Pod Insights ABC Rewind Great Aussie Cons | The Tichborne Claimant About this episode Is he a baronet or a butcher from Wagga Wagga? Can he claim the estate of an English aristocrat thought to be lost at sea?
Throughout the 1870s, this question attracted global attention, and was the subject of one of the longest, most sensational court cases Britain had ever seen.
Guests:
Robyn Annear (author) The Man Who Lost Himself: The Unbelievable Story of the Tichborne Claimant
Zadie Smith (author) The Fraud
Claire Campbell (former) Wagga Wagga head librarian and Tichborne aficionado
Credits:
Narrator - Richard RoxburghProducer - Lyn GallacherSound engineer - Angie GrantScript Editors - Kirsti Melville & Tom WrightMusic - Matthew CrawfordArtwork - Lachlan Conn
Transcript 3,618 words · 20 speakers
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0:38 Speaker 02 Nobody knows what Tom Castro knows. And up until August 1865, nobody much cares. Tom Castro is a butcher from Wagga Wagga. It's a small town in those days, roughly halfway between Sydney and Melbourne. Tom's a butcher of the Australian bush type, if you know what I mean. Old school. His meat's clean cut and well presented, which is more than can be said of Tom himself.
1:11 Speaker 02 Hi, I'm Richard Roxburgh. This is Great Aussie Cons and the unbelievable story of Tom Castro, who rockets to fame in the 1870s when he claims to be missing English aristocrat Sir Roger Tichborne.
1:29 Speaker 02 It's one of the longest, most sensational court cases Britain has ever seen.
1:36 Speaker 02 On ABC Rewind.
1:39 Speaker 02 Loose and slumming was how Castro's customers remembered him. A touch over five foot nine, he was a tallish man for the time, and solid. Though he carried himself like an uneven load, all stooped and shambling, he had full slack lips that hid the gap where three of his front teeth ought to have been. It gave him a tendency to drool. This depiction of Tom Castro is robbing in years. It comes from her book about him, The Man Who Lost Himself.
2:12 Speaker 03 Tom had for a long time been leading people to believe that he might not be a mere Tom Castro, you know, sometime drover, sometime butcher, that he was somebody in fact more important than that. And that one day, if they played their cards right, he might do them a big favour. So he did allude to the fact that there was money in the background, that Tom Castro wasn't his own name, and that there was a fortune lurking in the background there somewhere, and that someday he may choose to seize that fortune. So he did drop these kinds of hints and had been doing so for quite some time as he made his torturous way through the Australian bush.
2:50 Speaker 02 It all begins one Sunday morning in August 1865, when Tom Castro, lounging on a stump outside his shop, finds his thoughts interrupted by a drinking buddy handing him a newspaper. "What do you reckon?", says his mate, pointing to an ad on the front page. Tom takes the paper and reads.
3:12 Speaker 04 "A handsome reward will be given to any person who can furnish such information as will discover the fate of Roger Doughty Tichborne. He sailed from the port of Rio de Janeiro on the 20th of April 1854 in the ship La Bella and has never been heard of since. He is the son of Sir James Tichborne, Baronet, now deceased, and is heir to all his estate."
3:48 Speaker 02 The ad's been placed by one dowager lady Henrietta Tichborne, who regards her son's apparent disappearance at sea as more of a vexation than a tragedy. All evidence suggests the La Bella sank with no survivors, but she still hangs on to the hope, 11 years later, that Roger hasn't really drowned, that he's survived and is hiding out somewhere, possibly in Australia.
4:17 Speaker 02 When Tom Castro reads that ad, he thinks about his debts. As things stand, he's got no hope of paying them off. He doesn't really want to go to England to stake a claim to the Tichborne estate. But if, just if, damn it, he needs a lawyer.
4:40 Speaker 05 This gentleman is Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne, rightful twelfth baronet to the Tichborne estate. And your name? I am William Gibbs, attorney at law, a legal adviser to Sir Roger.
4:56 Speaker 02 And so the butcher, Tom Castro from Wogawoga, declares himself Sir Roger, the long-lost son of the Dowager Lady Tichborne. And following his lawyer's instructions, he writes to her.
