August 6, 2019 • 27 mins
An Australian man comes to England claiming to be a long-lost heir thought dead in a shipwreck. What happened next sparked a trial lasting 188 days—one of the longest in English history—and a scandal that captivated the Victorian public.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart
Radio and Aaron Minkey Listener discretion advised. In the summer
of eighteen sixty five, an Australian lawyer named William Gibbs
was sitting in his office reading the Sydney Morning Herald.
His eyes glazed over a large advertisement. The ad had
(00:22):
been placed in papers for weeks, and by now Gibbs
practically knew the words by heart. A handsome reward will
be given to any person who can furnish such information
as will discover the fate of Roger Charles Tickborne. He
sailed from the port of Rio de Janeiro on the
twentieth of April eighteen fifty four in the ship Labella,
(00:43):
and has never been heard of since. Roger Tickborn ship,
it seemed, had completely wrecked, but rumor had reached England
that the survivors had been rescued by ship headed to Australia,
and Roger's mother, Lady Tickborne, was conveyed iNTS that her
son still lived, making him the rightful heir to the
(01:03):
tick Born baronetcy. Gibbs put down the newspaper and looked
at his next client, a local butcher from Wagga Wagga
named Thomas Castro. Castro's situation was pretty bleak. There wasn't
much Gibbs could do to help him. Do you have
any other properties that you could maybe liquidate? He asked,
any valuable as you could sell any family abroad. Castor
(01:27):
was evasive. Yes, there was some property. He had an
entitlement back in England, but most of his possessions and
his paperwork had been lost in a shipwreck. Castro pulled
out a beautifully carved briar pipe and began smoking. It
was the pipe of a gentleman, and Castor had hoped
it added an air of legitimacy to the excuses he
(01:48):
made to his lawyer. Please, sir, he said, I have
a wife and daughter. Isn't there something you can do
for me? Gibbs asked for a closer look at Castro's pipe.
On the side of the burn mahogany would were three
gilded initials, almost invisible in the surface. R. C. T.
(02:09):
Roger Charles Tickborn. Gibbs salivated. His mouth tasted like copper.
He rose to his feet and paced to the window,
then paced back to his desk. All while the butcher
who had called himself, Thomas Castro watched him nervously. I think,
Gibbs said, still walking, pacing in steady circles around his
(02:31):
small hot office. I think you've been lying to me.
I don't know what you're talking about. Castro answered. I think,
Gibbs said, his voice triumphant, that your real name is
Roger Tickborne. Castro's eyes caught the newspaper still splayed on
Gibbs's desk. He saw the words reward, inheritance, and air.
(02:57):
The man cleared his throat, he in and exiled, and
then looked right into gives his eyes and said two
words that would send Victorian England into a frenzy to
words that would launch the longest trial England had seen
up until that point, Words that would tear families and
lives apart, Words that would captivate writers like Mark Twain
(03:20):
and George Bernard Shaw and ignite a populist movement. The man,
using the name Thomas Castro, who from that day on
would most commonly be referred to as the claimant, looked
directly at his lawyer and said, you're right. I'm Danish
Schwartz and this is noble blood. The story of the
(03:49):
tick Borne claimant doesn't actually begin in Australia. It doesn't
actually begin in England either. It begins in France, in
a cell in eighteen o three, where an English nobleman
named Henry Seymour was imprisoned during the Napoleonic Wars. Also
imprisoned with him was a man named James Tickborne, one
(04:11):
of the sons of an English baronet. Henry Seymour didn't
let a little thing like being a prisoner of war
stop him from enjoying himself. While in captivity, He seduced
the daughter of the Duc de Bourbon and became the
father of a daughter whom they named Henriette. Years passed
and Henriette still hadn't found a husband. When she turned twenty,
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her father, Henry Seymour, took matters into his own hands
and decided to arrange a match with James Tickborne, his
former brother in arms as a prisoner of war in France.
So what if James was twice Henriette's age, was ugly
and had the conversational abilities of a brick wall. Henriette
was twenty already an old maid, and James, as the
(04:54):
son of a baronet, was a suitable match, and so
the pair got married and had a son of their own,
Roger Charles Doughty Tickborn. James was his father's fourth son,
and so the odds weren't in his favor when it
came to him or his son Roger inheriting the baronetcy.
But as luck would have it, his older brother died
with no male heirs, his second eldest brother died young,
(05:18):
also with no children, and his third brother only had
a daughter, a girl named Catherine, and so it was
young Roger who was raised with the knowledge that he
would one day become the baronet. As one might have predicted,
the arranged marriage between Henriette and James Tickborne was rocky
at best. Although they eventually had another surviving son named Alfred,
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the spouses lived almost entirely separate lives. With her French pedigree,
Henriette believed that France would be the best place to
give her son Roger a proper education, and so she
brought little Roger with her to Paris, where he spoke
French before he spoke English. The little heir lived there
until his father intervened and sent him to a British
boarding school, where British schoolboys. Being British schoolboys, Roger was
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endlessly mocked for his thick French accent. His adolescence was
not a happy one. After school, Roger joined the British
Army and during his leaves he would spend time at
Tickborne Park with his uncle Edward, the Baronet, his aunt
and his cousin Katherine. It's there that he found the
only joy in his young life because even though she
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was his cousin, Katherine was beautiful and Edward, who was
tall and slim with dark hair and dark eyes, was
very handsome. The two cousins became enamored with one another.
