3-028-761 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Tichborne Trial: sketch in court, 1871. Scene during '...he protracted trial before Chief Justice Bovill, in the Court of Common Pleas, concerning the disputed identity of Sir Roger Tichborne with the person from Australia, who claims his title and estates...The Lord Chief Justice...read a letter from Lady Doughty, objecting to the threatened postponement of the trial...The cross-examination of the claimant by the Solicitor-General...related to the letters which passed between him and Lady Tichborne when he announced himself as her long-lost son...An application was made by the Solicitor-General...to have the claimant examined by surgeons, in order to search for particular marks on his ankles, arms, side, and head, of which he had spoken. This was refused by Serjeant Ballantine until after the witnesses should have been heard who were to speak of marks by which the true Sir Roger Tichborne might be identified. Serjeant Ballantine...[declared] that the defendants' whole story, of the claimant being not Roger Tichborne, but Arthur Orton, was the result of a deliberate conspiracy, and was founded on utter falsehood. The Solicitor-General replied that he considered the claimant's case a conspiracy, and the claimant himself an impostor'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.