[BITList] The real Sir Roger?

[John Feltham]

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Tichborne claimant  (d. 1898), claimant of baronetcy, was the person who identified himself, in a series of dramatic legal cases, to be the long-lost Sir Roger Tichborne. The Claimant, as he was commonly known, is usually assumed not to have been Sir Roger Tichborne, but  [see below], although doubt remains as to his identity. Roger Charles  Doughty-Tichborne  (1829-1854?)  was born in Paris on 5 January 1829, the elder of the two sons of Sir James Tichborne, tenth baronet (1784-1862), and his wife, Harriette-Felicite (1808/9-1868), the daughter of Henry Seymour of Knoyle and his French mistress, Felicite Dailly-Brimont, daughter of Louis Francois, duc de Bourbon Conti. He was educated privately and at Stonyhurst College, after which he joined the 6th dragoon guards. A romance with his cousin Katherine Doughty was marred by her family's resistance to a possible marriage because of Roger's drunkenness. In 1852, after the engagement was delayed, Roger abandoned the army and sailed for South America. Before leaving he entrusted a 'sealed packet' to Vincent Gosford, the steward of the Tichborne estate, a document which was later destroyed but was to assume considerable significance. He toured Chile, crossed the Andes, and was last sighted alive on a ship called the Bella, which left Rio de Janeiro on 20 April 1854, bound for Kingston, Jamaica. It was never seen again.

In 1862 Sir James Tichborne died; were Roger still alive, he would have inherited the title and the property. In his absence, Sir James's second son, Alfred, succeeded to his title and estates, to be succeeded in his turn in 1866 by his own infant son, Henry. However, Roger's mother refused to believe that her son was dead, and in 1863 she placed advertisements in the world's press, asking for his whereabouts. Then, in 1865, a butcher calling himself Tomas Castro from Wagga Wagga, Australia, came forward, claiming to be Sir Roger. He reported that the Bella had been overturned during a storm but that he had survived in a lifeboat and had been rescued by a ship, the Osprey, bound for Melbourne. In Australia he had worked as a cattle rancher before marrying an illiterate woman, Mary Ann Bryant, in 1865 and settling down to life as a butcher. The name Castro was adopted from a man he had met in Melipilla, Chile. The Claimant was identified as Sir Roger by a lawyer, William Gibbes, who was dealing with Castro's bankruptcy case. Gibbes's wife had noticed Lady Tichborne's advertisement and remembered that Castro had mentioned that he was entitled to some property in England. When challenged, Castro claimed that he was Sir Roger and contacted Lady Tichborne, who asked him to return home.

After reaching London at the end of 1866, the Claimant discovered that Lady Tichborne had left for Paris. However, he took the opportunity to go to Wapping, where he asked after the Orton family (an incident that later helped bring about his downfall). In Paris, Lady Tichborne recognized him as her son on 10 January 1867. Most of the Tichborne family insisted that the new arrival was an impostor who was a threat to the inheritance of the infant baronet, Henry Tichborne. The Claimant (weighing about 27 stone) looked nothing like Roger, who had been extremely slim. He was also unable to speak French, in which Roger had been fluent, and had scant knowledge of Roger's past. However, there was little that the family could do as long as the dowager was still alive. An examination in chancery led to the revelation by the Claimant that, before leaving for South America, he had seduced Katherine Doughty (now Lady Radcliffe) and had been told she was pregnant. He had left instructions with Vincent Gosford about what to do in this eventuality (the contents of the 'sealed packet'). Enquiries in Australia and South America then began to connect the Claimant with Arthur Orton. A photograph of the Claimant was identified as Orton by the wife of a former employer of the Claimant in Melbourne. Furthermore, when enquiries were made with the family of Tomas Castro in Chile, no memories were forthcoming about Roger Tichborne, but they did remember a young sailor called Arthur Orton.

Arthur Orton  (b. 1834)  was born on 20 March 1834 in Wapping, the youngest son of George Orton, a shipping butcher. As a sailor he had visited Chile in 1849-51 and then in 1852 had embarked for Australia, where he mysteriously disappeared. The Claimant always said he knew Orton and that they had worked as cattle ranchers together. He also hinted that they had been outlaws, frequently exchanging names, and had even been involved in a murder, which explained why Orton could no longer be found and why the Claimant did not want to talk about his past. The trail then led back to Wapping, where the Claimant's visit to the Ortons in 1866 was discovered. A former sweetheart of Orton's identified the Claimant as Orton, although most of the Orton family denied that he was their relative.