The marriage between first cousins wasn't strictly forbidden in the
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nineteenth century. Roger's uncle, Sir Edward, was not a fan
of the idea. He forbade Roger from seeing Katherine until
their youthful attraction diminished the planned in work. Whenever Roger
had time away from the army, he would sneak back
to see Catherine, the two meeting in secret by moonlight.
They exchanged love letters written in code, but Catherine's father,
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Sir Edward, was never going to agree to the match.
Love sick lonely and desperate, Roger needed to get away.
The twenty three year old resigned his military position, where
his regiment had just been stationed in the British Isles,
and he left on a private tour of South America.
Roger's ship landed safely in Chile, where he received a
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letter informing him that his uncle had passed away just
weeks after Roger had departed on his voyage. Now Roger's
father was the baronet. The air continued his journey, traveling
through South America for nearly a year, crossing the Andies,
traveling to Buenos Aires and then to Brazil. It was
from a port in Rio de jan Era that Roger
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boarded a boat called Labella, sailing for Jamaica, what would
be one of the final stops on his tour. No
one aboard Labella was ever heard from again. Four days later,
a wreck was discovered off the Brazilian coast, presumed to
be the ill fated Bella. By all appearances, every passenger,
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including Roger Tickborne, had perished, but Roger's mother, Henriette now
Lady Tickborne, refused to believe that her eldest son was dead.
Roger had been her shining boy, the beautiful child she
had raised in Paris and spent the mornings with chattering
in French. He was the dashing soldier, well read, quiet,
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always polite, and he couldn't possibly be dead without telling
her husband. One afternoon, Lady Tickborn snuck out to see
a psychic in London, at the type of place where
a woman of her stature would have been more than
a little embarrassed to be seen, but Lady Tickborn didn't care.
She brought with her one of Roger's hats and a
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newspaper clipping but the wreck of the Bella, and laid
her beating heart onto the psychic's velvet covered table. The
psychic smiled and told Lady Tickborne that, without a doubt,
her son was still alive. There were rumors that the
passengers of the Bella, or at least some of them,
had been picked up by a ship and brought to Australia.
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Roger must have been among them. That was the conviction
that Lady Tickborne carried with her after the death of
her husband. When her indolent younger son, Alfred became the
new baronet, it was the conviction that Lady Tickborne carried
with her when Alfred's drinking and gambling nearly led him
to bankruptcy and he had to begin to lease out
the estates of Tickborne Park to tenants. And it's the
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conviction that she carried with her when she issued out
a series of advertisements in Australian newspapers, including the Sydney
Morning Herald, which a lawyer in Wagga Wagga named William
Gibbs just happened to read. The man who had been
(10:07):
going under the alias of Thomas Castro, whom history would
refer to as the Claimant, made his way from Wagga
Wagga to Sydney, where he raised money from banks on
the declaration that he was Roger Tickborne, heir to a
title and a vast fortune. The claimant said he had
been on the sinking Bella, but had been rescued by
a ship and made it to Melbourne, and with his
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memories adult from the trauma of the shipwreck, he had
made up the name Thomas Castro, taking on the surname
from a kind family he had met in South America.
The so called Thomas Castro then settled in Wagga Wagga,
began working as an apprentice. Butcher got married and had
a daughter. But now the memories were flooding back. He
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was actually Roger Tickborn and all he needed was enough
money to get back to England to see his mother.
In order to prove it while in Sydney, the claimant
meant a man from Roger Tickborn's past life, a servant
named Andrew Boggle. Boggle was born a slave in Jamaica,
but had stowed away with Roger's uncle Edward, and worked
with him as a man servant for many years until
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Edward's death, when Boggle was cast off unceremoniously into forced
retirement with a tiny pension. Most long time servants at
the time were given a small property upon retirement. Boggle
had been given scarcely enough to support himself, which necessitated
his move to Australia, where living was cheaper. At first,
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Boggle didn't recognize the man calling himself Roger Tickborn. As
a youth, Roger was lean, all angles and long legs.
The man before him was nearly two hundred pounds, his
facial features less defined. During his time in Sydney, the
claimant would gain twenty pounds, and he would gain another
forty pounds on the ship from Australia to England. Sympathizers
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explained he was just in joining his new found indulgent lifestyle.
Skeptics would say the man was purposely trying to distort
his appearance. But Bogle looked closely and he made his determination.
The man was most certainly Roger Tickborne. And so, with
the money he had raised in Australia, he his wife,
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his daughter and Boggle would all depart back in order
to claim his inheritance from his mother, Lady Tickborne. So
the claimant made his way to England. He stayed at
a hotel in London and whispered to the man at
the front desk that his identity was actually that of
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the missing Baronet, Roger Tickborne, but that it was top secret.
Moms the word. The receptionists promised. First thing that the
claimant set out to see Lady Tickborne at her London residence,
but when he got there he was told that the
lady was residing in Paris. Then the claimant went somewhere else.
He went to a rough Cockney neighborhood in East London
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called Wapon and as the first man he saw, if
he knew the whereabouts of family? Called Orton, Who's asking?
