The baronetcy of Tichborne, now Doughty-Tichborne, is one of the
oldest. It has been claimed that the family held possession of the
Manor of Tichborne for two hundred years before the Conquest. Be
this as it may--and, in the light of J. H. Round’s revelations, some
scepticism as to these pre-Norman pedigrees is permissible--their
ancestors may be traced back to one Walter de Tichborne who held the
manor, from which he took his name, as early as 1135. Their names too,
are interwoven with the history of the country. Sir Benjamin, the first
baronet--for the earlier de Tichbornes were knights,--as Sheriff of
Southhampton, on the death of Queen Elizabeth, repaired instantly
to Winchester and on his own initiative proclaimed the accession of
James VI of Scotland as King of England, for which service he was made
a baronet, and his four sons received the honour of knighthood. His
successor, Sir Richard, was a zealous supporter of the Royal cause
during the civil wars. Sir Henry, the third baronet, hazarded his life
in the defence of Charles I and had his estates sequestered by the
Parliamentarians though he was recompensed at the Restoration.
Believers in occultism might see in the trials and tribulations
brought down upon the unfortunate heads of the Tichborne family by the
machinations of the Claimant, the realisation of the doom pronounced by
a certain Dame Ticheborne away back in the days of Henry II.
Sir Roger de Ticheborne of those days married Mabell, the daughter and
heiress of Ralph de Lamerston, of Lamerston, in the Isle of Wight, by
whom he acquired that estate. This good wife played the part of lady
bountiful of the neighbourhood. After a life spent in acts of charity
and goodness, as her end drew nigh and she lay on her death bed, her
thoughts went out to her beloved poor. She begged her husband, that in
order to have her memory kept green the countryside round, he would
grant a bequest sufficient to ensure, once a year, a dole of bread to
all comers to the gates of Tichborne. To gratify her whim Sir Roger
promised her as much land as she could encompass while a brand plucked
from the fire should continue to burn. As the poor lady had been
bedridden for years her husband may have had no idea that she could,
even if she would, take his promise seriously. However, the venerable
dame, after being carried out upon the ground, seemed to regain her
strength in a miraculous fashion, and, to the surprise of all, managed
to crawl round several rich and goodly acres which to this day are
known as “the Crawls.”
Carried to her bed again after making this last supreme effort and
summoning her family to her bedside, Lady Ticheborne predicted with her
dying breath, that, as long as this annual dole was continued, so long
should the house of Tichborne prosper; but, should it be neglected,
their fortunes would fail and the family name become extinct from want
of male issue. As a sure sign by which these disasters might be looked
for, she foretold that a generation of seven sons would be immediately
followed by one of seven daughters.
The benevolent custom thus established was faithfully observed for
centuries. On every Lady Day crowds of humble folk came from near
and far to partake of the famous dole which consisted of hundreds of
small loaves. But ultimately the occasion degenerated into a noisy
merry-making, a sort of fair, until it was finally discontinued in
1796, owing to the complaints of the magistrates and local gentry that
the practice encouraged vagabonds, gipsies and idlers of all sorts to
swarm into the neighbourhood under pretence of receiving the dole.
Strangely enough Sir Henry Tichborne, the baronet of that day (the
original name of de Ticheborne had by this time been reduced to
Tichborne), had seven sons, while his eldest son who succeeded him in
1821, had seven daughters. The extinction of the family name, too,
came to pass, for in the absence of male issue, Sir Henry, the eighth
baronet, was succeeded by his brother, who had taken the surname of
Doughty on coming into the estates bequeathed to him on these terms, by
a distant relative, Miss Doughty; though, in after years, his brother,
who in turn succeeded him, obtained the royal licence to couple the
old family name with that of Doughty. Following this repeated lapse of
direct male heirs came other troubles; but it is to be hoped that the
successful defeat of the fraudulent claim of Arthur Orton set a period
to the doom pronounced long years ago by the Lady Mabell.
