THE TICHBORNE TRIAL.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1523, 7 November 1873, Page 8

THE TICHBORNE TRIAL.

The Times.of*a recent date says :—The case for the prosecution being now substantially completed, what remains being chiefly confirmatory evidence, it may be of intere6t;now A to*give a brief analysis of the evidence alroady ( given. One hundred and fifty witnesses have _ now been examined, and no criminal trial is known in .which such a body of testimony has been offered. Of this enormous number of witnesses, upwards of one hundred have sworn that the defendant is not Roger Tichborne, and about forty have givenftjvidence ts show that he is Arthur Orton; and almost all of them have positively sworn that he is so. More than twenty witnesses have proved that Roger was tattooed (a fact which the defendant's counsel has admitted is, if established, decisive of his-guilt), and of these, some are utter strangers to the family. It has been proved, also, that the fact was always known and spoken of in the family, both before and after Roger's disappearance, and'especially on the first arrival of the defendant in this country. Several witnesses have shown that other marks existed on Roger which it does not appear are on the defendant, and a great number have testified that marks existing on him were not upon Roger. A great number of witnesses, many of them riot connected with the family, have testified that the claimant is utterly unlike Roger in features, in the color of his hair, in heiglit, in personal formation, and in voice. Six witnesses—none of them members of the family—and five of them foreigners, who knew Roger from his childhood,- in Paris, and there saw the last which was seen of him in Europe, in 1853, have.testified positively that the defendant is not Roger. More than twenty-five members, of the family—all pf rsons of high'character and position in society, and as they have stated, quite disinterested—have given similar evidence, and most of them have sworn to the tattoo marks on Roger, while all of them have denied, that the-.marks or personal |k (.'iiliarities 'existing online defendant existed on Roger, and all declare that the defendant is utterly dissimilar in person, in features, and in voice. This evidence hn« brcn confirmed by the testixm ' v j .-•■ ,ijy of tliem, thalftwhen "they »■; ■ ' .'' »! •■rufsivt-s to his notice, he did ;•<, i ■■■. .and by his own admission at. tin' Law Institution, when they were present, that he did not recognize, any of them, except Mrs Greenwood r> who has since stated that she had met him riding, and had been pointed out to him. •<• It has also been further confirmed by tlx&letter of Guilfoyle, the old gardener,'[of / the family, who saw him at Sydney, that he did not seem at all acqusunted.tovith the members of the family. It is further, confirmed by the fact, testified, to-by every member of the family, that he did not go to see any due of them except the dowager. As to her determination to recognize him, evidence has been given by her two half brothers--the Messrs. Seymour—and her .half sister Lady Rawlinson. As to the circumstances of the recognition, very amusing was given witness present otP occasion. Her letter.'of acJknowlod^ ni^ nt ) *Mch isjin evidence,-%as sent before* she had 'reived a line from him or any \hkeness of >ip^ oh the testimony °* strangers who bad never knowri Ro.ssff So much for the family . evidence. ( Then, twelve witnes»et from Stonyhurst~. B^x of them were Roger's preceptors, two of them laymen andfellow studonts % who*knew him there—gave- ovidence testifying- to their firm belief that the defendant was never Ibejn, ,/.i"! Krpnfirm this, evidence has been given of ti od'.'-'etidaiit's'owna'eclara-tion at Sydney that he was never at Stpnyhurst in his life, and his cross-examination is also reliftd upon as showing entire ignorance of Roger's life there. Then, as to Roger's anny life, twelve officers of the regiment and fourteen privates who knew Roger in his regiment hav# sworn the defendant is not the officer they knew, and to this is to be added his own declaration at Sydney that he was only in the army for a few days as a private, and his oral statement there, proved by two witnesses, to the like effect, with his subsequent statement that he was " discharged " from the army. Many of the officers have given evidence that he did not know them when they presented themselves to his notice, or even addressed hira and accosted him. There is also a great body of evidence supplied by Roger himself, in the form of letters, affording proof of facts and dates and incidents in his life, whicli are contrasted with the statements of the defendant, especially on two vital points—the story of the seduction and the i! sealed " packet (which he has connected together), and the visit to Mellipilla, which is relied on so strongly as identifying him with Orton. As regards the seduction story, he laid the scenp at Tichborne in July or August, 1852, and the letters of Roger all through the year are relied upon as showing tbat he never was at Tichborne after the 22nd of June, and that then he was there only for two or three days, with a house full of company, having not been there previously since February, when he , was there also only'for a few days—on the occasion of a dangerous illness ,of his uncle—and that on the previous visit in January he had first avowed his attachment for his cousin, and it had been disapproved. So that in the whole period tie had only been, as he himself says in one of his letters, a few moments in the society of the relative he is supposed to have seduced. Moreover, he swore that the sealed packet related to the seduction, and the letters of Roger show that it had already been deposited in January, and that it related to a church, and the friend with whom it was deposited and his wife to whom it was known have sworn that such was its nature, and that it was deposited at that time. This evidence has been confirmed by that of Lady Doughty, the young lady's, mother, and also by her aunt, and her cousiu, who wore In the house at that time—that, during the brief visit of two or three days in June, she never could have been alone with her cousin for an hour. As to the other vital point, the visit to Mellipilla—so closely connected with the Orton case —it is an undoubted and admitted fact that the defendant was there, as he says, for two or three weeks. Roger's letters are relied upon as showing that he was never there at all; and this not only because he never mentions it, but because the dates he gives prove that it would have been impossible. A witness from Mellipilla has been called who positively identified the defendant as having been there long before Roger was ,in South America. This has a double bearing on the' case—to prove that tke defendant is not Roger, and that he is "Orton—parts of the case totally distinct. To conclude the former part of the case, and disprove his identity with Roger, evidence has been given tbat Roger went - on board the Bella at Rio, and that it was goou afterwards lost; and a witness who saw Roger on boa/d positively swears that the defendant ft not the man. Three wifeiesses of nautical knowledge have been called to show that the dSEendirnt's account of his escape from ityjs absurd, impossible, and incredible. Moreover, one of these Witnesses, Captain Hall, who' was at Mel- I ',

