The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) Part 27

The Tichborne trials demand a few words by way of introduction, for although there were two trials, they were of a different character, the first being an ordinary action of ejectment in which the Claimant sought to dispossess the youthful heir, whose t.i.tle he had already a.s.sumed, under circ.u.mstances of the most extraordinary nature.

The action of ejectment was tried before Chief Justice Bovill at the Common Pleas, Westminster. Ballantine and Giffard (now Lord Halsbury) led for the plaintiff, the butcher, while on behalf of the trustees of the estate (that is, the real heir) were the Solicitor-General Coleridge, myself, Bowen (afterwards Lord Bowen), and Chapman Barber, an _equity_ counsel.

I must explain how it was that I, having been retained to lead Coleridge, was afterwards compelled to be led by him; and it is an interesting event in the history of the Bar as well as of the Judicial Bench.

The action was really a Western Circuit case, although the venue was laid in London. Coleridge led that circuit and was retained. I belonged to the Home Circuit, and had no idea of being engaged at all for that side. I had been retained for the Claimant, but the solicitor, with great kindness, withdrew his retainer at my request.

I was brought into the case for the purpose of leading, and no other; but by the appointment of Coleridge to the Solicitor-Generalship in 1868, I was displaced, and Coleridge ultimately led. His further elevation happened in this way: Sir Robert Collier was Attorney-General, and it was desired to give him a high appointment which at that moment was vacant, and could only be filled by a Judge of the High Court. Collier was not a Judge, and therefore was not eligible for the post. The question was how to make him eligible.

The Prime Minister of the day was not to be baffled by a mere technicality, and he could soon make the Attorney-General a Judge of the High Court if that was a condition precedent.

There was immediately a vacancy on the Bench; Collier was appointed to the judgeship, and in three days had acquired all the experience that the Act of Parliament antic.i.p.ated as necessary for the higher appointment in the Privy Council.

Instead of leading, therefore, in the case before Chief Justice Bovill, I had to perform whatever duties Coleridge a.s.signed to me. My commanding position was gone, and it was no longer presumable that I should be entrusted with the cross-examination of the plaintiff. I was bound to obey orders and cross-examine whomsoever I was allowed to.

[The one thing Mr. Hawkins was retained for was the cross-examination of the plaintiff. Lord Chief Justice c.o.c.kburn said, "I would have given a thousand pounds to cross-examine him." It would have been an excellent investment of the Tichborne family to have given Hawkins ten thousand pounds to do so, for I am sure there would have been an end of the case as soon as he got to Wapping.

Coleridge acknowledged that the Claimant cross-examined him instead of his cross-examining the Claimant.

When that shrewd and cunning impostor was asked, "Would you be surprised to hear this or that?" "No," said he, "I should be surprised at nothing after this long time and the troubles I have been through; but, now that you call my attention to it, I remember it all perfectly well." Coleridge said: "I am leader by an accident." "Yes," said Hawkins, "a colliery accident."]

I had also been retained by the trustees of the Doughty estate. Lady Doughty was an aunt of Sir Roger Tichborne, and it was her daughter Kate whom the heir desired to marry. Had the Claimant succeeded in the first case, he would have brought an action against her also.

No copy of the proceedings had been supplied to me, and I was informed that at this preliminary cross-examination they would not require my a.s.sistance; that their learned Chancery barrister was merely going to cross-examine the Claimant on his affidavits--a matter of small consequence. So it was in one way, but of immeasurable importance in many other ways. But they said _I might like to hear the cross-examination as a matter of curiosity_.

I did.

The Claimant had it all his own way. I was powerless to lend any a.s.sistance; but had I been instructed, I am perfectly sure I could then and there have extinguished the case, for the Claimant at that time knew absolutely nothing of the life and history of Roger Tichborne.

So the case proceeded, with costs piled on costs; information picked up, especially by means of interminable preliminary proceedings, until the impostor was left master of the situation, to the gratification of fools and the hopes of fanatics.

I was, however, allowed in the trial to cross-examine some witnesses.

Amongst them was a man of the name of Baigent, the historian of the family, who knew more of the Tichbornes than they knew of themselves.

The cross-examination of Baigent, which did more than anything to destroy the Claimant's case, occupied ten days. He was the real Roger's old friend, and knew him up to the time of his leaving England never to return. I drew from him the confession that he did not believe he was alive, but that he had encouraged the Dowager Lady Tichborne to believe that the Claimant was her son; and that her garden was lighted night after night with Chinese lanterns in expectation of his coming.

Admissions were also obtained that when he saw the Claimant at Alresford Station neither knew the other, although Baigent had never altered in the least, as he alleged.

There was another witness allotted to me, and that was Carter, an old servant of Roger whilst he was in the Carabineers. This man supplied the plaintiff with information as to what occurred in the regiment while Roger belonged to it; but he only knew what was known to the whole regiment. He did _not_ know private matters which took place at the officers' mess, and it was upon these that my cross-examination showed the Claimant to be an impostor. I "had him there."