Most families, great and small, have their secret troubles and
unpleasantness, and the Tichbornes seem to have had their share of
them. To this may be traced the actual, if remote, cause of the
Claimant’s imposture. James Tichborne, afterwards the tenth baronet,
the father of the missing Roger, who was drowned in the mysterious
loss of the _Bella_, off the coast of South America, in the spring of
1854, lived abroad for many years; but, while his wife was French in
every sentiment, he himself from time to time exhibited a keen desire
to return to his native land. When Roger was born there was small
likelihood of his ever succeeding to either title or estates, and so
his education was almost entirely a foreign one.
Sir Henry Tichborne, who had succeeded in 1821, though blessed with
seven beautiful daughters, had no son. Still there was their uncle
Edward, who had taken the name of Doughty, and he, after Sir Henry,
was the next heir. Edward, too, had a son and daughter. But, one day,
news came to James and his wife, in France, that their little nephew
was dead; and with the possibilities which this change opened up, it
brought home to the father the error he had committed in permitting
Roger to grow up ignorant of the English tongue and habits. It was
manifest that Mr. James F. Tichborne was not unlikely to become the
next baronet, and he felt it his bounden duty to make good his previous
neglect, by providing his son with an English education, such as would
fit him for his probable position as head of the house of Tichborne.
In this praiseworthy intention he met with strong opposition from his
wife whose great aim it was to see her son grow up a Frenchman. To her,
France was the only land worth living in. She cared nought for family
traditions; her dream was that her darling boy should marry into some
distinguished family in France or Italy. If he was to enter the army,
then it should be in some foreign service. But to England he should
not go if she could prevent it.
James Tichborne, like many weak men with self-willed wives, put off
the inevitable day as long as he could; and in the end only achieved
his purpose by strategy. Roger was sixteen years of age when news
arrived of the death of Sir Henry. Naturally James arranged to be
present at his brother’s funeral and it was only reasonable that he
should be accompanied by his son Roger, whom everyone now regarded as
the heir. Accordingly the boy took leave of his mother, but under the
solemn injunction to return quickly. However, his father had determined
otherwise. After attending the funeral of his uncle, at the old chapel
at Tichborne, Roger was, by the advice of relatives and friends, and
with the consent of the boy himself, taken down to the Jesuit College
at Stonyhurst. When Mrs. Tichborne learned of this step, her fury knew
no bounds. She upbraided her husband violently; and there was a renewal
of the old scenes in the Tichborne establishment. Roger wrote his
mother filial, if ill-spelt, letters in French; but, for a year, the
son, though ardently looking for a letter, got no token of affection
from the incensed and indignant lady.
During his three years’ stay at Stonyhurst, Roger seems to have applied
himself diligently to the study of English; but, though he made fair
progress, he was never able to speak it with as much purity and
command of words as when conversing in French. In Latin, mathematics,
and chemistry, too, he contrived to make fair headway; while his
letters evidenced an inclination for the study of polite literature.
If not highly accomplished, he was of a refined and sensitive nature.
During this period he made many friends, spending his vacation with his
English relatives in turn. His great delight was to stay at Tichborne,
then in possession of his father’s brother, Sir Edward Doughty. Withal,
the shy, pale-faced boy steadily gained in favour, for he had a nature
which disarmed ill-feeling. As time wore on it became necessary to
determine on some profession for the lad; and needless to say his
father’s choice of the army added fuel to the fire of his wife’s anger.
After some delay a commission was obtained and Mr. Roger Charles
Tichborne was gazetted a coronet in the Sixth Dragoons, better known as
the Carbineers.