bourne in 1854, during the very period when the ship would have arrived there, ae the defendant represented, from Rio, has stated that such stringent regulations were then in force at the port as to inspection of ships by a medical officer, and as to registry at the custom-house of passengers and crews, that it was quite impossible that a wrecked crew of eight sailors and a, passenger could havearrived there without their arrival being umiced and recorded ; added to which, these witnesses stated that the owners would have a claim on the owners of the wrecked ship for the support of the crew, while the crew would also have a claim upon the owners. Nor is this all. The defendant, in his crossexamination, swore that he had drawn a cheque at Melbourne for payment of his diet on board, and that Mr Hopkins (an attorney, a warm supporter of his) had actually got it, and had shown it, he said, to a member of the family; and though this has been denied, and it has been sworn that if it had existed it would, of course, have been known to the whole family, it was observed by the Lord Chief Justice that if, as the defendant had sworn, the cheque existed in the possession of his friend, it ought to be produced by him, and that its production would, of coarse, be decisive of the case. Such is the substance of the case on the part of the prosecution, supported by more than 100 witnesses, to prove that the defendant is not Roger Tichborne. There is an immense body of evidence to identify the defendant with ArthurflOrton. This evidence consists of the testimony of a,number of persons who knew the Ortori family in Wapping, from the time of Arthur's birth, in 1834,* down to 1848, when he went on a voyage to South America, returning in 1851, and sailing in 1852 for Hobart Town, in Australia. More than thirty witnesses who knew Arthur Orton well identified him, with the ''defendant, and many of them remembered him as late as 'lßsl having the care of Shetland ponies, in whicli his brother dealt. More-tban one of them remembered his going on hoard the Middleton, in 1852, with two Shetland ponies. One Allen, who was cook on hoard the ship, positively identified the defendant as tho'niau who :,»••! lb-- pities. One Hawks, who sa-c l • '"m!< I fit

Ho-'ort Town, id iiiiiti >•■■ _ •■.' ■■' 'Uiit »» th ■ iiipii who was in ■•! - nf/tli mi, and •rftiifinti'Tpd.liiiii 'from that fact. Mrs Minn Jury—to* whom Orton took a Jetton'of introduction, which she produced—swore positively thatohe defendant brought it; that she remembered him'for some time afterwards at Hobart Town ;Und that he borrowed money from her husband, for which he gave a note, which she also produced. Mary Ann Loder—to whom 0;tou was engaged, and to whom he wrote, several letters on the voyage—identified the defendant, and produced the letters for comparison of handwriting. AMr Pettit Smith, who saw a good deal of the defendant in Australia, identified this handwriting with his, and also proved statements which connected him with Wapping and the trade of a butcher. -One Hopwood identified the defendant 'as a man he had known at several places from 1855 to 1857, first as Orton and then as Castro. One Redman positively identified him as a man who had been well-known in 1857 as Orton. Finally, several witnesses—a Mr Miller and others—trace the defendant to Wagga Wagga. Then Mr Gibbes and Mr Cubitt proved declarations by him that he never was an officer in the army and never was at Stonyhurst. Guilfoyle, the old gardener of the family, who saw him at%dney, states that he knew nothipgof theifamilv. On ms arrival iri rjugiana, ut»v""" ;">" was to Wapping, and witnesses testified that his inquiries there after the Orton family, his evident familiarity with them, and his features and voice, caused him to be at once recognized as a member of their family. Two witnesses proved that they so recognized him, and challenged him as an Orton on that very occasion. Several other witnesses proved that he put himself in correspondence with Orton's sisters under a feigned name, and that he sent them the portrait of his own wife and child as those of Arthur Orton. Several witnesses, as early as 1867, only 15 years after Orton had sailed, identified defendant as'Arthur Orton. Altogether, upwards of 100 persons have sworn that the defendant is-not Roger Tichborne, and about 40 have identified him with Orton. Thus nearly 150 witnesses have already given evidence to prove that the defendant is not Roger Tichborne.