5:10 Speaker 06 My dear mother,
5:13 Speaker 06 I deeply regret the trouble and anxiety I must have caused you by not writing before. Mr Gibbs suggests to me as essential I should recover to your memory things which can only be known to you and me to convince you of my identity. I don't think it needful, my dear mother, although I send them, namely the brown mark on my side and the card case at Brighton, I must request you send me maybe over two hundred pounds.
5:51 Speaker 02 In response, the Dowager pours out her heart.
5:55 Speaker 07 My dear and beloved Roger, I hope you will not refuse to come back to your poor afflicted mother. I have had the great misfortune to lose your poor dear father. And lately, I have lost my beloved son Alfred. I am now alone in this world of sorrow. I hope you will take that in consideration and that you will come to join me as soon as possible. I have nobody to look to but you.
6:34 Speaker 02 Soon, there's no stopping the new baronet.
6:39 Speaker 00 Tom Castro. Gads. Hello. What can I get you? Uh, a leg of lamb, thanks. Roger?
6:48 Speaker 02 He's set to become heir to Tichborne Park, all its estates, and receive an annual income of fifteen thousand pounds.
7:00 Speaker 02 Castro marks his departure to England with a public weighing, showing the assembled crowd that since becoming Sir Roger, he's gained twenty-three kilos.
7:13 Speaker 02 He boards the ship, and as it pulls away, he stands pensive for forty-four minutes.
7:23 Speaker 02 Is he choreographing his upcoming meeting with his would-be mother?
7:28 Speaker 02 In any case, this is how it plays out.
7:35 Speaker 08 Prior to the meeting, the dowager is told that her son's health is poor.
7:41 Speaker 08 Sir Roger is, in fact, too weak to stand. The dowager is ushered into the dimly lit room. Oh, my dear Roger, is it you? The figure is crying. Oh, my dear Roger. The dowager cradles his head awkwardly. Oh, Mama. He sobs.
8:03 Speaker 02 All of which utterly dismayed the other members of the Tichborne family.
8:08 Speaker 08 Good God!
8:10 Speaker 02 Especially his uncle, Henry Seymour.
8:13 Speaker 08 You don't know your own father's handwriting!
8:16 Speaker 02 And besides, this blow-in from the colonies looks nothing like Sir Roger. Sir Roger Tichborne was slight, with champagne-bottled shoulders sloping away from his slim neck, and he spoke almost fluent French. Castro's a wrecking ball of a man, with missing teeth, he speaks zero French, and lower-class English. But what seals it for Henry Seymour is that the new arrival from Wagga insists on calling him Uncle. They were so close in age, the young Sir Roger never, ever called him anything but plain Henry.
8:56 Speaker 02 Nevertheless, the Dowager stands firm, even as the rest of the Tichborne clan rails against her. But the extended family takes Castro to court, with the Tichborns on one side, and the Dowager on the other. And Tom Castro, who we'll now call "The Claimant", in the dock. The trial will last a record-shattering 291 days, and diminish the Tichborne family's fortune, and expand the Claimant's waistline. In May 1867, the Claimant tips the scales at the Crystal Palace at 133 kilos.
9:46 Speaker 02 As well as the pounds, the Claimant also gains a new persona. He's accused in court, not just of being a butcher called Tom Castro, but a lad from Wapping called Arthur Orton. It's put to the court that Arthur Orton went to Australia and became Tom Castro to avoid his debts and, ahem, indiscretions. Witnesses are called to testify.
10:13 Speaker 09 That man is my brother, Arthur Orton.
10:16 Speaker 02 The Claimant vehemently denies the accusation.
10:20 Speaker 08 I aimed him, but I knew him. We was working together for a time, at butchering, you know? He was at Wogga when I left.
10:29 Speaker 02 The trial is a spectacle, and Roger, or not Roger, becomes a celebrity.
10:36 Speaker 09 I couldn't help noticing, by the way, that's Sir Roger Tichborne. Initials on your luggage. R.C.T.
10:42 Speaker 07 That's Roger Tichborne, to be sure. Tailor of the thunder.
10:47 Speaker 09 This is Roger Tichborne. Not Tichborne, by the chance.