Defeated in her purpose of making a Frenchman of her boy, Roger’s
mother yet continued to harp upon her old desire to marry him to one
of the Italian princesses of whom he had heard so much. But Roger
had other ideas, for he had fallen passionately in love with his
cousin--Miss Katharine Doughty afterwards Lady Radcliffe. However, the
course of love was not to run smooth. The Tichbornes had always been
Roman Catholic, and the marriage of first cousins was discountenanced
by that church. Consequently when some little token incidentally
revealed to the father the secret and yet unspoken love of the young
people, their dream was rudely shattered.
That the girl warmly reciprocated her cousin’s affection was beyond
question, and Lady Doughty was certainly sympathetic though she took
exception to certain of her nephew’s habits. He was an inveterate
smoker besides drinking too freely. These and other little failings
seem to have aroused some fear in her anxious mother’s heart, though
she quite recognised the boy’s kind disposition, and the fact that he
was truthful, honourable and scrupulous in points of duty. Still she
would not oppose the wishes of the young lovers--except to the extent
of pleading and encouraging Roger to master his weaknesses. It was
Christmas time in 1851 when the _dénoument_ came and the eyes of Sir
Edward were opened to what was going on. He was both vexed and angry,
and was resolved that the engagement should be broken off before it
grew more serious. One last interview was permitted to the cousins
and, this over, the young man was to leave the house forever. The
great hope of his life extinguished, there was nothing left for Roger
but to rejoin his regiment, then expecting orders for India, and to
endeavour to forget the past. Still even in those dark days neither
Roger nor Kate quite gave up hope of some change. Lady Doughty, despite
her dread of her nephew’s habits, had a warm regard for him, and could
be relied upon to plead his cause; and in a short time circumstances
unexpectedly favoured him. Sir Edward was ill and, fearing that death
was approaching, he sent for his nephew and revived the subject. He
explained that if it were not for the close relationship he should
have no objection to the marriage and begged Roger to wait for three
years. If then the affection, one for the other, remained unaltered,
and providing that Roger obtained his own father’s consent and that
of the Church, he would accept things as the will of God and agree to
the union. As might be expected, Roger gratefully promised loyally to
observe the sick man’s wishes.
However, Sir Edward, instead of dying, slowly mended, and Roger
returned to his regiment. Occasionally he would spend his leave with
his aunt and uncle, when the young people loved to walk together in the
beautiful gardens of Tichborne exchanging sweet confidences and weaving
plans for the future. On what proved to be his last visit to his
ancestral home, in the midsummer of 1852, Roger, to comfort his cousin,
confided a secret to her--a copy of a vow, which he had written out and
signed, solemnly pledging himself, in the event of their being married
before three years had passed, to build a church or chapel at Tichborne
as a thanks offering to the Holy Virgin for the protection shown by her
in praying God that their wishes might be fulfilled.
His leave up, Roger went back to his regiment more than ever a prey
to his habitual melancholy. To his great regret the orders for the
Carbineers to go to India were countermanded. He accordingly determined
to throw up his commission and travel abroad until his period of
probation had passed. South America had long been the subject of his
dreams, and so thither he would make his way; and in travelling through
that vast continent he hoped to find occupation for his mind and so get
through the trying period of waiting. His plan was to spend a year in
Chili, Guayaquil and Peru, and thence to visit Mexico, and so, by way
of the United States, to return home. Having come to this resolution
he lost no time in putting it into execution. Being of business-like
habits he made his will, in which he purposely omitted any mention
of the “church or chapel.” This secret had already been committed to
paper, and with other precious souvenirs of his love for his cousin,
had been confided to his most trusted friend--Mr. Gosford, the steward
of the family estate. After paying a round of farewell visits to his
parents and old friends in Paris, Roger finally set sail from Havre, on
March 21, 1853, in a French vessel named _La Pauline_, for Valparaiso,
at which port she arrived on the 19th of the following June, when Roger
set out on his wanderings. During his travels Roger continued to write
home regularly; but the first news he received was bad. Sir Edward
Doughty had died almost before the _Pauline_ had lost sight of the
English shores; and Roger’s father and mother were now Sir James and
Lady Tichborne.
