them" with a heartiness which would have been perfectly natural in the mouth of Mr. Hawkins, but which, coming from counsel for the defence, was, as one of the learned judges remarked, "strange indeed." But the doctrine of the learned gentleman was, that the very extent of the perjury should be his client's protection, because it showed that he was not a man "to be tried by ordinary standards."

When, in addition to this, he laboured day after day to persuade the jury that Roger Tichborne was a drunkard, a liar, a fool, an undutiful son, an ungrateful friend, and an abandoned libertine--declared in loud and impa.s.sioned tones that he would "strip this jay of his borrowed plumes," and indignantly repudiated the notion that the man his client claimed to be had one single good quality about him, the humour of the situation may be said to have reached its climax. Yet Dr.

Kenealy at least proved his sincerity by not only insinuating charges against the gentleman who disappeared with the "Bella," but by actually calling witnesses to contradict point blank statements of his own client which lay at the very foundation of the charges of perjury against him. There were, it is true, many unthinking persons of the kind that mistake sound for sense, who considered Dr. Kenealy a vastly clever fellow. If he be so, then the world in general, and the const.i.tution of the English bar in particular, are wrong; but anyhow one thing is certain, that the counsel damaged the case materially, and showed himself eminently unfitted for the position of leader. Mr.

Hawkins' powerful address quickly disposed of Dr. Kenealy and his crotchets. The inquiry was raised into a calmer height when the Lord Chief-Justice commenced his memorable summing up, going minutely through the vast ma.s.s of testimony--depicting the true character of Roger Tichborne from the rich mine of materials before him, contrasting it with that of the defendant as shown by the evidence, and, while giving due weight to the testimony in his favour, exposing hundreds of examples of the falsity of his statements made upon oath.

The verdict of Guilty had been antic.i.p.ated by all who paid attention to the evidence. The foreman publicly declared that there was no doubt in the mind of any juryman that the man who has for eight years a.s.sumed the name and t.i.tle of the gentleman whose unhappy story is recorded in these pages is an impostor who has added slander of the wickedest kind to his many other crimes. But not only were they satisfied of this; they were equally agreed as to his being Arthur Orton. The sentence of fourteen years' penal servitude followed, and was a.s.suredly not too heavy a punishment for offences so enormous. Yet there are others still at large, who, having aided the impostor with advice and money, should not be allowed to escape, while the more clumsy scoundrel suffers the award of detected infamy.

Thus ended the great Tichborne impersonation case, the most remarkable feature in which was, not that a rude ignorant butcher should proclaim himself a baronet, but that thousands of persons sane in every other respect should have gone crazy about him, and should, despite the evidence given--sufficient many hundreds of times told, or for any reasonable being--even now persist that Roger Tichborne still lives, and is the victim of a gross conspiracy. What need is there to point out the idiotcy of such ravings? What necessity ever to contradict statements which contradict themselves?