As Parry and I were sitting one morning waiting for the Judges, I remarked on the subject of the counsel chosen for the prosecution: "Suppose, Parry, you and I had been Solicitor and Attorney-General, in the circ.u.mstances what should we have done?"

"Plunged the country into a b.l.o.o.d.y war before now, I dare say," said Parry, elevating his eyebrows and wig at the same time.

I confess when I undertook the responsibility of this great trial I was not aware of the immense labour and responsibility it would involve; nor do I believe any one had the smallest notion of the magnitude of the task.

Instead of the work diminishing as we proceeded, it increased day by day, and week by week; one set of witnesses entailed the calling of another set. The case grew in difficulty and extent. It seemed absolutely endless and hopeless.

Within a few weeks of the start, a necessity arose for procuring the testimony of a witness from Australia, a matter of months; and the trial being a criminal one, the defendant was ent.i.tled to have the case for the prosecution concluded within a reasonable time. If we had no evidence, it was to his advantage, and we had no right to detain him for a year while we were trying to obtain it.

However, the Australian evidence came in time. Numbers of witnesses had to be called who not only were not in our brief, but were never dreamed of. For instance, there was the Danish perjurer Louie, who swore he picked up the defendant at sea when the _Bella_ went down.

Instead of this man going away after he had given his evidence, he remained until two gentlemen from the City, seeing his portrait in the Stereoscopic Company's window in Regent Street, identified him as a dishonest servant of theirs, who was undergoing a sentence of penal servitude at the time he swore he picked Roger up. He received five years' penal servitude for his evidence.

I had pledged myself to the task, which extended over many months more than I ever antic.i.p.ated. At every sacrifice, however, I was bound to devote myself to the case, and did so, although I had to relinquish a very large portion of my professional income.

What made things worse, there was not only no effort made to curtail the business, but advantage was taken of every circ.u.mstance to prolong it. The longer it was dragged out the better chance there was of an acquittal. Had a juryman died after months of the trial had pa.s.sed, the Government must have abandoned the prosecution. It would have been impossible to commence again. This was the last hope of the defence.

[The trial before Bovill ended at last, as it ought to have done months before, in a verdict for the defendants and the order for the prosecution of the Claimant for perjury. It was this prosecution that occupied the attention of the court and of the world for 188 days, extending over portions of two years.

There is no doubt that Coleridge would a second time have deprived the country of Mr. Hawkins's services, but higher influences than his prevailed, and the distinguished counsel was appointed to lead for the Crown, with Mr. Serjeant Parry as his leading junior. It is not too much to say that no one knew the case so well as Mr. Hawkins, and none could have done it so well. Bowen and Mathews were also his juniors.

The whole case, from the commencement of the Chancery proceedings down to the commencement of this trial, had been a comedy of blunders. The very claim was an absurdity, every step in the great fraud was an absurdity, and every proceeding had some ridiculous absurdity to accompany it. It was not until the cross-examination of Baigent by Mr.

Hawkins that the undoubted truth began to appear.

"You are the first," said Baron Bramwell, "who has let daylight into the case." It will be seen presently what the simple story was which the learned counsel at last evolved from the lies and half-truths which had for so many years imposed upon a great number even of the intelligent and educated cla.s.ses of the community. And I would observe that until nearly the end of the trial the case was never safe or quite free from doubt; it was only what was elicited by Mr. Hawkins that made it so. No Wonder the advocate said to Giffard, who was opposed to him on the first trial: "If you and I had been together in that case in the first instance, we should have won it for the Claimant." Being on the other side, this is how the case stood when he had completed it:--

The real heir to the family was a fairly well-formed, slender youth of medium height. The personator of this youth was a man an inch and a half or two inches taller, and weighing five-and-twenty stone. His hands were a great deal larger than those of Roger, and at least an inch longer; his feet were an inch and a half longer. He was broader, deeper, thicker, and altogether of a different build. The lobes of his ears, instead of being pendent like Roger's, adhered to his cheeks.

But he was not more unlike in physical outline than in mental endowment, taste, character, pursuits, and sentiment, in manners and habits, in culture and education, connection and recollection.

Roger had been educated at Stonyhurst, with the education of a gentleman; this man had never had any education at all. Roger had moved in the best English society; this man amongst slaughtermen, bushrangers, thieves, and highwaymen. Roger had been engaged to a young lady, his cousin, Kate Doughty; this man had been engaged to a young woman of Wapping, of the name of Mary Ann Loader, a respectable girl in his own sphere of life.

Roger's engagement to this young lady, his cousin, was disapproved of by the Tichborne family, and was the cause of his leaving England. But before he went he gave her a writing, and deposited a copy of it with Mr. Gosford, the legal adviser of the family.