Presently the wanderer began to retrace his steps, making his way to
Rio de Janeiro. Here, he found a vessel called the _Bella_ hailing from
Liverpool, about to sail for Kingston, Jamaica, and as he had directed
his letters and remittances to be forwarded there, he prevailed upon
the captain to give him a passage. On the 20th of April, 1854, the
_Bella_ passed from the port of Rio into the ocean. From that day no
one ever set eyes upon her. Six days after she left harbour, a ship
traversing her path found, amongst other ominous tokens of a wreck, a
capsized long-boat bearing the name “_Bella_, Liverpool.”
These were taken into Rio and forthwith the authorities caused the
neighbouring seas to be scoured in quest of survivors; but none were
ever found. That the _Bella_ had foundered there was little room to
doubt. It was supposed that she had been caught in a sudden squall,
that her cargo had shifted, and that, unable to right herself, the
vessel had gone down in deep water, giving but little warning to those
on board. In a few months the sad news reached Tichborne, where the
absence of letters from the previously diligent correspondent had
already raised grave fears. The sorrow-stricken father caused enquiries
to be made in America and elsewhere. For a time, there was a faint hope
that some one aboard the _Bella_ might have been picked up by some
passing vessel; but, as months wore on, even these small hopes dwindled
away. The letters which poor Roger had so anxiously asked might be
directed to him at the post office, Kingston, Jamaica, remained there
till the ink grew faded; the banker’s bill which lay at the agents’
remained unclaimed. At last the unfortunate vessel was finally written
off at Lloyd’s as lost, the insurance money paid, and gradually the
_Bella_ faded from the memories of all but those who had lost friends
or relatives in her. Lady Tichborne alone, refused to abandon hope.
Her obstinate disregard of such conclusive evidence of the fate of her
unfortunate son preyed upon her mind to such an extent as to make her
an easy victim for any scheming rascal pretending to have news of her
lost son; and “sailors,” who told all sorts of wild stories of how
some of the survivors of the _Bella_ had been rescued and landed in a
foreign port, became constant visitors at Tichborne Park and profited
handsomely from the weak-minded lady’s credulity. Sir James, himself,
made short work of these tramping “sailors,” but after his death,
in 1862, the lady became even more ready to be victimised by their
specious lies.
Firm in her belief that Roger was still alive, Lady Tichborne now
caused advertisements to be inserted in numerous papers; and in
November, 1865, she learnt through an agency in Sydney that a man
answering the description of her son had been found in Wagga Wagga,
New South Wales. A long correspondence ensued, the tone and character
of which ought to have put her on her guard; but, over-anxious to
believe that she had indeed found her long-lost son, any wavering
doubts she may have had, were swept from her mind by the evidence of
an aged negro servant named Boyle, an old pensioner of the Tichborne
family. Boyle, who lived in New South Wales, professed to recognise the
Claimant as his dear young master, and he certainly remained one of his
most devoted adherents to the end. Undoubtedly this man’s simplicity
proved a very valuable asset to Orton. His intimate knowledge of the
arrangements of Tichborne Park was pumped dry by his new master, who,
aided by a most tenacious memory, was afterwards able to use the
information thus obtained with startling effect.
As to the identity of the Claimant with Arthur Orton there can be
absolutely no doubt. As a result of the enquiries made by the trustees
of the Tichborne estate nearly the whole of his history was unmasked.
He was born, in 1834, at Wapping where his father kept a butcher’s
shop. In 1848 he took passage to Valparaiso, whence he made his way up
country to Melipilla. Here he stayed some eighteen months receiving
much kindness from a family named Castro, and it was their name he
went under at Wagga Wagga. In 1851 he returned home and entering his
father’s business became an expert slaughterman. The following year
he emigrated to Australia; but after the spring of 1854 he ceased to
correspond with his family. He had evidently led a life of hardship
and adventure--probably not unattended with crime, and certainly with
poverty. At Wagga Wagga he carried on a small butcher’s business, and
it was from here that he got into communication with Lady Tichborne
just after his marriage to an illiterate servant girl.
