The Curse Recalled

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30959, 15 January 1966, Page 2

The Curse Recalled

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) ARLESFORD (England), Jan. 14. The death fall from her London apartment of Lady Antonia Doughty Tichborne stirred memories in this village today of an ancient curse on one of Britain’s historic families.

Fifty-year-old Lady Antonia—lady of the manor at Alresford—was found lying in Swan Court, Chelsea, on Wednesday night. Her husband, Sir Anthony Doughty-Tichborne, the fourteenth baronet, was left with three daughters—and no male heirs.

Villagers recalled that according to legend an ancestress 800 years ago laid a curse on the Tichborne family. The curse threatened the family with extinctionthrough a lack of sons—if it discontinued an annual gift to the village poor. The gift started in the twelfth century when Sir Roger de Tichborne offered to the poor some of the produce of as much of the estate as his sick wife could crawl over.

Records show that this charitable tradition has been scrupulously observed but Sir Anthony Doughty-Tichbome was quoted in 1959 as saying that it was stopped for a time in the nineteenth century. Sir Anthony Doughty-

Tichborne, aged 51, is a Knight of Malta, a Privy Chamberlain to the Pope and holder of the French Croix de Guerre. A century ago, the family fought a claim by a London butcher’s son, Argur Orton, who came from Australia to

contest the title. He was sent to prison for perjury and then made a living touring British music halls. Police are investigating Lady Antonia’s death. Sir Anthony Doughty-Tich-borne’s only son died one day old.