In March 1868 Lady Tichborne died from heart failure, clearing the way to further legal action. A civil action was brought in the court of common pleas in the form of an action of ejectment against Colonel Lushington, the current lessee of Tichborne Park. Although he was nominally the plaintiff, it was clear that the Claimant was really the defendant. Tichborne  Lushington lasted from 10 May 1871 to 6 March 1872. The Claimant found more than 100 witnesses to support him in court, and the other side had 250. The case was particularly notorious for its revelation about the contents of the 'sealed packet', and the newspaper reports of the trial were eagerly read throughout the nation. The case finally ended in a non-suit after Lord Bellew testified that, during his schooldays at Stonyhurst, he had tattooed Sir Roger, marks that the Claimant did not possess.

Criminal charges for perjury were then brought against the Claimant. Having no money to defend himself, he launched an appeal for funds and stumped the country in 1872-3, assisted by the Liberal MP Guildford Onslow, who had known Sir Roger and believed the Claimant to be genuine. An enormous popular campaign developed, drawing most support from working-class people, who believed in the Claimant and felt that his case represented the problems the poor faced in obtaining justice in a court of law. Subscriptions to the Claimant's defence fund came in from all over the country, and several Tichborne newspapers were published to promote his cause. In the criminal trial the Claimant was defended by a maverick Irish lawyer, Edward Kenealy, whose erratic behaviour in the courtroom contributed to the Claimant's defeat. R.  Castro lasted from 23 April 1873 to 28 February 1874, then one of the longest trials in English legal history. After a month-long summing up by the lord chief justice, Alexander Cockburn, the jury found against the Claimant, who was given two sentences of seven years, to run sequentially.

Kenealy was disbarred from the legal profession for his hostile comments towards the judge during the case. He then took over the Tichborne movement, creating an organization called the Magna Charta Association, edited a Tichborne newspaper, The Englishman (1874-86), and was elected to parliament as a 'people's candidate' in the Stoke by-election of February 1875, largely on the strength of the Tichborne cause. He failed in his attempt to obtain a royal commission on the Tichborne case. The Claimant was perceived by many as a martyr and his cause became one of the largest popular agitations between the end of Chartism and the coming of socialism. The movement began to decline in the later 1870s but retained pockets of strength well into the 1880s. Under Kenealy it became a focus for many radical causes, including demands for triennial parliaments, opposition to the income tax, and (half-heartedly) votes for women. The religion of the Tichborne family also introduced an anti-Catholic dimension into the agitation.

A model prisoner, the Claimant was released on a ticket-of-leave on 11 October 1884, still insisting that he was Sir Roger Tichborne. He immediately signed with a theatrical agent and took no interest in the political dimensions of the Magna Charta Association, which shortly afterwards collapsed. Kenealy had died in 1880, having lost his seat in the general election. The Claimant began to appear in music-halls and circuses around the country. In 1886 he went to America to give lectures but was not a great success and ended up becoming a bartender; he returned home without any money. His wife had deserted him for another man while he was in prison and he subsequently married a singer called Lily Enever. He failed to make a living by showing himself off in pubs and the two were reduced to poverty. This may explain why in 1895 he signed a confession in The People admitting he was Orton. After its publication he immediately retracted the confession and used the money to set up as a tobacconist. The business collapsed, and he was destitute when he died of heart failure on 1 April 1898 at 21 Shouldham Street, Marylebone. The Tichborne family graciously gave permission for Sir Roger Tichborne's name to be placed on his coffin when he was buried in an unmarked grave in Paddington cemetery. The Claimant had two sons and two daughters from his marriage to Mary Ann Bryant. His four children with Lily Enever all died in infancy. One daughter, Teresa, continued her father's crusade and, in 1912, attempted to shoot Joseph Tichborne on his wedding day after demanding financial assistance. Sir Joseph eventually married in 1913, in which year Teresa Tichborne, or Alexander, was imprisoned for six months for sending him and his mother threatening letters.

The Claimant's identity remains elusive. While most commentators have assumed him to be Orton, Douglas Woodruff in the most substantial study of the case, The Tichborne Claimant (1957), has raised the possibility that he might have been Sir Roger after all. Whoever he was, the Claimant provided the Victorian working class with a flamboyant hero.

Rohan McWilliam 

Sources  J. D. Woodruff, The Tichborne claimant: a Victorian mystery (1957) + R. McWilliam, 'The Tichborne claimant and the people', DPhil diss., U. Sussex, 1990 + M. Roe, Kenealy and the Tichborne case (1974) + Burke, Peerage (1939) + B. Falk, The naughty Seymours (1940)
Archives Hants. RO, Seymour MSS + W. Yorks. AS, Radcliffe MSS + Warks. CRO, Dormer MSS FILM The Tichborne claimant, film directed by D. Yates, 1998
Likenesses  Sampson Smith of Longton, Staffordshire figurine, 1873, Stoke City Museum and Art Gallery · W. Sickert, portrait, c.1930, Southampton City Art Gallery