This doc.u.ment was one of the most important incidents in the history of the case, and upon it, if the cross-examination had been conducted by Mr. Hawkins in Chancery, the case would have been crushed at the outset. It is not my task to show how, but to state what it all came to when the learned counsel left it to the jury to say whether the claimant _was_ the Roger Tichborne he had sworn himself to be, or whether he was Arthur Orton, the butcher of Wapping, whom he swore he was not.

This doc.u.ment forms the subject of the "sealed packet" left with Mr.

Gosford, and contained in effect these words: "If G.o.d spares me to return and marry my beloved Kate within a year, I promise to build a church and dedicate it to my patron saint."

Till his cross-examination in Chancery he had never heard of this packet, and when he was informed of it his solicitor naturally demanded a copy. Gosford had destroyed the original, and of course there was no end of capital out of it; a concocted original was made, which was to the effect that this gentleman, "so like Roger," _had seduced his cousin_, and that if she proved to be _enceinte_, Gosford was to take care of her. Luckily "Kate Doughty" had her original preserved with sacred affection. But such was the memory of this man's early life, contrasted with what _would_ have been the memory of Sir Roger Tichborne.

He did not recollect being "at Stonyhurst, but said positively he was at Winchester, where certainly Roger never was. He did not remember his mother's Christian names, and could not write his own.

He came to England to see his mother, and then would not go to her; she went to see him, and he got on to the bed and turned his face to the wall. She did not see his face, but recognized him by his ears, because they were like his uncle's, then ordered the servant to undo his braces for fear he should choke.

Such a piece as this on the stage would not have lasted one night; in real life it had a run for many years. But then there never was a rogue that some fool would not believe in. How else was it possible that millions believed in this man, who had forgotten the religion he had been brought up in, and was married by a Wesleyan minister at a Wesleyan church, he being, as his mother informed him, a strict Roman Catholic from his birth? However, he did his best to reform his error by getting married again by a Roman priest, although he made another blunder, and forgetting he was Sir Roger Tichborne, married as Arthur Orton, the son of the Wapping butcher. When his dear mother reminded him of his being a Catholic, he wrote and thanked her for the information, and hoped the Blessed Maria would take care of her for evermore, little dreaming that the "Black Maria" would one day take particularly good care of himself.

So that he forgot the place of his birth, the seat of his ancestors, the friends of his youth, the face, features, and form of his mother, his education and religion, his brother officers in the regiment, the regiment itself, and the position he occupied, thinking he had been a private for fifteen days instead of a painstaking, studious, diligent officer, who was beloved by his fellows. He had forgotten all his neighbours, servants, dependants, as well as the family solicitor who made his will and was appointed his executor. He forgot his life in Paris, the village church of his ancestral seat--nay, the ancestral seat itself--and the very road that led to it. He forgot his old friend and historian, who swore he had never altered the least in appearance since Roger left--historian and picture-cleaner to the family. In short, there was not one single thing in the life of Roger that he knew. He forgot what any but a born fool would remember while he was in poverty and bankruptcy for a couple of hundred pounds; the real Roger had written home on hearing of the death of his uncle, from whom he derived his t.i.tle and estates, saying, "Pray go to Messrs.

Glyn's and exchange my letter of credit for 2,000 for three years for one for 3,000."

Imagine a man forgetting he had 3,000 a year and an estate in England worth 30,000, and earning his bread in a slaughter-house and in the Bush, borrowing money from a poor woman and running away with it.

But now another singular thing stamps this fraudulent impostor who makes so many believe in him. He, alleged by his supporters to be Sir Roger Tichborne, recollected all about a place that he had never been to; people he had never heard of, far less seen; events that he could _not_ know and which never happened to him, but did happen to Arthur Orton. He knew Wapping well--every inch of it; Old Charles Orton, the father of Arthur; Charles Orton the brother, the sisters, the people who kept this shop and that; so that when on his return to England he went to the Wapping seat of his ancestors instead of Ashford, he asked all about them, and reminded them so faithfully of the little events of Arthur's boyhood, and resembled that person so much in the face, that they said, "Why, you are Arthur Orton yourself!" True, he paid some of them to swear he was not, but the impression remained.

Mr. Hawkins told the jury how he picked up his second-hand knowledge of the things he spoke about concerning the Tichbornes, for it was necessary to be able to answer a good many questions wherever he went, especially when he went into the witness-box.

There was an old black servant, quite black, who had been a valet in the Tichborne family. His name was Bogle; and the Claimant was told by the poor old dowager that if he could meet with him, Bogle could tell him a good many things about himself.

Bogle was an excellent diplomatist, and no sooner heard from Lady Tichborne that her son Roger was in Australia than the two began to look for one another, the one as black inside as the other was out.

Bogle announced that he was the man before he saw him, on the mother's recommendation, and became and was to the end one of his princ.i.p.al supporters--so much so that "Old Bogle" spread the Claimant's knowledge of the Tichbornes abroad, and, like everybody else, believed in him because he knew so much which he could not have known unless he had been the veritable Roger, all which Bogle had told him.