According to his subsequent confession, until his attention was drawn
to the advertisement for the missing Roger, he had never even heard of
the name of Tichborne, and it was only his success when, by way of a
joke upon a chum, he claimed to be the missing baronet, that led him
to pursue the matter in sober earnest. Indeed he seemed at first very
reluctant to leave Australia, and probably he was only driven to accede
to Lady Tichborne’s request, to return “home” at once, by the fact that
he had raised large sums of money on his expectations. His original
intention was probably to obtain some sort of recognition, and then to
return to Australia with whatever money he had succeeded in collecting.
After wasting much time he left Australia and arrived in England, by
a very circuitous route, on Christmas Day, 1866. His first step on
landing, it was subsequently discovered, was to make a mysterious
visit to Wapping. His parents were dead, but his enquiries showed
a knowledge, both of the Orton family and the locality, which was
afterwards used against him with very damaging effect. His next
proceeding was to make a flying and surreptitious excursion to
Tichborne House, where, as far as possible, he acquainted himself with
the bearings of the place. In this he was greatly assisted by one Rous,
a former clerk to the old Tichborne attorney, who was then keeping a
public house in the place. From this man, who became his staunch ally,
he had no doubt acquired much useful information; and it is significant
that he sedulously kept clear of Mr. Gosford, the agent to whom the
real Roger had confided his sealed packet before leaving England.
Lady Tichborne was living in Paris at this time and it was here, in his
hotel bedroom, on a dark January afternoon, that their first interview
took place for, curiously enough, the gentleman was too ill to leave
his bed! The deluded woman professed to recognise him at once. As
she sat beside his bed, “Roger” keeping his face turned to the wall,
the conversation took a wide range, the sick man showing himself
strangely astray. He talked to her of his grandfather, whom the real
Roger had never seen; he said he had served in the ranks; referred to
Stonyhurst as Winchester; spoke of his suffering as a lad from St.
Vitus’s dance--a complaint which first led to young Arthur Orton being
sent on a sea voyage; but did not speak of the rheumatism from which
Roger had suffered. But it was all one to the infatuated woman--“He
confuses everything as if in a dream,” she wrote in exculpating him;
but unsatisfactory as this identification was, she never departed from
her belief. She lived under the same roof with him for weeks, accepted
his wife and children, and allowed him £1,000 a year. It did not weigh
with her that the rest of the family unanimously declared him to be an
impostor, or that he failed to recognise them or to recall any incident
in Roger’s life.
Nearly four years elapsed before the Claimant commenced his suit of
ejectment against the trustees of the infant Sir Alfred Tichborne--the
posthumous son of Roger’s younger brother; but he utilised the time
to good purpose. He had taken into his service a couple of old
Carbineers who had been Roger’s servants and before long so completely
mastered small details of regimental life that some thirty of Roger’s
old brother-officers and men were convinced of his identity. He
went everywhere, called upon all Roger’s old friends, visited the
Carbineers’ mess and generally left no stone unturned to get together
evidence in support of his identity. As a result of his strenuous
activity and plausibility he produced at the first trial over one
hundred witnesses who, on oath, identified him as Roger Tichborne;
and these witnesses included Lady Tichborne, the family solicitor,
magistrates, officers and men from Roger’s old regiment besides various
Tichborne tenants and friends of the family. On the other hand, there
were only seventeen witnesses arraigned against him; and, in his own
opinion, it was his own evidence that lost him the case. He would have
won, he said, “if only he could have kept his mouth shut.”