10:52 Speaker 02 Halfway through the trial, the claimant's strongest ally, the Dawaja Lady Tichborne, dies. For the past year, she's been giving him an allowance of £20 a week, half her own income. But now, she's gone. And with the Tichborne estate still in limbo, the claimants short on funds, seems he's a man with champagne tastes on, well, an aged whisky budget.
11:37 Speaker 02 He's blowing more cash than he has, so he mounts a public subscription.
11:48 Speaker 02 As a result, the claimant ends up with an extra £400 a year.
12:00 Speaker 02 But as the court case rolls on, more and more details of the claimant's Australian activities come to light, which, even by the standards of the day, are particularly seedy. And in her book, Robin Aneer relishes every one of them.
12:16 Speaker 03 Well, what was happening? This was Arthur Orton, of course. Tom Castro hadn't been created, apparently. Anyway, he worked, he had a stall in the market in Hobart, and was selling bad meat. It was basically meat that was already dead. And so, it was cheap. In fact, it probably didn't cost him anything. He probably got it off the ships already dead. And he was pulled up before the bylaws officer, or whatever the equivalent was then, for selling his dodgy meat. He hadn't paid his rent to the landlord. The landlord reported on his dodgy meat. The council officer came down and charged Arthur Orton. But on the technicality, that it wasn't his stall, it was actually his landlord's stall, his landlord was informing on himself, the charges were dropped, or at least Arthur got off.
13:04 Speaker 03 It was classic, he was such a slippery character.
13:10 Speaker 02 He'd also been charged, as Arthur Orton, with horse theft.
13:15 Speaker 10 Arthur Orton is charged on warrant issued in Sale with stealing a chestnut mare, the property of one Thomas Blacker. Description of the offender: about five feet nine or 10 inches high, stout build, pallid complexion, one front tooth wanting in upper jaw, by a trader butcher and is a good jockey and horse breaker.
13:38 Speaker 02 These stories aren't doing the claimant any favours. When they resurface as evidence, they show how Arthur slipped easily from one identity into another. And then, another.
13:51 Speaker 11 That man is Arthur Orton.
13:54 Speaker 02 Arthur Orton?
13:56 Speaker 11 I'm definitely Arthur Orton.
13:58 Speaker 09 Arthur Orton is laughing.
14:00 Speaker 02 Opponents of the claimant start to gloat. Something about rats leaving a sinking vessel?
14:06 Speaker 12 That man is Arthur Orton. I've got 500 guineas on you to win, and I don't intend to lose it.
14:13 Speaker 02 The working class stays loyal to the claimant, but the aristocrats, well, they're shaking their heads.
14:19 Speaker 03 The gentleman before me in the dock is not my cousin Roger.
14:59 Speaker 02 Meanwhile, the claimant continues to overspend. He's putting away 13 pints of Irish whisky and 150 large cigars a week.
15:12 Speaker 02 He's living like landed gentry. Fly fishing, pigeon shooting, as he writes to a friend.
15:21 Speaker 08 I've been down at the grounds today and made the best score that's been made for anyone for some years. Killing forty-two pigeons out of fifty-three. Extraordinary. I killed thirteen out of fourteen.
15:42 Speaker 02 The claimant's having so much fun, he forgets to pay his bills. So his lawyers come up with a cunning plan to put an end to his money troubles. They draw up a legal document, the Tichborne Estate Mortgage Debiture, and print up fifteen hundred copies.
16:02 Speaker 02 These become the Tichborne Bonds, and each one costs sixty-five pounds. The idea is, when the claimant eventually gains possession of his estate, each investor will be paid back one hundred pounds. For each bond, it's a thirty-five-pound profit for the investor, but a one-hundred-thousand-pound profit for our claimant. The bonds are hawked everywhere, at public houses, marketplaces, at sporting events, and the races.
16:37 Speaker 12 Ladies and gentlemen, the Tichborne Bond, personally signed by Sir Roger Tichborne, who promises to pay each of you a one-thousandth part of the Tichborne Estates when his case succeeds. Your opportunity to buy into the oldest and most profitable firm in the British Isles, the aristocracy. Who is going to be the boss?
17:13 Speaker 02 They rarely sell at the full price, but they do sell, and the claimant makes forty thousand pounds.
17:24 Speaker 02 It's a public relations masterclass. Now his team can say that throughout England and beyond, thousands hold a stake in the outcome of the case. But the country's property classes are livid. It's such an outrageous precedent.