The stranger responded. The claimant said that he was close
friends with Arthur Orton. They had worked together in Australia
on a cattle station. Orton, the claimant said, had done
incredibly well for himself and was now one of the
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wealthiest and most successful men in Australia. The claimant was
told that the Orton family had left the area a
while back. Just over a week later, the claimant met
Lady Tickborne at the Hotel de Lille in Paris. Upon
seeing his face, Lady Tickborne burst into tears. It's my son,
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she cried. She embraced him and declared for all the
world to hear that her lost son Roger, had been
found at last. Although Lady Tickborne was fully convinced that
the claimant was the lost heir and haply bestowed an
income of a thousand pounds a year on him, the
rest of the Tickborn clan remained less than convinced. The
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claimant's physical stature aside, and by now he was nearly
four hundred pounds, he didn't speak a word of French,
nor did he speak with a French accent, and after
all French had been Roger's first language. The claimant mixed
up Greek and Latin, didn't know his Virgil, couldn't identify
distant family members, but then again, he didn't know small
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strange details about Roger's life. He knew the type of
fly fishing tackle Roger had used and the name of
the dog he had adopted during his travels in South America.
On one hand, he knew where certain paintings were located
at Tickborne Park. But on the other hand, he had
referred to his mother, Lady Tickborn, in a letter as Hannah,
even though her name was Henriette. Still, Lady Tickborn would
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hear nothing against the miraculous return of her son, and
though the family didn't allow him to formally claim the
baronet tight after the degenerate Alfred's death, that title went
to his infant son. The claimant still received a thousand
pounds a year annual income from her ladyship, and he
was quite content enjoying his new position in society as
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a rogue noble, that is, until Lady Tickborn died. To
the outrage of the Tickborne family. The claimant took the
position of chief mourner at her funeral to them, he
was a low born impostor, an embarrassing blight on their
family name, and he would receive no title and no
more money. Bankrupt, the claimants set up a fundraising venture
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in which he issued Tickborn bonds that holders could purchase
and then received interest for once he had claimed his
rightful inheritance. He made a living that way, affording enough
to temporarily maintain his posture living as a noble born gentleman.
But if he actually wished to prove to the world
that he was Roger Tickborne, then the claimant had only
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one an option. He needed to go to court. While
the claimant was living as either a pretender or a
populist hero, depending on your perspective, members of the Tickborne
family sent private investigators to try to look into the
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story that they were told the cleimant had mentioned that
he used to work with a man named Arthur Orton
on a cattle ranch in Australia. Maybe if they could
find Orton, they would uncover the truth about the claimant.
The Tickborne family agent traveled down to Australia and made
it to the old cattle station where the claimant had
claimed to work a place run by a man named
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William Foster. Foster's widow checked the old employment records. There
was an Arthur Orton listed, but no one by the
name of Thomas Castro the claimants alias. Maybe he had
been using another alias at the time. The agent showed
the widow the photograph of the man claiming to be
Roger Tickborn. Oh I do know him, she said, that's
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Arthur Orton. Arthur Orton, born in Wapping in England, was
the son of a butcher who had traveled to Chile
as a young man and later moved to Australia. He
worked at the cattle station owned by William Foster, but
his paper trail ends there. It's as if he disappeared
from existence or took up a new identity. When the
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claimants civil trial came to court in eighteen seventy one,
the defense lawyer asked about the mysterious Arthur Orton. The
claimant was evasive, saying they had been friends in Australia,
but that saying anything else about the time they had
spent together would incriminate him. Finally, the lawyer asked the
man on the standpoint blank, are you Arthur Orton? No?
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The claimant responded, I am not at stake in the
trial was Tickborne Park, which consisted of over two thousand
acres manners farm land in Hampshire and a number of
other properties in London and beyond. The baronet title would
afford whoever held it an annual income of what to
day would be several millions of dollars. The witnesses lined
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up to testify. Some pointed out that the claimant couldn't
speak French, or claimed that the real Roger Tickborn had
had tattoos. But some witnesses, former soldiers in Roger's battalion,
a servant that Roger had traveled with in South America,
maintained that after spending time with the man, the claimant
was Roger Tickborne. The defense lawyer had two hundred witnesses
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ready to go to disprove that claim, but the judge
held up his hand no more witnesses would be necessary.
The case was dismissed and the claimant was arrested on
charges of perjury. During that civil trial, the claimant had
become a massively popular figure of the public imagination. Here
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was a working class hero with a Cockney accent going
up against the aristocracy and the criminal system, being denied
something that belonged to him. I appealed to every British
soul who was inspired by a love of justice and
fair play, and is willing to defend the weak against
the strong, The claimant wrote in an essay appealing for
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donations for his upcoming criminal trial. Support poured in his
story was a Victorian sensation. His trial followed breathlessly. Knick
knacks were sold featuring the major players of the story.
Tickborne was recreated in wax at Madame Tousseau's In a
political cartoon published in Punch magazine in eighteen seventy one,
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the claimants to destroy the shoulders of a man demarcated
as quote representing the British public. The quote British public
man is sweating and read under the significant weight of
the claimant, his cheeks puffed out with effort. On either
side of the men are crowd holding signs Australia police, socialism, politics.
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The caption of the cartoon reads, I cannot be expected
to attend to any of you with this interesting topic
on my shoulders. George Bernard Shaw wrote about the case
and its peculiar contradictions and the introduction to his play
Andrew Cles and the Lion, A Shaw wrote, the claimants
attempt to pass himself off as a baronet was supported
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by an association of laborers, on the ground that the
tick Borne family, in resisting it, were trying to do
a laborer out of his rights. Two Shaw, the paradox
was obvious, who had to believe simultaneously that this man
was a cockney workman just like you, and at the
same time that he was a born and raised, legitimate aristocrat.
