The Claimant

​The Tichborne Case occupied thousands of column inches in newspapers around the world from the mid-19th Century onwards when an obese, slovenly butcher (Tom Castro aka Arthur Orton) from Wagga Wagga claimed he was really the English Baronet Roger Tichborne miraculously risen from the dead and who travelled to England to claim his rightful inheritance.
 
His case wouldn’t have got far if the missing Baronet’s grieving mother hadn’t embraced him as her son without question. It set in motion some of the most extraordinary events in English jurisprudence. Hundreds of witnesses swore the butcher was definitely the refined and aristocratic Roger Tichborne and just as many swore he definitely wasn’t, but an illiterate crook and charlatan.
 
Everything about the Claimant was analysed and discussed: his differing height, dodgy memories, his tattoos, the mystery contents of a secret packet, a mystic signature code and even shortcomings with his private parts (which didn’t stop him having upwards of 8 children). In the days before a DNA test would have put paid to the claim quick-smart, the public was enthralled. Everyone had an opinion. Was he or wasn’t he?
 
There’s a maniacal frenzy about the whole affair (including characters already in the lunatic asylum). The obsequious former servants or acquaintances being bribed to remember things, the members of the ruling classes bamboozled into giving the Claimant money to live the life to which a blue blood must be accustomed, the completely out-of-control defence barrister (Edward Kenealy) who ranted for days and abused his client and the judge in the process. You couldn’t invent many of these characters and the scenarios because no-one would believe you.  
 
Then there was the support he had from the common folk who saw his campaign as some kind of banner to follow in their struggles against privilege and the aristocracy. On his first release from prison, rather than being pilloried, the Claimant became a people’s champion and crowds lined the road to wave to him as he made a progress about the country waving from “a wagonette drawn by four fine bay horses decorated with Tichborne-blue rosettes and carrying footmen in scarlet silk jackets.” It is incredible to think that there was even a movement to have Orton/Castro/Tichborne become a member of parliament which in a way disturbingly reflects recent happenings when a whole country was in denial, willing to believe lies and support a man even though he has been proved to be a crook.
 
But it’s difficult to really get a handle on Orton/Castro/Tichborne. At one stage he confessed it was all a put-up job and then retracted. Perhaps he came to believe his own myth. After he served his time in gaol, he turned into a side-show freak, often impecunious and living on the margins of society in both the USA and England. One has to have some sympathy for him, in particular suffering the loss of four infant children with his second “wife”. Although by the time he died in 1898 the majority had come to accept he was a fraud, his coffin still bore the name of the man whose identity he usurped.
 
Every few years someone re-examines the fascinating story of the Tichborne Claimant and this latest offering by journalist Paul Terry presents it in an entertaining and in-depth fashion. A downside is that the book lacks an index although there is a list of some of the principal characters at the front. One name omitted from that list is the man who briefly acted as the Claimant’s secretary, a certain Mr Truth Butts. Not even Gilbert & Sullivan at their peak could have come up with a more agreeable name to reflect this bizarre but true comic opera.

3.5 stars.

Booktopia

Amazon.co.uk

​Amazon.com
 

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