17:44 Speaker 02 What's to stop any scoundrel with a bogus claim trying such a scheme? The law must be changed. And it is, but not before the Tichborne bonds capture everyone's imagination.
17:56 Speaker 13 The people crowd here every day, do ya, do ya? And rush to see the Tichborne play, oh do da dey. Then cheer up, Roger boy, no matter what they say. I'll bet my money on the big fat man if he only gets fair play.
18:18 Speaker 02 For those who can't afford the bonds, there's Tichborne merchandise, Tichborne postcards, Tichborne cigar cases and Tichborne figurines. And by the way, if you're ever passing through Wogga Wogga, you'll find them on display at the Riverina Museum.
18:36 Speaker 14 Yeah, we've got some little figurines here at Wogga. We've got one of the claimants and one of his mother and one of the judges. I think there might be five altogether, but we've got the front of a case of cigars. It's actually got a Tichborne character on the front and that was quite common as well. There was, you know, Tichborne went on to various things that people bought. So maybe there was, you know, Tichborne soap and things like that. It just became a sort of a popular thing to attach to anything that you were trying to sell.
19:02 Speaker 02 The Tichborne story also lives on in leading British author Zadie Smith's latest novel, The Fraud, where the characters spend time at the Tichborne trial. But Smith's point is not so much about Tichborne as it is, bear with me here, about Trump, about how society can enable an impostor.
19:26 Speaker 15 It's hard to remember now, but when Trump first appeared presenting himself as the champion of the working man, everybody in New York was like, "You've got to be kidding me. You've literally got to be kidding me. This, you know, notorious capitalist fraudster millionaire." But we misunderstood something very profoundly about the rhetoric and the manner in which Trump presented himself to people. And he was a fraud on both levels. Now, he was pretending to be a working man for the working people and also pretending to be a billionaire, which of course in New York, we also knew he wasn't a billionaire. He was a half-assed real estate guy. So it's very possible to present in a kind of carnivalesque mode, I think, the opposite of what you seem to be. And what I heard on the ground in America during those
20:11 Speaker 15 years was exactly what people said about the Tichborne claimant, which is, you know, whenever Trump made an obvious mistake and was obviously gross or said something ridiculous, people would say, "Well, that just shows that he's honest." So it's the same logic. And the Tichborne was exactly the same. The fact that he spoke in a Cockney accent, the fact that he'd forgotten all the French that he grew up learning, the fact that he didn't seem anything like a lord, the people said, "Well, that's a lord. A lord is somebody who doesn't care what you think of him. So he must be a lord." And then there's the second part of the logic, which is, we want this man to win. Given that the courts were rigged against the working class, they were aristocratically led in their judges and juries, they wanted a poor man to win for once, even if it meant proving
20:55 Speaker 15 that a poor man was a rich man. It doesn't make sense, but it makes social sense.
21:04 Speaker 02 Meanwhile, the claimant's case drags on. His lawyer's opening remarks last a whole month, unbearable in the hot London summer. One juror faints. Even the claimant's heard wishing to die. The trial continues, but the court now considers the claimant a suicide risk.
21:25 Speaker 08 Were it not for my friends and children, I should like to die. I am so tired of this worry. Besides, it is hardly worthwhile living in this world now, for I see nothing but lawsuits before me for years to come.
21:42 Speaker 03 There are notes to his lawyer and to some of his closest supporters where you can see he's just despairing. And there are suggestions there that he was really in deep depression sometimes, so much so that the prosecution feared that he would commit suicide, that he would take poison if he were found guilty. And they had policemen stationed at his elbow almost, so that he couldn't reach into his coat for the vial of poison when the verdict came. So he was obviously plunged pretty deep there for a while, but he seemed to be able to rally himself somehow with his own stories, I think.
22:15 Speaker 02 Which is just as well, because the claimant's lawsuits do continue, as does his lawyer's interminable pontificating.
22:25 Speaker 16 All right then, let the trial begin.
22:28 Speaker 17 Tichborne versus the claimant.
22:30 Speaker 18 We shall prove, through incontrovertible medical evidence, that the man before you is Roger Tichborne.
