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Speaker 1: Hello, Welcome to this day history class, where we dust

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Speaker 1: off a little piece of history every day. Today is

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Speaker 1: February nineteen. The day was February eighteen seventy four. It

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Speaker 1: was the last day of Regina versus Castro, a criminal

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Speaker 1: trial that lasted one eight eight court days, one of

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Speaker 1: the longest cases in English legal history. The star of

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Speaker 1: the trial was a man who claimed to be the

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Speaker 1: heir to the Titchborn baronetcy. A baronetcy is a hereditary

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Speaker 1: honor awarded by the British Crown that's usually given to

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Speaker 1: families of nobility or wealth. The Titchborns were a wealthy

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Speaker 1: family in Hampshire, England, and the oldest Titchborn son, Roger,

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Speaker 1: was next in to be baronet. But he went missing,

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Speaker 1: and when Roger's mom, Henriette Titchborne, desperately searched for any

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Speaker 1: clues as to where Roger could be, the claimant stepped

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Speaker 1: up saying he was Roger. It's a weird series of

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Speaker 1: events that brings us to this day, the day on

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Speaker 1: which the claimant was found guilty of perjury for lying

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Speaker 1: about being Roger Tichborne. The Titchborne case is still shrouded

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Speaker 1: in mystery, but like any good years long scandalous drama

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Speaker 1: should the case took Victorian England by storm, Roger traveled

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Speaker 1: a lot. After making his way around South America, Roger

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Speaker 1: hopped on a ship called the Bella on April eighteen

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Speaker 1: fifty four at Rio Day Janeiro. The ship was headed

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Speaker 1: to Kingston, Jamaica and New York, but a few days later,

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Speaker 1: package in a lifeboat bearing the name Bella were found

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Speaker 1: off the coast of Brazil. The ship and people on

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Speaker 1: it were considered lost. Roger's father accepted the fact that

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Speaker 1: his son was gone, but Roger's mother, Lady Titchborne, held

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Speaker 1: out hope that her son was still out there somewhere.

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Speaker 1: She even contact a clairvoyant who told her that her

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Speaker 1: son was alive. And on top of that, there were

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Speaker 1: whispers that the people who survived the Belareck were rescued

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Speaker 1: and taken to Australia. So Lady Titchborne put out advertisements

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Speaker 1: offering money to anyone who could provide information on Roger's whereabouts.

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Speaker 1: Her appeals were unsuccessful. Initially, Roger's father died in eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty two, so Roger was set to be the eleventh

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Speaker 1: Baronet of Titchborne. Roger did have a brother, Alfred, who

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Speaker 1: would have taken Roger his place and become baronet, but

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Speaker 1: Lady Titchborne refused to give up on Roger. In eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty a butcher named Thomas Castro in Wagga Wagga, Australia

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Speaker 1: stepped forward to say that he'd survived a shipwreck and

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Speaker 1: had property in England. He claimed he was Roger Titchborne,

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Speaker 1: and he wrote to Lady Titchborne to tell her that, yes,

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Speaker 1: he was alive. His answers to some of Lady Titchborne's

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Speaker 1: questions were suspicious, but that didn't phase her. Her willingness

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Speaker 1: to accept that Castro truly was Roger might have been

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Speaker 1: affected by the fact that she had lost her other son,

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Speaker 1: Alfred in eighteen sixty six. But this mystery man said

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Speaker 1: a ship called the Asprey rescued him after the Bella crashed,

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Speaker 1: and it took him to Australia, where he decided to

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Speaker 1: stay and make a living. After are reaching out to

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Speaker 1: Lady Titchborne, the claimant, as he came to be known,

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Speaker 1: moved to Sydney with plans to move to England. In Sydney,

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Speaker 1: he ran into two people who had been servants for

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Speaker 1: the Titchborne family. They both agreed that the butcher was Roger,

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Speaker 1: though one changed his mind after the claimant asked him

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Speaker 1: for money. But the claimant's actions didn't exactly inspire confidence

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Speaker 1: that he was actually Roger. The claimant wrote a will

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Speaker 1: in which he called his supposed mother, Lady Titchborne, the

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Speaker 1: wrong name, but either way, Lady Titchborne helped the claimant

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Speaker 1: fun travel back to England and he arrived in England

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Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty six. When he got to England and

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Speaker 1: met with Lady Titchborne, she accepted him as Roger and

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Speaker 1: began paying him a yearly allowance of one thousand pounds.