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Mark Twain also paid attention to the massively popular trial.
While in London, the celebrated writer was at a party
with the claimant, where he noticed the way Uppercross men
and women in high society always referred to him as
Sir Roger. It was Sir Roger, always, Sir Roger, on
all hands, no one withheld the title. Of course, the
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upper Cross didn't really believe that the man was Sir Roger.
The only reason that this man had been invited to
all these parties in the first place had been a
sort of a joke, a hilarious little pantomime like seeing
a monkey dressed in human clothes. But the claimant maintained
that he was Roger Tickborne, never wavering even as lawyers
and witnesses abandoned his case. His criminal trial for perjury
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lasted one hundred and eighty eight days, one of the
longest trials in English history, but the deliberation lasted only
thirty minutes. The jury declared that he was not Roger Tickborn,
and he was guilty on two counts of perjury and
sentenced to fourteen years in prison. The loss in court
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did nothing to quell the groundswell of popular support among
the working class for the claimant and his lawyer, an
eccentric irishman named Keennoy, who was ultimately disbarred thanks to
his violent and excessive performance in court during the trial.
But Kenoy used that popularity to launch a campaign for
election to Parliament, which he won in a landslide victory.
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But if the people were hoping for a champion, they
had unfortunately chosen the wrong one. Keen only attempted to
get the House of Commons to establish a Royal Commission
to re examine the Tickborn case, but it only received
a single gay vote. His own popularity and fervor over
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Roger Tickborne and his mysterious disappearance and reappearance gradually dissolved,
and newspapers moved on to covering newer and more exciting gossip.
In eighty four, after serving a ten year sentence, the
man the public had come to know as the Claimant
was released from prison. He had lost nearly a hundred
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and fifty pounds. Ironically, his time in jail had made
him look even more like Roger Tickborn than ever before.
His old supporters attempted to rally him into their populist
political movements, but the claimant had no interest in any
of that. Instead, he made paid appearances at dance halls
and circuses and married a young music hall singer he
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had long since separated from his Australian wife. When no
one in England seemed to care about him anymore, he
went to America, where he thought he still might make
some money. But no one in America cared about who
he was either, and the claimant worked as a bartender
there Before coming back to England. A newspaper paid him
a few hundred pounds for a confession that he was
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Arthur Orton all along. The claimant retracted that confession as
soon as he spent the money. The claimant died in
abject poverty on April Fool's Day in eighteen. His funeral
was attended by nearly five thousand people. For one last moment,
the public seemed to care about him again. Some call
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it foolishness or kindness or mercy, but for whatever reason,
the Tickborne family permitted a card on the claimant's coffin
that said Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tickborn. And so it
was a coffin that bared the title of a baronet
that was laid into a pauper's grave. That's the end
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of the claimant's life, but his story doesn't end there.
Stick around after a brief sponsor break to learn more
about how the Tickborn case lives on a century later.
Because the Tickborne controversy had happened a century before the
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discovery of DNA evidence, it's impossible to determine for certain
who the claimant actually was. He went to his grave
still declaring that he was Roger Tickborn. Years later, the
claimant's daughter would go on to say that her father
had confessed to her that he had accidentally killed Arthur
Orton back in Australia, and that's why he couldn't reveal
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the true details of his past. The claimant's daughter would
spend a lifetime declaring that she was Roger Tickborne's daughter.
Some believe that the claimant was Arthur Orton all along,
and that he was helped in the details of Roger's
life by the disgruntled servant Boggle, angry at the Tickborne
family for terminating his position and looking for revenge, Perhaps
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they orchestrated the conspiracy together. Another theory is that the
real Roger Tickborn had made it to Australia and befriended
the man who would later claim his identity. Maybe that
man had killed the real Roger Tickborn. In his nineteen
fifty seven book The Tickborne Claimant, Douglas Woodruff argues that
it's possible the claimant actually might have been the real
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Roger Tickborn all along. After all, what kind of lunatic
would travel halfway across the world with the wife and
daughter in tow to meet a mother and a family
he knew nothing about if he had nothing to go on.
The soap opera saga of the Tickborn case captivated the
Victorian public, but it's a story that continues to fascinate
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modern audiences. In the Simpsons, writer Ken Keeler Pendant episode,
he says was influenced by the Tickborn case. In the
episode Principal, Skinner reveals that his real name is Armand
Tamsarian and that as a soldier in the Vietnam War,
he made friends with the fellow platoon man named Skinner.
When Skinner was assumed dead, Tamsarian went to Springfield in
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order to deliver the bad news to his mother. Mrs
Skinner mistook Tamsarian for her own son, and Tam'sarian began
life anew under a false name. It was an episode
so outlandish that some critics consider at the end of
The Simpsons Golden Age. Ironically enough, the episode takes its
title from a story by Mark Twain. It's called The
(27:00):
Principal and the Pauper. Noble Blood is a co production
of I Heart Radio and Aaron Mankey. The show is
written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey,
Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is
on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can
(27:21):
learn more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales
dot com. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart
Radio and Aaron Minkey Listener discretion advised. In the summer
of eighteen sixty five, an Australian lawyer named William Gibbs
was sitting in his office reading the Sydney Morning Herald.
