Who was the mysterious man who claimed to be the long-lost heir to one of Britain’s oldest aristocratic families?
From Alexandre Dumas’s 1850 adventure The Man In The Iron Mask to Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, tales of imposters and devious doubles have thrilled us for centuries. But sometimes fact is far stranger than fiction. In the mid-19th century, Victorian Britain was shaken to its core when Roger Tichborne, the heir to the aristocratic Tichborne family, returned to his ancestral home, 13 years after disappearing without a trace. When he attempted to claim the Tichborne inheritance, a bitter legal battle began that divided Victorian society. The Tichborne Claimant might appear to be another tale of a devious con artist, but the story of this real-life Mr Ripley is far more complex than it might first seem. Was he the long-lost Roger as he claimed? Or was he the manipulative Arthur Orton, out to swindle Britain’s ruling class?
By the 19th century the Tichbornes had established themselves as privileged members of Britain’s ruling elite. An old and prestigious family, they had held Tichborne manor in Hampshire since at least the 12th century and were also said to be extremely wealthy, owning lands worth somewhere in the region of £25,000, an astronomical figure at the time. The heir to this vast fortune was Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne, the eldest son of Sir James Tichborne and Lady Tichborne, Harriette Felicité. Born in Paris in 1829, he spent much of his young life in the army, serving as a lieutenant in the Sixth Dragoon Guards.
