The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-03-07 00:00:00

A REVIEW OF THE TICHBORNE
CASE.
(From Monday's Times.)

At length the great trial ie over ; the impostor who
'assumed the name and attempted to a,qnfre the in-
heritance of Roger Tichborne, has been identified ae
Arthur Orton; and hie accumulate i perjuries have
been visited with a sentence of penal servituds for
fourteen yeare—a sentence declared by the Jin'ge who
pronounced it to be quite Inadequate to meet the
enormity of hie crime. There can be but one feeling of
gratitude that the protracted and, sa it almost set med,
interminable proceedings of the trial 14ie reached their
close without the occurrence of any of the numerous
accidents any one of which might have made it neces-
sary to begin the promos again from the beginning,
and that when the time arrived for the delivery of the
owe into the hands of the jury less than half all hour
sufficed for them to return their verdict, and to append
to it the ohservations they felt themselves bound to
make in vindication of the lady wnose chat acter the

. •
convict sought to blast, and in condemnation of the
language and forensic conduct of the leading counsel
for the defence. If the claim of the pretender has
now been before the public for eight years, if it Is
six years since he applied to the Court of Chancery
as a first step in &wetting it, if it is three years
since he commenced a trial of ejectment in the Court

Wo'Otn—m-o-n—Fleas, and nine moans since be was him-
self put upon his trial in respect of perjuries com-
mitted in Ms affidavit filed in Chancery and in his
examination and crone-examination in the Common
Pleas, it is at least satisfactory that the verdict of
the jury should have been at the last pronounced
without hesitation, with the entire approval of the
Judges, and with the full concurrence of the national
judgment. The process may have bees: tardy; the
result is sure. There is still, possibly, one excep-
tion in the person who prejudged Jean Luis's cane
In his favour, but the other believers in the Me of
the Claimant have one by one fallen away. The
rowdy sympathizers with the convict who to the lest
applauded his enterprise did not affect to believe that
he was the person he pretended to he ; they were
carried away by the spectacle of his audacity and his
endurance, and accorded him the same admiration
which was formerly rendered to those who maintained
their courage as they slowly passed along the Oxford
road to Tyburn.

