Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/250

 OSBORNE MORGAN, GEORGE (1826–1897), politician. [See .]

 ORTON, ARTHUR (1834–1898), the Tichborne claimant, born at Wapping in 1834, was the twelfth and youngest child of George Orton, a butcher there. At the age of fifteen he was sent to sea, and, having deserted at Valparaiso, made his way up country to Melipilla, where he remained for eighteen months, receiving much kindness from a family named Castro. In 1851 he was back in England, and, entering his father's business, became an expert slaughterman. In November 1852 he emigrated to Australia, and after March 1854 ceased to correspond with his family.

In the spring of 1866 it was rumoured that Roger Tichborne, the eldest son of Sir James Francis Doughty Tichborne, tenth baronet (d. 11 June 1862), who was believed to have been drowned at sea, had been discovered in Australia. The Tichbornes were a Hampshire Roman catholic family of great wealth. Sir James Doughty Tichborne, by his marriage with Henriette Félicité, the daughter of Henry Seymour of Knoyle, had, besides his elder son Roger Charles, who was born on 5 Jan. 1829, the younger son Alfred Joseph, who succeeded his father as eleventh baronet in 1862 and died in February 1866, leaving a posthumous heir, Sir Henry, the twelfth baronet. The elder son, Roger, spent his early years with his parents at Paris, proceeded to Stonyhurst, and finally obtained a commission in the 6th dragoon guards (the Carabineers). He sold out in 1852, after three years' service, and went to South America for sport and travel. In 1854 he embarked at Rio in the Bella, a ship which was never again heard of; but the discovery of her long boat and other articles of wreckage left no doubt she had foundered with all hands, and in July 1855 Roger's will was proved. Alone among the family his mother persisted in believing that he was not dead, and in inserting advertisements for him in the English and colonial papers.

In November 1865 she learnt through an agency in Sydney that a man answering the description of her son had been found at Wagga Wagga in Queensland. A long correspondence ensued, the tone and substance of which ought to have put her on her guard; but with an eagerness bordering on insanity she had made up her mind, before seeing a line of his handwriting or learning a single particular of his life, that her correspondent was her son. In accordance with her repeated entreaties he was induced to leave Australia, and he arrived in London on Christmas day 1866.

Of the identity of this claimant with Arthur Orton there is no doubt. At Wagga Wagga he bore the name of Tom Castro, borrowed from his South American benefactors, and he had passed the twelve previous years in humble positions, acting as stockman, mail-rider, and in all probability bushranger and horse-thief. He was now carrying on a small butcher's business, and was just married to an illiterate servant girl. The difficulties in the way of his claim were so enormous that in all probability he was only driven to England by the fact that he had raised large sums in Australia on his expectations. His idea, apparently, was to obtain some sort of recognition from Lady Tichborne and to return to Sydney with what money he could collect.

After paying a flying visit to Tichborne House—he had never before been in Hampshire in his life—the claimant met the dowager in Paris. She professed to recognise him at their first meeting, which took place in his hotel bedroom on a dark January afternoon. Unsatisfactory as this identification was, she never departed from her belief. She lived under the same roof with him for weeks at a time, accepted his wife and children, and allowed him 1,000l. a year. Her recognition was not followed by any of the rest of the family, who declared unanimously that the claimant was an impostor, and that he failed to recognise them or to recall any incident in Roger's life.

On the other hand, the claimant secured important allies in the old family solicitor, Mr. Hopkins, and a Winchester antiquary named Baigent, who was intimately acquainted with the Tichborne family history. This had a powerful effect in Hampshire. A large number of the county gentry became converts, while the villagers hailed the return of one of the old stock. Starting with a faint glimmering of knowledge acquired from Bogle, the old negro servant of a former baronet, who had accompanied him from Sydney, and aided by a most tenacious memory, the claimant succeeded in eliciting isolated facts which he used with startling effect. He took into his employment a couple of old carabineers, who had been servants to Roger Tichborne, and in a short time he was so completely master of small details of regimental life that more than a dozen of Roger's brother officers and an unlimited number of private soldiers were convinced of the claimant's identity.

Bills were filed in chancery against the trustees of the Tichborne estates, and in June 1868 an issue was directed to be tried in the common pleas as to whether the