The Rest Is History - 400. Victorian Britain's Maddest Mystery

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

In 1854, the twenty-five year old aristocrat Roger Tichborne, heir to an impressive fortune, died in a shipwreck ....Or did he? His mother, certain of her son’s survival, advertised extensively with a tantalising reward for her son’s return. Twenty years later a rough, corpulent butcher from Australia named Arthur Orton arrived in Europe and declared himself to be the long lost heir. The trial that ensued captivated the public imagination, becoming the greatest and most dramatic case of Victorian England and arguably, all of British history. Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss The Tichborne Case with best-selling author Zadie Smith, which forms the centrepiece of her new novel The Fraud. It is a darkly comic story of intrigue and mystery, that crosses continents and encompasses the issues of race, empire and class that smouldered at the very heart of 19th century British society. 📱Protect your tech valuables with our exclusive 20% off discount at http://uk.mous.co/RestHistory🎒 Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. It is but seldom in actual life that the tragic and dramatic notes of action and feeling are struck with the force and frequency with which they were sounded in the Tichborne case. This strange episode, indeed, may be regarded as having been a species of moral tornado, which sweeping suddenly into the social midst, swept men from their feet. In its rushing and conflicting currents were excited every sort of human passion. Prejudice, justice, anger, bitterness, heroic disinterestedness, sordid cupidity, ambition, devotion, cowardice, courage.

In a word, every man's strength or weakness, the whole gamut of human motive and emotion raging and swirling about one large, melancholy, monstrous, mysterious figure. So, Tom, those were the words of Arabe arabella canely who was a eugenicist a novelist and anti-feminist she was also the daughter of an eccentric irish barrister called edward canely and she is talking about the titchborne case yeah the greatest trial of victorian england arguably the most exciting and dramatic trial in all British history, which forms the centrepiece, as do those words, of Zadie Smith's brilliant novel, The Fraud, which you've been reading. Now, you don't normally read fiction, Tom, it's fair to say,

because you don't like books that are imaginative. Is that the case? I do make exceptions for our greatest living novelists, Dominic. People that you meet at dinner parties. Is that not the case? That's what you said to me? No, not at all. I did happen to meet Zadie at a party. Of course. And she did mention that she had been writing a book on the Tichborne claimant, and my ears immediately pricked up. Because as you say, this is an absolutely incredible story. I mean, it has curses, it has disputed inheritances, it has mad attempts to pass off various identities, and it's a case that obsesses Victorian Britain for years and years and years. So the moment the fraud came out,

I did indeed rush out and read it. I thought you were going to say, I did rush out and suck up to the author, but no, you read the book. She doesn't need my praise. I mean, she's the most garlanded novelist of modern Britain. But what I will say is that it weaves in the facts of this extraordinary case with all kinds of meditations on fiction, on race, on empire, on all kinds of things. But it brilliantly articulates why this case obsessed people. So I'm just going to read a very short passage. So this is about a servant girl in the household of the novelist William Harrison Ainsworth. I think he's the guy who basically invents the legend of Dick Turpin. I mean, he was a very, very prolific Victorian novelist who no one reads now.

Anyway, so this is a servant girl in his household who ends up marrying him. And she becomes obsessed by the story of the Tichborne claimant. So no story captured her quite like the saga of the Tichborne claimant. It had everything, toffs, Catholics, money, sex, mistaken identity and inheritance, high court judges, snobbery, exotic locations, the struggle of the honest working man as opposed to the undeserving poor and the power of a mother's love. So dramatic stuff, Dominic. And we thought, I mean, an ideal subject for The Rest is History.

And who better to talk about it than Zadie Smith herself. Hello. Who joins us. Hiya. Thanks for having me. Welcome to The Rest is History, and who better to talk about it than Zadie Smith herself. Hello. Who joins us. Hiya. Thanks for having me. Welcome to The Rest Is History, Zadie. Thank you. That's a characteristically long build-up. Normally when you go on a podcast, I imagine people introduce you, bring you on immediately.

No, it's nice. But we like to keep people waiting. We like to increase the tension. It's good. It's good. Well, it's like a Victorian novel. Yeah. Yeah. Big intro. Thank you. All right. So the Titchbourne case. So for people who don't know anything about it, which I'm guessing is the vast majority of people, in very, very broad terms to start with, explain what it is and maybe what drew you to it. I've been doing a few readings and my experience

is when you start trying to explain the case, then the event is over. By the time I get to the end of the trial, there's no time for the event, but I try and do it as quickly as possible. So a Catholic aristocrat, a young man called Sir Roger Tichborne, he was going to Jamaica. He was going on his kind of year off adventure. The boat went down with everybody on board. Everybody died. But his mother, who was French and hated the family she'd married into, decided that he was still alive and put adverts all around England and then all around Europe and finally all around Australia, offering larger and larger amounts of money for the return of her son, which seems unwise and like a temptation to fraudsters.