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Speaker 1: But Lady Titchbourne was one of the few people who

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Speaker 1: were on his side. Much of the family and family

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Speaker 1: friends weren't falling for the claimants assertions, and with good reason.

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Speaker 1: Based on apparents alone, he weighed a lot more than

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Speaker 1: Roger had before he left, but there were more serious

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Speaker 1: issues with his claim. For one, he didn't understand French

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Speaker 1: or have an accent, even though Roger had, and he

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Speaker 1: didn't remember anything about the board in college Roger had attended,

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Speaker 1: but he did remember details about Roger's childhood That would

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Speaker 1: be hard for anyone else to fake, so there was

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Speaker 1: room to believe he was telling the truth, especially after

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Speaker 1: he claimed that the shipwreck had affected his memory. Even

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Speaker 1: with the claimants misspellings and shaky memory, Lady Titchbourne still

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Speaker 1: believed he was her son, but she died in eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty eight. Would Schmidt, the claimant no longer had his

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Speaker 1: biggest supporter and source of income, but his time to

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Speaker 1: prove his identity and claim his rights to the Titchborne

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Speaker 1: estate did come. When his civil trial began in May

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Speaker 1: seventy one. Investigators said that the claimant was actually Arthur Orton,

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Speaker 1: the son of a butcher from London who had moved

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Speaker 1: to Australia and took the name Tom Castro. He'd taken

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Speaker 1: advantage of Lady Titchborne's ads to improve his finances and status.

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Speaker 1: They suggested. The claimant denied he was Orton, but in

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Speaker 1: the end the claimant did not have tattoos that Roger had,

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Speaker 1: so the claimant was arrested on perjury charges and sent

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Speaker 1: to prison. The public was paying close attention to the trial,

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Speaker 1: and the claimant appealed to people to support him. The

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Speaker 1: working class was largely on his side, but the upper

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Speaker 1: class sided with the Titchborns, and on April seventy three,

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Speaker 1: the criminal trial began. Sir Alexander Cockburne was the president

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Speaker 1: of the panel of judges who heard the case. Edward

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Speaker 1: Conneely was the claimants lawyer. Henry Hawkins led the prosecution team,

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Speaker 1: and Hawkins ended up calling hundreds of witnesses to deny

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Speaker 1: that the claimant was Roger or to confirm that he

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Speaker 1: was Arthur Orton. A handwriting expert said that the claimants

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Speaker 1: writing was that of Arthur, not Roger, and the ship

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Speaker 1: that the claimant said he arrived at Australia on didn't

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Speaker 1: have records of it picking up any shipwrecked passengers. Basically,

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Speaker 1: the evidence was stacked against the claimant. In the end,

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Speaker 1: the jury took thirty minutes to deliberate. They said that

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Speaker 1: the claimant was Arthur Orton, not Roger titch Warren, and

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Speaker 1: they found guilty of perjury. He was sentenced to prison

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Speaker 1: for fourteen years. Canneely, who had led a confrontational defense,

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Speaker 1: was barred from practicing law after the jury condemned his

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Speaker 1: behavior on trial. The claimant did ten years in prison

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Speaker 1: before he was released in he confessed to being Arthur Orton,

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Speaker 1: but he quickly retracted his statement. Oddly enough, the claimant

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Speaker 1: died destitute in eight and the verdict that he was

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Speaker 1: actually Arthur Orton has since been widely accepted, but what

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Speaker 1: really happened to Roger Tichbourne remains to be seen. I'm

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Speaker 1: Eves Jeff Coote and hopefully you know a little bit

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Speaker 1: more about history today than you did yesterday. If you

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Speaker 1: feel like correcting my pronunciation or my accent on anything

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Speaker 1: that I've said in the show, feel free to leave

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Speaker 1: a very kind comment on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. At

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Speaker 1: t D I h C podcast, tune in tomorrow for

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Speaker 1: Another Day in History. M