His eyes glazed over a large advertisement. The ad had
(00:22):
been placed in papers for weeks, and by now Gibbs
practically knew the words by heart. A handsome reward will
be given to any person who can furnish such information
as will discover the fate of Roger Charles Tickborne. He
sailed from the port of Rio de Janeiro on the
twentieth of April eighteen fifty four in the ship Labella,
(00:43):
and has never been heard of since. Roger Tickborn ship,
it seemed, had completely wrecked, but rumor had reached England
that the survivors had been rescued by ship headed to Australia,
and Roger's mother, Lady Tickborne, was conveyed iNTS that her
son still lived, making him the rightful heir to the
(01:03):
tick Born baronetcy. Gibbs put down the newspaper and looked
at his next client, a local butcher from Wagga Wagga
named Thomas Castro. Castro's situation was pretty bleak. There wasn't
much Gibbs could do to help him. Do you have
any other properties that you could maybe liquidate? He asked,
any valuable as you could sell any family abroad. Castor
(01:27):
was evasive. Yes, there was some property. He had an
entitlement back in England, but most of his possessions and
his paperwork had been lost in a shipwreck. Castro pulled
out a beautifully carved briar pipe and began smoking. It
was the pipe of a gentleman, and Castor had hoped
it added an air of legitimacy to the excuses he
(01:48):
made to his lawyer. Please, sir, he said, I have
a wife and daughter. Isn't there something you can do
for me? Gibbs asked for a closer look at Castro's pipe.
On the side of the burn mahogany would were three
gilded initials, almost invisible in the surface. R. C. T.
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Roger Charles Tickborn. Gibbs salivated. His mouth tasted like copper.
He rose to his feet and paced to the window,
then paced back to his desk. All while the butcher
who had called himself, Thomas Castro watched him nervously. I think,
Gibbs said, still walking, pacing in steady circles around his
(02:31):
small hot office. I think you've been lying to me.
I don't know what you're talking about. Castro answered. I think,
Gibbs said, his voice triumphant, that your real name is
Roger Tickborne. Castro's eyes caught the newspaper still splayed on
Gibbs's desk. He saw the words reward, inheritance, and air.
(02:57):
The man cleared his throat, he in and exiled, and
then looked right into gives his eyes and said two
words that would send Victorian England into a frenzy to
words that would launch the longest trial England had seen
up until that point, Words that would tear families and
lives apart, Words that would captivate writers like Mark Twain
(03:20):
and George Bernard Shaw and ignite a populist movement. The man,
using the name Thomas Castro, who from that day on
would most commonly be referred to as the claimant, looked
directly at his lawyer and said, you're right. I'm Danish
Schwartz and this is noble blood. The story of the
(03:49):
tick Borne claimant doesn't actually begin in Australia. It doesn't
actually begin in England either. It begins in France, in
a cell in eighteen o three, where an English nobleman
named Henry Seymour was imprisoned during the Napoleonic Wars. Also
imprisoned with him was a man named James Tickborne, one
(04:11):
of the sons of an English baronet. Henry Seymour didn't
let a little thing like being a prisoner of war
stop him from enjoying himself. While in captivity, He seduced
the daughter of the Duc de Bourbon and became the
father of a daughter whom they named Henriette. Years passed
and Henriette still hadn't found a husband. When she turned twenty,
(04:32):
her father, Henry Seymour, took matters into his own hands
and decided to arrange a match with James Tickborne, his
former brother in arms as a prisoner of war in France.
So what if James was twice Henriette's age, was ugly
and had the conversational abilities of a brick wall. Henriette
was twenty already an old maid, and James, as the
(04:54):
son of a baronet, was a suitable match, and so
the pair got married and had a son of their own,
Roger Charles Doughty Tickborn. James was his father's fourth son,
and so the odds weren't in his favor when it
came to him or his son Roger inheriting the baronetcy.
But as luck would have it, his older brother died
with no male heirs, his second eldest brother died young,
(05:18):
also with no children, and his third brother only had
a daughter, a girl named Catherine, and so it was
young Roger who was raised with the knowledge that he
would one day become the baronet. As one might have predicted,
the arranged marriage between Henriette and James Tickborne was rocky
at best. Although they eventually had another surviving son named Alfred,
(05:41):
the spouses lived almost entirely separate lives. With her French pedigree,
Henriette believed that France would be the best place to
give her son Roger a proper education, and so she
brought little Roger with her to Paris, where he spoke
French before he spoke English. The little heir lived there
until his father intervened and sent him to a British
boarding school, where British schoolboys. Being British schoolboys, Roger was
(06:05):
endlessly mocked for his thick French accent. His adolescence was
not a happy one. After school, Roger joined the British
Army and during his leaves he would spend time at
Tickborne Park with his uncle Edward, the Baronet, his aunt
and his cousin Katherine. It's there that he found the
only joy in his young life because even though she
(06:28):
was his cousin, Katherine was beautiful and Edward, who was
tall and slim with dark hair and dark eyes, was
very handsome. The two cousins became enamored with one another.
The marriage between first cousins wasn't strictly forbidden in the
(06:48):
nineteenth century. Roger's uncle, Sir Edward, was not a fan
of the idea. He forbade Roger from seeing Katherine until
their youthful attraction diminished the planned in work. Whenever Roger
had time away from the army, he would sneak back
to see Catherine, the two meeting in secret by moonlight.