The trial of this action lasted 102 days. Sergeant Ballantine led for
the Claimant; and Sir John Coleridge (afterwards Lord Chief-justice),
and Mr. Hawkins, Q. C. (afterwards Lord Brampton), for the trustees
of the estates of Tichborne. The cross-examination of the Claimant at
the hands of Sir John Coleridge lasted twenty-two days, during which
the colossal ignorance he displayed was only equalled by his boldness,
dexterity and the bull-dog tenacity with which he faced the ordeal.
To quote Sir John’s own words: “The first sixteen years of his life
he has absolutely forgotten; the few facts he had told the jury were
already proved, or would hereafter be shown, to be absolutely false and
fabricated. Of his college life he could recollect nothing. About his
amusements, his books, his music, his games, he could tell nothing.
Not a word of his family, of the people with whom he lived, their
habits, their persons, their very names. He had forgotten his mother’s
maiden name; he was ignorant of all particulars of the family estate;
he remembered nothing of Stonyhurst; and in military matters he was
equally deficient. Roger, born and educated in France, spoke and wrote
French like a native and his favourite reading was French literature;
but the Claimant knew nothing of French. Of the ‘sealed’ packet he
knew nothing and, when pressed, his interpretation of its contents
contained the foulest and blackest calumny of the cousin whom Roger had
so fondly loved. This was proved by Mr. Gosford, to whom the packet had
been originally entrusted, and by the production of the duplicate which
Roger had given to Miss Doughty herself. The physical discrepancy, too,
was no less remarkable; for, while Roger, who took after his mother was
slight and delicate, with narrow sloping shoulders, a long narrow face
and thin straight dark hair, the Claimant was of enormous bulk, scaling
over twenty-four stone, big-framed and burly, with a large round face
and an abundance of fair and rather wavy hair. And yet, curiously
enough, the Claimant undoubtedly possessed a strong likeness to several
male members of the Tichborne family.”
When questioned as to the impressive episode of Roger’s love for his
cousin, the Claimant showed himself hopelessly at sea. His answers
were confused and irreconcilable. Not only could he give no precise
dates, but even the broad outline of the story was beyond him. Yet,
for good reasons, the Solicitor-General persisted in pressing him as
to the contents of the sealed packet and compelled him to repeat the
slanderous version of the incident which he had long ago given when
interrogated on the point. Mrs. Radcliffe (she was not then Lady) sat
in court beside her husband, and thus had the satisfaction of seeing
the infamous charges brought against the fair fame of her girlhood
recoil on the head of the wretch who had resorted to such villainous
devices. Unfortunately, some years after Roger’s disappearance, Mr.
Gosford, feeling that he was neither justified in keeping the precious
packet, nor in handing it to any other person, had burnt it; but,
fortunately his testimony as to its contents was proved in the most
complete manner by the production of the duplicate which poor Roger had
given to his cousin on his last visit to Tichborne.
Where the case broke down most completely was in the matter of tattoo
marks. Roger had been freely tattooed. Among other marks he bore, on
his left arm, a cross, an anchor, and a heart which was testified to
by the persons who had pricked them in. Orton, too, it was found out,
had also been tattooed on his left arm with his initials, “A. O.,”
and, though neither remained, there was a mark which was sworn to be
the obliteration of those letters. Small wonder then that, on the top
of this damning piece of evidence, the jury declared they required to
hear nothing further, upon which the Claimant’s counsel, to avoid the
inevitable verdict for their opponents, elected to be nonsuited. But
these tactics did not save their client, for he was at once arrested,
on the judge’s warrant, on the charge of wilful and corrupt perjury,
and committed to Newgate where he remained until bail for £10,000 was
forthcoming.
