Arthur Orton

Arthur Orton photographed c. 1872

Orton caricatured in Vanity Fair by 'Ape' in 1871

Arthur Orton (20 March 1834 – 1 April 1898) was the celebrated Tichborne claimant of the Victorian era.

Biography

Orton was born at Wapping, London, the son of George Orton, a butcher and purveyor of ships' stores. He left school early and was employed in his father's shop. In 1849, he was apprenticed to a Captain Brooks of the ship Ocean. The ship sailed to South America and in June 1849 Orton deserted and went to the small Chilean country town of Melipilla. He stayed in Chile for a year and seven months and befriended the Castro family. Orton then went back to London as an ordinary seaman.

In November 1852 he sailed for Tasmania aboard the Middleton and arrived at Hobart in May 1853. There, Orton worked for several butchers. Orton's letters to England at the time showed he was fond of dogs and children and affectionate towards his girlfriend in Wapping. There is some evidence he was a heavy drinker; and for minor trade malpractices, he appeared before magistrates. Orton crossed to the Australian mainland late in 1855 and worked for some time on cattle-stations in Gippsland, Victoria.

From 1855 to the mid-1860s there is not a great amount of detail to be had about his life, but he appears to have pursued gold prospecting, mail-running and pastoral station hand-work, with a suggestion of bushranging and even murder. In 1864, he was living in the rural town of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, under the name Thomas Castro, and working as a butcher's assistant.

As Thomas Castro, in January 1865, Orton married Mary Ann Bryant, an illiterate second-generation Australian.

In August 1865, an advertisement appeared world-wide (including Australian newspapers) asking for information about the fate of aristocratic Roger Charles Tichborne (born 1829), who had been on a vessel La Bella which disappeared at sea off South America in 1854. This advertisement had been inserted by the wealthy mother of the missing man, Lady Tichborne, who believed her son remained alive. Roger Tichborne had, however, been presumed dead by the courts and his younger brother had thus succeeded to the family's landed estates and the title, a baronetcy, that went with them.

Orton consulted William Gibbes, a lawyer (solicitor) at Wagga and the descendant of a prominent West Indies sugar-planter family, about Lady Tichborne's appeal for help. He appears to have persuaded Gibbes that he was truly the missing Tichborne heir. Alternatively, Gibbes may have entertained some degree of scepticism but still encouraged Castro to answer the advertisement. (Gibbes was owed money by Orton and may have thought this was his best means of obtaining recompense). Either way, Orton decided to respond to the ad through a letter by Gibbes, although he did commit some bad biographical blunders when dictating details of his early life as a Tichborne. He was asked, nonetheless, by Lady Tichborne's representatives to come to England when they read the letter from Gibbes. The Claimant duly left Sydney on 22 September 1866.

It was arranged for the Claimant to meet Lady Tichborne in Paris, France. She was adamant at the meeting that she recognised Orton as her son, although other members of the Tichborne family disputed the claim. There appears to have been little physical resemblance between the two men and the Claimant did not speak in an educated fashion. Others became convinced, however, that Orton was indeed the genuine article, and he later obtained much financial support for the prosecution of his claim, which went ahead despite the death of Lady Tichborne in 1868. The ensuing courtroom proceedings proved to be protracted, and in March 1872 Orton was non-suited in his civil action for the recovery of the estates. The presiding judge stated that in his opinion the plaintiff (Orton) had been guilty of perjury. Consequently, the plaintiff was arrested and, after a criminal trial lasting 188 days, found guilty on 28 February 1874. The jury also found that the defendant was not Roger Tichborne and that he was, in fact, Arthur Orton.

Orton was sentenced to 14-years' penal servitude and his weight rose to 27 stone (171 kg) But having behaved in jail as a model prisoner, he was freed in October 1884. He continued to press his claim but gradually lost his following, and in 1895 he purported to make a confession of his frauds which appeared in the People. Afterwards, he repudiated this confession and styled himself once again as Sir Roger Tichborne. He died on 1 April 1898.

The modern consensus is that the Claimant was an uneducated scoundrel, who seized on any information that he could gather about his supposed early life, and showed some ability in the employment of it for his own fraudulent ends. It is possible to understand how a grief-sticken and obsessive Lady Tichborne could have recognised him as her son, for it had become a fixed idea with her that Roger Tichborne was still alive; and although Orton had become enormously fat, he harboured the remains of what had once been good looks. More difficult to fathom, however, is the devotion displayed by Orton's last legal Counsel, Dr Edward Kenealy, not to mention the large number of outsiders who provided him with ongoing financial backing and used their influence on his behalf.

Orton's cause continued to be upheld during the 20th century by his eldest daughter, one of four children borne him by his wife, who died as late as 1926.

Further reading

• Rohan McWilliam: The Tichborne Claimant; A Victorian Sensation Hambledon Continuum, London 2007 ISBN 1-8528-5478-2
• Parry, His Honour Judge Edward Abbott, Vagabond's All (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926), p. 1-21, "Chapter I: Arthur Orton, The Claimant."

External links

en:Tichborne Case