They exchanged love letters written in code, but Catherine's father,
(07:11):
Sir Edward, was never going to agree to the match.
Love sick lonely and desperate, Roger needed to get away.
The twenty three year old resigned his military position, where
his regiment had just been stationed in the British Isles,
and he left on a private tour of South America.
Roger's ship landed safely in Chile, where he received a
(07:33):
letter informing him that his uncle had passed away just
weeks after Roger had departed on his voyage. Now Roger's
father was the baronet. The air continued his journey, traveling
through South America for nearly a year, crossing the Andies,
traveling to Buenos Aires and then to Brazil. It was
from a port in Rio de jan Era that Roger
(07:55):
boarded a boat called Labella, sailing for Jamaica, what would
be one of the final stops on his tour. No
one aboard Labella was ever heard from again. Four days later,
a wreck was discovered off the Brazilian coast, presumed to
be the ill fated Bella. By all appearances, every passenger,
(08:16):
including Roger Tickborne, had perished, but Roger's mother, Henriette now
Lady Tickborne, refused to believe that her eldest son was dead.
Roger had been her shining boy, the beautiful child she
had raised in Paris and spent the mornings with chattering
in French. He was the dashing soldier, well read, quiet,
(08:36):
always polite, and he couldn't possibly be dead without telling
her husband. One afternoon, Lady Tickborn snuck out to see
a psychic in London, at the type of place where
a woman of her stature would have been more than
a little embarrassed to be seen, but Lady Tickborn didn't care.
She brought with her one of Roger's hats and a
(08:58):
newspaper clipping but the wreck of the Bella, and laid
her beating heart onto the psychic's velvet covered table. The
psychic smiled and told Lady Tickborne that, without a doubt,
her son was still alive. There were rumors that the
passengers of the Bella, or at least some of them,
had been picked up by a ship and brought to Australia.
(09:21):
Roger must have been among them. That was the conviction
that Lady Tickborne carried with her after the death of
her husband. When her indolent younger son, Alfred became the
new baronet, it was the conviction that Lady Tickborne carried
with her when Alfred's drinking and gambling nearly led him
to bankruptcy and he had to begin to lease out
the estates of Tickborne Park to tenants. And it's the
(09:44):
conviction that she carried with her when she issued out
a series of advertisements in Australian newspapers, including the Sydney
Morning Herald, which a lawyer in Wagga Wagga named William
Gibbs just happened to read. The man who had been
(10:07):
going under the alias of Thomas Castro, whom history would
refer to as the Claimant, made his way from Wagga
Wagga to Sydney, where he raised money from banks on
the declaration that he was Roger Tickborne, heir to a
title and a vast fortune. The claimant said he had
been on the sinking Bella, but had been rescued by
a ship and made it to Melbourne, and with his
(10:30):
memories adult from the trauma of the shipwreck, he had
made up the name Thomas Castro, taking on the surname
from a kind family he had met in South America.
The so called Thomas Castro then settled in Wagga Wagga,
began working as an apprentice. Butcher got married and had
a daughter. But now the memories were flooding back. He
(10:51):
was actually Roger Tickborn and all he needed was enough
money to get back to England to see his mother.
In order to prove it while in Sydney, the claimant
meant a man from Roger Tickborn's past life, a servant
named Andrew Boggle. Boggle was born a slave in Jamaica,
but had stowed away with Roger's uncle Edward, and worked
with him as a man servant for many years until
(11:14):
Edward's death, when Boggle was cast off unceremoniously into forced
retirement with a tiny pension. Most long time servants at
the time were given a small property upon retirement. Boggle
had been given scarcely enough to support himself, which necessitated
his move to Australia, where living was cheaper. At first,
(11:34):
Boggle didn't recognize the man calling himself Roger Tickborn. As
a youth, Roger was lean, all angles and long legs.
The man before him was nearly two hundred pounds, his
facial features less defined. During his time in Sydney, the
claimant would gain twenty pounds, and he would gain another
forty pounds on the ship from Australia to England. Sympathizers
(11:58):
explained he was just in joining his new found indulgent lifestyle.
Skeptics would say the man was purposely trying to distort
his appearance. But Bogle looked closely and he made his determination.
The man was most certainly Roger Tickborne. And so, with
the money he had raised in Australia, he his wife,
(12:19):
his daughter and Boggle would all depart back in order
to claim his inheritance from his mother, Lady Tickborne. So
the claimant made his way to England. He stayed at
a hotel in London and whispered to the man at
the front desk that his identity was actually that of
(12:41):
the missing Baronet, Roger Tickborne, but that it was top secret.
Moms the word. The receptionists promised. First thing that the
claimant set out to see Lady Tickborne at her London residence,
but when he got there he was told that the
lady was residing in Paris. Then the claimant went somewhere else.
He went to a rough Cockney neighborhood in East London
(13:03):
called Wapon and as the first man he saw, if
he knew the whereabouts of family? Called Orton, Who's asking?