A year later, on April 23, 1873, the Claimant was arraigned before
a special jury in the Court of Queen’s Bench. The proceedings were
of a most prolix and unusual character. Practically the same ground
was covered as in the civil trial, only the process was reversed:
the Claimant having now to defend instead of to attack. Many of
the better-class witnesses, including the majority of Roger’s
brother-officers, now forsook the Claimant. There was a deal of
cross-swearing. The climax of the long trial was the production by the
defence of a witness to support the Claimant’s account of his wreck
and rescue. This was a man who called himself Jean Luie and claimed
to be a Danish seaman. With a wealth of picturesque detail he told
how he was one of the crew of the _Osprey_ which had picked up a boat
of the shipwrecked _Bella_, in which was the claimant and some of the
crew, and how when the _Osprey_ arrived at Melbourne, in the height
of the gold fever, every man of the crew from the captain downwards
had deserted the ship and gone up country. According to his story from
that time forth he had seen nothing of any of the castaways; but having
come to England in search of his wife he had heard of the trial. When
Luie was first brought into the presence of the Claimant that astute
person immediately claimed him with the greeting in Spanish “_Como
esta, Luie?_”--“How are you, Luie?” The sailor with equal readiness
recognised Orton as the man he had helped to rescue years before. All
this sounded very convincing; but it would not stand investigation.
From the beginning to end the thing was an invention; an examination
of shipping records failed to find the _Osprey_ so that she must have
escaped the notice of the authorities in every port she had entered
from the day she was launched! Of “Sailor” Luie, however, a very
complete record was established. Not only were the police able to prove
that, at the time he swore he was a seaman on board the _Osprey_,
he was actually employed by a firm at Hull; that he had never been
a seaman at all; but that he was a well-known habitual criminal and
convict only recently released on a ticket-of-leave. This made things
very awkward for the defence who made every effort to shake free from
the taint of such perjured evidence. Dr. Kenealy, seeing his dilemma,
contended that it had been concocted by Luie himself. But the damning
and unanswerable fact remained--that, by his recognition of the man,
the Claimant had acknowledged a previous acquaintance with him which he
could only have had by being privy to the fraud.
On February 28, 1874, the one hundred and eighty-eighth day of the
trial, the jury after half-an-hour’s deliberation returned their
verdict. They found that the defendant was not Roger Charles
Tichborne; that he was Arthur Orton; and finally that the charges made
against Miss Catherine Doughty were not supported by the slightest
evidence. Orton was sentenced to fourteen years’ penal servitude which,
assuredly, was none too heavy for offences so enormous. The trial
was remarkable, not only for its inordinate length, but also for the
extraordinary scenes by which it was characterised and for which Dr.
Kenealy, leading counsel for the defence, was primarily responsible.
His conduct was sternly denounced by the Lord Chief Justice in his
summing up as: “the torrent of undisguised and unlimited abuse in which
the learned counsel for the defence has thought fit to indulge,” and
he declared that “there never was in the history of jurisprudence a
case in which such an amount of imputation and invective had been used
before.” After the trial was over, Dr. Kenealy tried to turn the case
into a national question through the medium of a virulent paper he
started with the title of the _Englishman_; and undeterred by being
disbarred for his flagrant breaches of professional etiquette, he went
about the country delivering the most extravagant speeches concerning
the trial. He was elected Member of Parliament for Stoke, and, on April
23, 1875, moved for a royal commission of inquiry into the conduct of
the Tichborne Case; but his motion was defeated by 433 votes to 1.
The verdict and sentence created enormous excitement throughout the
country, for all classes, more or less, had subscribed to the defence
fund. But, by the time Orton was released, in 1884, practically
all interest had died away, and his effort to resuscitate it was a
miserable failure. In the sworn confession which he published in the
_People_, in 1895, he told the whole story of the fraud from its
inception to its final denouement. Orton survived his release from
prison for fourteen years, but gradually sinking into poverty, he died
in obscure lodgings in Shouldham Street, Marylebone, on April 1, 1898.
To the end he was a fraud and impostor for, before his death, he is
said to have recanted his sworn confession, which nevertheless bore the
stamp of truth and was in perfect accord with the information obtained
by the prosecution, while his coffin bore the lying inscription: “Sir
Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne; born 5th January, 1829; died 1st
April, 1898.”