TICHBORNE CLAIMANT, THE. Roger Charles Tich borne (1829-1854), whose family name became a household word on account of an attempt made by an impostor in 1868 to per sonate him and obtain his heritage, was born at Paris on Jan. 5, 1829, the eldest son of James Francis Doughty-Tichborne (who subsequently became loth baronet and died in 1862) by Henriette Felicite, natural daughter of Henry Seymour of Knoyle, in Wilt shire. He sailed in March 1853 from Havre for Valparaiso, whence he crossed the Andes, reaching Rio de Janeiro in 1854. In April of that year he sailed from Rio 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-Tichborile, who died in 1866. The only person uncon vinced of Roger's death was his mother the dowager Lady Tich borne, from whom every tramp-sailor found a welcome at Tich borne Park. She advertised largely and injudiciously for the wanderer, and in November 1865 she learnt, through an agency in Sydney, that a man "answering to the description of her son" had been found in the guise of a small butcher at Wagga Wagga, in Queensland. Lady Tichborne "acknowledged" him as her son when he reached Paris in 1867. Other members of the family, however, obtained evidence that the claimant was identical with Arthur Orton (1834-1898), the son of a Wapping butcher, who had deserted a sailing vessel at Valparaiso in 185o, and had received much kindness at Melipilla in Chile from a family named Castro, whose name he had subsequently elected to bear during his sojourn in Australia. An ejectment action against the
trustees of the Tichborne estates (to which the heir was the 12th baronet, Sir Henry Alfred Joseph Doughty-Tichborne, then two years old) finally came before the court of common pleas on May I I, 1871. During a trial that lasted over one hundred days over a 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. But the evidence of the Tichbornes finally convinced the jury, who declared that they wanted no further evidence. Orton was arrested on a charge of perjury and was brought to trial at bar before Chief Justice Cockburn in 1873. 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 188th day of the trial, found that the claimant was Arthur Orton. Found guilty of perjury on two counts, he was sentenced on Feb. 28, 1874 to fourteen years' penal servitude. Orton died in obscure lodgings in Marylebone on April 2, 1898. (T. S.) See J. Brown, The Tichborne Case compared with previous impostures (1874).