The stranger responded. The claimant said that he was close
friends with Arthur Orton. They had worked together in Australia
on a cattle station. Orton, the claimant said, had done
incredibly well for himself and was now one of the
(13:24):
wealthiest and most successful men in Australia. The claimant was
told that the Orton family had left the area a
while back. Just over a week later, the claimant met
Lady Tickborne at the Hotel de Lille in Paris. Upon
seeing his face, Lady Tickborne burst into tears. It's my son,
(13:44):
she cried. She embraced him and declared for all the
world to hear that her lost son Roger, had been
found at last. Although Lady Tickborne was fully convinced that
the claimant was the lost heir and haply bestowed an
income of a thousand pounds a year on him, the
rest of the Tickborn clan remained less than convinced. The
(14:07):
claimant's physical stature aside, and by now he was nearly
four hundred pounds, he didn't speak a word of French,
nor did he speak with a French accent, and after
all French had been Roger's first language. The claimant mixed
up Greek and Latin, didn't know his Virgil, couldn't identify
distant family members, but then again, he didn't know small
(14:28):
strange details about Roger's life. He knew the type of
fly fishing tackle Roger had used and the name of
the dog he had adopted during his travels in South America.
On one hand, he knew where certain paintings were located
at Tickborne Park. But on the other hand, he had
referred to his mother, Lady Tickborn, in a letter as Hannah,
even though her name was Henriette. Still, Lady Tickborn would
(14:52):
hear nothing against the miraculous return of her son, and
though the family didn't allow him to formally claim the
baronet tight after the degenerate Alfred's death, that title went
to his infant son. The claimant still received a thousand
pounds a year annual income from her ladyship, and he
was quite content enjoying his new position in society as
(15:13):
a rogue noble, that is, until Lady Tickborn died. To
the outrage of the Tickborne family. The claimant took the
position of chief mourner at her funeral to them, he
was a low born impostor, an embarrassing blight on their
family name, and he would receive no title and no
more money. Bankrupt, the claimants set up a fundraising venture
(15:37):
in which he issued Tickborn bonds that holders could purchase
and then received interest for once he had claimed his
rightful inheritance. He made a living that way, affording enough
to temporarily maintain his posture living as a noble born gentleman.
But if he actually wished to prove to the world
that he was Roger Tickborne, then the claimant had only
(15:59):
one an option. He needed to go to court. While
the claimant was living as either a pretender or a
populist hero, depending on your perspective, members of the Tickborne
family sent private investigators to try to look into the
(16:21):
story that they were told the cleimant had mentioned that
he used to work with a man named Arthur Orton
on a cattle ranch in Australia. Maybe if they could
find Orton, they would uncover the truth about the claimant.
The Tickborne family agent traveled down to Australia and made
it to the old cattle station where the claimant had
claimed to work a place run by a man named
(16:43):
William Foster. Foster's widow checked the old employment records. There
was an Arthur Orton listed, but no one by the
name of Thomas Castro the claimants alias. Maybe he had
been using another alias at the time. The agent showed
the widow the photograph of the man claiming to be
Roger Tickborn. Oh I do know him, she said, that's
(17:05):
Arthur Orton. Arthur Orton, born in Wapping in England, was
the son of a butcher who had traveled to Chile
as a young man and later moved to Australia. He
worked at the cattle station owned by William Foster, but
his paper trail ends there. It's as if he disappeared
from existence or took up a new identity. When the
(17:28):
claimants civil trial came to court in eighteen seventy one,
the defense lawyer asked about the mysterious Arthur Orton. The
claimant was evasive, saying they had been friends in Australia,
but that saying anything else about the time they had
spent together would incriminate him. Finally, the lawyer asked the
man on the standpoint blank, are you Arthur Orton? No?
(17:51):
The claimant responded, I am not at stake in the
trial was Tickborne Park, which consisted of over two thousand
acres manners farm land in Hampshire and a number of
other properties in London and beyond. The baronet title would
afford whoever held it an annual income of what to
day would be several millions of dollars. The witnesses lined
(18:14):
up to testify. Some pointed out that the claimant couldn't
speak French, or claimed that the real Roger Tickborn had
had tattoos. But some witnesses, former soldiers in Roger's battalion,
a servant that Roger had traveled with in South America,
maintained that after spending time with the man, the claimant
was Roger Tickborne. The defense lawyer had two hundred witnesses
(18:37):
ready to go to disprove that claim, but the judge
held up his hand no more witnesses would be necessary.
The case was dismissed and the claimant was arrested on
charges of perjury. During that civil trial, the claimant had
become a massively popular figure of the public imagination. Here
(19:00):
was a working class hero with a Cockney accent going
up against the aristocracy and the criminal system, being denied
something that belonged to him. I appealed to every British
soul who was inspired by a love of justice and
fair play, and is willing to defend the weak against
the strong, The claimant wrote in an essay appealing for
(19:20):
donations for his upcoming criminal trial. Support poured in his
story was a Victorian sensation. His trial followed breathlessly. Knick
knacks were sold featuring the major players of the story.
Tickborne was recreated in wax at Madame Tousseau's In a
political cartoon published in Punch magazine in eighteen seventy one,
(19:43):
the claimants to destroy the shoulders of a man demarcated
as quote representing the British public. The quote British public
man is sweating and read under the significant weight of
the claimant, his cheeks puffed out with effort. On either
side of the men are crowd holding signs Australia police, socialism, politics.
(20:04):
The caption of the cartoon reads, I cannot be expected
to attend to any of you with this interesting topic
on my shoulders. George Bernard Shaw wrote about the case
and its peculiar contradictions and the introduction to his play
Andrew Cles and the Lion, A Shaw wrote, the claimants
attempt to pass himself off as a baronet was supported
(20:25):
by an association of laborers, on the ground that the
tick Borne family, in resisting it, were trying to do
a laborer out of his rights. Two Shaw, the paradox
was obvious, who had to believe simultaneously that this man
was a cockney workman just like you, and at the
same time that he was a born and raised, legitimate aristocrat.
