In 1854, Roger Tichborne, heir to an ancient Roman Catholic baronetcy and vast estates, was lost at sea off the coast of South America. His mother, Lady Tichborne, clung to hope and placed advertisements in international newspapers seeking information. In 1865, a butcher from Wagga Wagga, Australia, named Arthur Orton stepped forward claiming to be Roger.
Despite vast physical differences—the real Roger was slender, fluent in French, and well-educated, while Orton was corpulent, spoke no French, and had illiterate handwriting—Lady Tichborne astonishingly recognized him as her son upon meeting in Paris. Backed by her financial support, Orton assumed the lifestyle of a baronet. However, after Lady Tichborne died in 1868, the family challenged his claim, launching one of the longest and most costly legal battles in British legal history.
The civil trial lasted 102 days, ending when the claimant withdrew, leading immediately to a criminal perjury trial lasting 188 days. Investigators proved Orton was actually the son of a Wapping butcher who had traveled to Chile and Australia under various aliases. Orton was convicted of perjury in 1874 and sentenced to 14 years of hard labor.
The case fascinated Victorian society, creating deep class divisions between the working class who viewed him as a folk hero and the aristocracy who saw him as a blatant fraud.