22:37 Speaker 02 It's unclear how the civil case to prove Castro an impostor ends, but either way, it leads to a criminal case.
22:45 Speaker 18 A man with only the slightest acquaintance with his own early life. We do not deny us.
22:50 Speaker 02 This is the famously tortuous criminal trial, where the claimant's lawyer is eventually disbarred. Month-long speeches can't be allowed to become the norm. At this point, the claimant weighs 172 kilos, but refuses to sit down in court. He's mostly hungover and exhausted, he's also riddled with parasites, has trouble sleeping, suffers from cigar smokers' chest, and probably gonorrhea.
23:23 Speaker 07 This is the jury, eleven in all, who would not be sorry the sky should fall, and end at once this protracted case, and free them forever from this vile place.
23:36 Speaker 02 After months and months in court, the juries had enough. They asked to quit, and the case collapses. But then, in a shocking move, Chief Justice Bevel charges the claimant with willful and corrupt perjury. He arrests him on the spot, and sets bail at £10,000. The working classes rally to pay it.
24:05 Speaker 08 Wherever he travelled, there were supporters who called out, "Glory to you, Sir Roger!" as he rattled past. He went on tour giving speeches to crowds of up to 20,000, asking, "Is working men's evidence not as good as that of Lord Bellow?" The people cheered. "I am not here to ask you to believe I am Sir Roger Tichborne. That will be decided by the courts of law. What I insist on is having a fair trial, like any other Englishman."
24:41 Speaker 17 It is Sir Roger Tichborne!
24:44 Speaker 08 The crowd went wild, the band played, and there was a fireworks display which went on until midnight. He was called "the good angel of the Australian bush".
24:57 Speaker 08 Working men of Britain, I am Sir Roger Charles Tichborne!
25:10 Speaker 02 But the jury hearing the perjury case isn't convinced.
25:15 Speaker 16 We find Tom Castro, Arthur Orton, Fred Long Arthur, Artie Orton, and his son Arturo Orton guilty.
25:23 Speaker 08 Good. I sentence you to 14 years in jail.
25:30 Speaker 02 The judge adds that he hopes in time, England will forget the claimant ever existed.
25:43 Speaker 07 So the claimant's trial is over, and Roger, they have screwed. For 14 years, they have sent him to penal servitude.
25:53 Speaker 02 Two decades later, the claimant looks back on his guilty verdict as...
25:58 Speaker 08 "One of the greatest reliefs I have ever felt in my life."
26:08 Speaker 02 In the end, the claimant, known as Tom Castro, Arthur Orton, and Sir Roger Tichborne, serves just ten years and eight months of his fourteen-year term.
26:22 Speaker 02 On the twenty-second of October eighteen eighty-four, he walks free, weighing in at a shade just over one hundred kilos, the best shape he's been in for decades.
26:34 Speaker 02 He continues to perform his "I'm a Victim of Conspiracy" speaking tour, but people have lost interest. So what does the butcher from Wagga do next? Well, he joins the circus.
26:49 Speaker 02 But soon enough, they don't want him either.
26:53 Speaker 02 He bombs as a vaudeville act in New York, and in the end, he plays the music halls of London, slipping lower and lower down the bill. Finally, he ends up living on charity from the church.
27:10 Speaker 02 Some publicans take pity on him, letting Sir Roger peddle his tarnished tail in exchange for a few coins, but he still carries one hundred and fourteen kilos. And eventually, his poor heart confines him to his third-floor lodgings in Sholdham Street, London, where on April Fool's Day eighteen ninety-eight, he dies. The newspapers name him Arthur Orton in their obituaries, but when the wreaths are removed from his oversized oak coffin, the claimant reveals his final card.
27:47 Speaker 02 Affixed to the lid is a plaque which reads "Sir Roger Charles Tichborne."
27:55 Speaker 02 The sizable crowd gasps.
27:59 Speaker 02 The claimant has had the last laugh.
28:03 Speaker 02 May he rest in peace.
28:21 Speaker 02 You've been listening to the Tichborne Claimant. Many thanks to producer Lynne Gallagher and sound engineer Angie Grant. I'm Richard Roxburgh and I'll be rewinding more great Australian cons next time. It's a terrifying story that takes place at 20,000 feet. Catch you then.
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