(20:47):
Mark Twain also paid attention to the massively popular trial.
While in London, the celebrated writer was at a party
with the claimant, where he noticed the way Uppercross men
and women in high society always referred to him as
Sir Roger. It was Sir Roger, always, Sir Roger, on
all hands, no one withheld the title. Of course, the
(21:07):
upper Cross didn't really believe that the man was Sir Roger.
The only reason that this man had been invited to
all these parties in the first place had been a
sort of a joke, a hilarious little pantomime like seeing
a monkey dressed in human clothes. But the claimant maintained
that he was Roger Tickborne, never wavering even as lawyers
and witnesses abandoned his case. His criminal trial for perjury
(21:32):
lasted one hundred and eighty eight days, one of the
longest trials in English history, but the deliberation lasted only
thirty minutes. The jury declared that he was not Roger Tickborn,
and he was guilty on two counts of perjury and
sentenced to fourteen years in prison. The loss in court
(21:54):
did nothing to quell the groundswell of popular support among
the working class for the claimant and his lawyer, an
eccentric irishman named Keennoy, who was ultimately disbarred thanks to
his violent and excessive performance in court during the trial.
But Kenoy used that popularity to launch a campaign for
election to Parliament, which he won in a landslide victory.
(22:17):
But if the people were hoping for a champion, they
had unfortunately chosen the wrong one. Keen only attempted to
get the House of Commons to establish a Royal Commission
to re examine the Tickborn case, but it only received
a single gay vote. His own popularity and fervor over
(22:38):
Roger Tickborne and his mysterious disappearance and reappearance gradually dissolved,
and newspapers moved on to covering newer and more exciting gossip.
In eighty four, after serving a ten year sentence, the
man the public had come to know as the Claimant
was released from prison. He had lost nearly a hundred
(22:58):
and fifty pounds. Ironically, his time in jail had made
him look even more like Roger Tickborn than ever before.
His old supporters attempted to rally him into their populist
political movements, but the claimant had no interest in any
of that. Instead, he made paid appearances at dance halls
and circuses and married a young music hall singer he
(23:18):
had long since separated from his Australian wife. When no
one in England seemed to care about him anymore, he
went to America, where he thought he still might make
some money. But no one in America cared about who
he was either, and the claimant worked as a bartender
there Before coming back to England. A newspaper paid him
a few hundred pounds for a confession that he was
(23:39):
Arthur Orton all along. The claimant retracted that confession as
soon as he spent the money. The claimant died in
abject poverty on April Fool's Day in eighteen. His funeral
was attended by nearly five thousand people. For one last moment,
the public seemed to care about him again. Some call
(24:00):
it foolishness or kindness or mercy, but for whatever reason,
the Tickborne family permitted a card on the claimant's coffin
that said Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tickborn. And so it
was a coffin that bared the title of a baronet
that was laid into a pauper's grave. That's the end
(24:28):
of the claimant's life, but his story doesn't end there.
Stick around after a brief sponsor break to learn more
about how the Tickborn case lives on a century later.
Because the Tickborne controversy had happened a century before the
(24:49):
discovery of DNA evidence, it's impossible to determine for certain
who the claimant actually was. He went to his grave
still declaring that he was Roger Tickborn. Years later, the
claimant's daughter would go on to say that her father
had confessed to her that he had accidentally killed Arthur
Orton back in Australia, and that's why he couldn't reveal
(25:09):
the true details of his past. The claimant's daughter would
spend a lifetime declaring that she was Roger Tickborne's daughter.
Some believe that the claimant was Arthur Orton all along,
and that he was helped in the details of Roger's
life by the disgruntled servant Boggle, angry at the Tickborne
family for terminating his position and looking for revenge, Perhaps
(25:31):
they orchestrated the conspiracy together. Another theory is that the
real Roger Tickborn had made it to Australia and befriended
the man who would later claim his identity. Maybe that
man had killed the real Roger Tickborn. In his nineteen
fifty seven book The Tickborne Claimant, Douglas Woodruff argues that
it's possible the claimant actually might have been the real
(25:53):
Roger Tickborn all along. After all, what kind of lunatic
would travel halfway across the world with the wife and
daughter in tow to meet a mother and a family
he knew nothing about if he had nothing to go on.
The soap opera saga of the Tickborn case captivated the
Victorian public, but it's a story that continues to fascinate
(26:13):
modern audiences. In the Simpsons, writer Ken Keeler Pendant episode,
he says was influenced by the Tickborn case. In the
episode Principal, Skinner reveals that his real name is Armand
Tamsarian and that as a soldier in the Vietnam War,
he made friends with the fellow platoon man named Skinner.
When Skinner was assumed dead, Tamsarian went to Springfield in
(26:37):
order to deliver the bad news to his mother. Mrs
Skinner mistook Tamsarian for her own son, and Tam'sarian began
life anew under a false name. It was an episode
so outlandish that some critics consider at the end of
The Simpsons Golden Age. Ironically enough, the episode takes its
title from a story by Mark Twain. It's called The
(27:00):
Principal and the Pauper. Noble Blood is a co production
of I Heart Radio and Aaron Mankey. The show is
written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey,
Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is
on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can
(27:21):
learn more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales
dot com. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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