It has been freely said, and will probably be often
said again, that the length of time consumed before
Arthur Orton has been convicted as • perjured im-
postor is a scandal upon our law. We cannot join in
this opinion. Scandal tea re has been, undoubtedly;
but the blame is misplaced when it in attributed to the
adminieffration of justice. The real ground of humilia-
tion is the defect of common-sense and the imperfect
education of so large a proportion of the Euglish
people. If one thing more than another is and ought
to be the object of training in schools, in colleges, and
in daily life, it should be to enable a man of full years
and in the pessearion of ordinary faculties to know what
to believe and what to disbelieve, to discriminate the
value and the weight of evidence, to reject the false and
to detect the true. La eyers are, no doubt, especially
trained for, rich exercioms and in very difficult insure we
may have to ask their help in guiding us to right con-
clusion.; but no man can be excused for going utterly
wrong in a simple case. It would have been quite
impossible for this man Orton to have kept up his
enterprise for a fortnight if his way had not been
made easy by a number of dupes of various ranks,
which for weeks and months, and even yeare, went
on increasing. When he first started at Wagga.
Wagga there was nothing in his favour except the
impudence of his clahn. The improbahi.ity that a
butcher or hutcher'e assistant in an Australian settle-
ment should falsely claim to be the inheritor of
• Baronetcy is so strong as to raise a taint pre-
etunptiou that the claim must be true ; but the
moment it was seen that he was quite ignorant of
the history, the education, and the family of the
person he pretended to be this presumption lost
its feeble influence. Long before Orton left Australia
it was discovered that he knew nothing of the history
of Roger Tichb orite, that he did not know where the
family property was, that he did not en, n know hie
owe mother's name. If any one will consider how the
case stood at the moment Orton set sail from Mel-
bourne, he mud conclude that no person of any
power of judgment could regard him as other than an
impoetor. Yet the convict had believers there, and
believers free from any interest in his success.. His re.
cognition as her son by Lady Tichborne on
arrival in Paris told moat powerfully, and very
justly, in his favour with the public, who knew
nothing more of him than that after years of absence
be had been welcomed by a motner as her long lost
eldest born son; but, with all the weight of the pre-
sumption thus raised on his behalf, it is most difficult
to understand how men and women who saw him day
after day could have remained persuaded of the reality
of his claim. We do not wish to press hardly upon
the respectable witnesses who came forward to give
honest testimony in his favour during the action for
ejectment in the Common Pleas, profoundly conscioueltil
they must now be that they were duped with their eyes
open; but the truth must not be overlooked that, f the
trials in the Common P 1611.8 and Queen's Bench have
been long and tedious, it has been solely because a
large array of unimpeachable witnesses had suffered
themselves to be gulled by an I npostor with all
the marks of his imposture upon him. If they
had not been deplorati y credulous and incapable
of diatinguiehing the force and weakness of the
circumstances upon which their receghition of the
Claimant depended, he could never have brought his
case into Court, much less have ce a 'pied years be-
fore he could be convicted as • perjurer. But we will
not leave the wimeasee who were deluded without
some consolation. If they fell into an open-trap, half
England ehowed themselves ready to do the same. NVe
are all now persuaded that the Claimant is a lowborn,
illiterate, vulgar scoundrel, without any traces of edu-
cation either of ichools or of society, with no lingering
eugigestion of culture of any kind about him; but how
stood the matter when the case of the Claimant closed
In the Common Pleas? We have always regretted that
the Jury in that action did not then intervene to sip
it. They perhaps felt it was denirsohle to give Lady
Radcliffe an immediate opportunity of ...contradicting the
Claimant on moth, instead of leaving her to vindicate
herself by a subsequent trial for perjury ; but her
character needed no such help, and the effect of an
instant declaration on their part that the Claimant
Lai altogether failed to make out his case would
have been gteat and beneficial. It is too possible
that they hesitated to make this statement be-
cause they had not made up their minds to it, and it
Is certain that when the Claimarr's case closed half
England believed hint to be the real Roger Tichborne.
Tne sources of all his information were clearly re-
vea:ed in the course of the examination and cross
examination of himself and his VALI:It/A.4 and while
he knew nothing but what he had had opportunities
of learning, his uttor ignorance of every part of the
life of the man he pretended to be, except facts on
which he had been instructed or had picked up infor-
mation rot obvious quarters, waa conclusive against
him. Yet this Was not the clear judgment of the
public. Perrone respected as authorities remained
doubtful whether he was not the man oven at the close
td the Claimant's cross-examination by the Attorney-
General, aud some were still convinced that his claim
was venume.
The came he closed. and if It. history shall lead us to
understand something of what are the criteria of truth
the time it has absorbed will not to, wholly wasted.
The :scandal of its length rests, as we have said—aud
we repeat it—not upon the law, but upon the
credulity of the Englith poople. It may, however,
be admitted that a process of such unexampled
duration will naturally find out some of the weak
points of our Criminal prsetice, and there are un-
doubtedly lessons to be learnt from it which suggests
amendments of our procedu se. The Lord Chief
Junims rec mmended t at the Bench should have
power to summon and examine witnesses whose evi-
dence would be Material to the issues before the
Court when it appeared that counsel on both sides
avoided calling them. It is needless to say that
this opinion nowt have great weight, but. it is • fair
subject for dinurwion whether the defect to whi .h
it refers may not he better remedied in another way.
Counsel are often deterred from calling a witneot
to prove some isolated fact in respect of which he
can give the beat possiole evidence because by calling
a witness they make him their own, and every-
thing he may sub:evenly say in answer to the other
side is treated as their own evidence. Is there any
sufficient reason for maintaining this principle? Why
should Mr. Hawkins have been meddled with the
re,ponsibi.ity of all that Arthur Orion's sisters and
brother might say about the Claimant if he bad
called them to prove the facts of the Claimant's nom-
natmications with them? There are several other
points raised by the trial which are worth future
nonsileration, and We may perhaps name tWo.
The control of the Court over counsel appears in
practice defective, while, on the other hand, the limits
and conditions of the general jurisdiction over con-
tsnept of Court appear alarmingly wide. This juris-
diction WU often exercised in the coarse of the trial,
and it would seem desirable, in the interest of the
Bench itself, that soma definition of it should be
attempted, aid some clear regulation of the process of
-.tatting it in force.

Noticing the abc ve leader, Mr. W. Hamilton Crake, Frit-
mso nt th.. ste Jury In "Tlchborne v Lushlngton,' Wlll4ll
ty The imes
Sir, —Your leader of this morning contains the fol.
lowing :
linthow stood the matter when the case of the
Cialmsnt closed In the Common Picas? We love always
regretted that the jury in that Saha did not Intervene to
stop IL"
And further on :
"it IR certain, when the Claimant's cams dosed, half Eng-
land believed him to be the real Pop r Tichborne."
- •

The jury with wh m I had the honour to serve were
in duty bond to listen to the last wold of evidence
test could be proouced in the Claimant's favour.
The voice of " half Eogland," who, you state, be-
lieved in the Claimant at the close of his trial, would
have spoken out in no uncertain language of less than
justice done to the Claimant if the jury had stopped
the case, as suggested.
Lady Radcliffe's husband appealed to the Court and
jury in earnest terms, and aught the earliest
1.14-nutty of being heard, but the rules of the Court
denied him the privilege at the time.
Whet would all Ruglaud have said—and with justice,
too—if the jury had intervened before Lady Radcliffe
had had so opirori un'ty of being heard
I coutehd, 81r, that it was the bouuden duty of the
jury to hear the last witness for the plairaiff, to secure
a hearing for the members of the T ice oorne family, and
until both of thee ends were acoodiphsbed they would
bays been wrong to stop the trial.
71, Old Broad-street, March 2.