20 Facts About Arthur Orton

Arthur Orton was an English man who has generally been identified by legal historians and commentators as the "Tichborne Claimant", who in two celebrated court cases both fascinated and shocked Victorian society in the 1860s and 1870s.

The son of a London butcher, Orton went to sea as a boy, spent a year in Chile, and worked as a butcher and stockman for squatters in Australia in the middle-to-late 1850s.

Arthur Orton was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment for perjury.

Arthur Orton died in 1898; the Tichborne family allowed a coffin plate bearing the names "Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne" to be placed on the coffin, not because his claim had been conceded, but because "[n]o legal means of preventing such an outrage existed".

Arthur Orton was born at Wapping, London, the son of George Arthur Orton, a butcher and purveyor of ships' stores.

Arthur Orton left school early and was employed in his father's shop.

The ship sailed to South America and in June 1849 Arthur Orton deserted and went to the small Chilean country town of Melipilla.

Arthur Orton stayed in Chile for a year and seven months and befriended the Castro family.

Arthur Orton then went back to London as an ordinary seaman.

In October 1855, Arthur Orton appeared on a charge of obtaining money under false pretences brought by Frederick Dight, after Arthur Orton had been a witness against Dight in an earlier Supreme Court trial, but the case was dismissed.

Arthur Orton left Hobart as a passenger on schooner Eclipse on 16 November 1855 bound for Port Albert on the coast of Gippsland, Victoria.

Arthur Orton worked for some time on squatters 'runs' in the district.

Arthur Orton appeared to have some knowledge of the missing man's background and family history, although many of his assertions were inaccurate or false.

Arthur Orton was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment, of which he served 10 before his release on licence in 1884.

Arthur Orton died on 1 April 1898 in impoverished circumstances, and was given a pauper's burial in Paddington Cemetery.

The modern consensus is that the Claimant was Arthur Orton, who had used family information obtained from gullible or self-serving supporters.

Woodruff argues the sheer improbability of anyone conceiving such an imposture from scratch and at such a distance: "[I]t was carrying effrontery beyond the bounds of sanity if Arthur Orton embarked with a wife and retinue and crossed the world, knowing that they would all be destitute if he did not succeed in convincing a woman he had never met and knew nothing about first-hand, that he was her son".

Arthur Orton's cause continued to be upheld during the 20th century by his eldest daughter, one of four children borne him by his wife, who lived until 1926.

Arthur Orton was fictionalized by Jorge Luis Borges in Tom Castro, The Implausible Impostor, written between 1933 and 1934 and published in A Universal History of Iniquity in 1935.

Arthur Orton was portrayed by actor Robert Pugh in The Tichborne Claimant, a drama about the case.