And about 20 years later, a man does turn up with a black Jamaican with him who was a servant of the Titchbourne family. And together they arrive in Paris, where Roger's mother was, and say, well, I'm your son. And the problem with it was that their son was tall and thin. This man, who was called Arthur Autumn, was about 300 pounds. He's a large man very large man the son was uh educated grew up speaking french arthur orton did not speak french was not educated was a butcher from whopping had a thick cockney accent um despite

all of this the mother said that's my son for reasons maybe of perversity or of genuine longing. Anyway, she said it, gave him £1,000 a year and then promptly died. And that was the problem, starting an enormous court case because Sir Roger Tichborne was owed this enormous estate in Hampshire, but also like a substantial part of central London. All that bit around Tottenham Court road doughty street it was big they'd married into the doughty family yeah which had brought the titchborns all this extra money and land it was a double clan a lot of land a lot of money and so it started a court case that lasted

for a year and a bit at which point he was found to be lying so then there was a criminal case after that so altogether it's about two and a half years in court yeah yeah so this is in the 1860s and 1870s isn't it so it's reported in gazettes and in kind of scandal sheets the amazing thing about it is it captures the public imagination as much as it does because from the way you described it it sounds like a kind of bizarre victorian case that would you know proceed in the courts and ultimately who cares right but actually it's that reading that Tom just did earlier suggests it's something that it had all these issues because it had London Australia he'd got shipwrecked in South America hadn't he right first hadn't he been going to Valparaiso in Chile yeah

and race obviously because as you said there's the black guy who's with him who's an old servant of the family is that right Andrew Bogle yeah and giving testimony every day in court I mean that was quite a sight I thought after I finished it I kind of dawned on me that when you have a Jamaican an Irish lawyer from Cork who's very eccentric and a working class Englishman you're basically dramatizing in the center of English power, the whole problem of the 19th century, which is, oh God, the Jamaicans, oh God, the Irish, and oh God, the working classes. These are three things that people are really wanting to think about. And suddenly they're being dramatized daily in the Queen's Court. It didn't really occur to me when I was writing it, but when you step back,

you can see the obsession. But also that sense of people from different classes and different backgrounds being brought together is very reminiscent of Dickens, who appears as a figure in your novel. Those kind of great portmanteau Victorian novels, there is a quality of this whole case about that. No court case in a Victorian novel is worth anything without an ancestral curse. And what's even better is that the Tichborne claimant features an ancestral curse that supposedly goes back to the 12th century. And I wonder, before we get into the absolute details of the case itself, could we go back to the story of the Tichborne Dole and the curse that visits

itself upon the Tichborne family? I the curse that visits itself upon the Tichborne family. I find this part of the story really disturbing because I like to think of myself as a rational actor interested in rational things. But this story, it is a curse and it does come true. So there is a previous Sir Roger Tichborne, hundreds of years earlier, who has a sick wife, Lady Mabella. And as she's dying, she has this concern about the poor in hampshire and she says she wants something to be kept for them so she decides i don't understand the logic of this really but she decides to crawl around the land to crawl to crawl well she's very ill isn't she she's ill she doesn't have an option dominic's what i'm saying she can't walk so she crawls no one would carry her no apparently not it's a poor show it's so weird

but it's a bet on her deathbed she bets that as far as she can crawl with this lit candle around the land and enclosed it symbolically that amount of land will be given every year whatever grows on that land will be given every year to the poor so she manages 23 acres which on your deathbed it's not bad even on a good day i'm not walking 23 acres well crawling and certainly not on my hands and knees tom you'd do that you'd absolutely do that wouldn't you just for spite i would three stinging nettles and everything yeah if it was for the good of the poor dominic i would do it right to spite your husband so she does it and the promise is made and she said if you don't do that after i'm dead if you

don't give the profit from this land to these poor people, there will be a curse on you. There will be seven brothers born and then seven sisters, and then the family will fall into ruin. That was the curse. Quite dramatic. It's always seven, isn't it? Always seven.

It's always seven. And they did do the dole for a long time, giving this profit every year, giving the corn. But then it got a little bit wild like so many poor people were turning up that the family disliked the amount of charity they were having to give so they shut it down it's amazing and when they shut it down um the curse begins to come into effect oh oh we love a curse yeah it is pretty wild so sir henry tichborne who's roger's uncle did have i think it's seven daughters there was one son who died so roger tichborne, who's Roger's uncle, did have, I think it's seven daughters.

There was one son who died. So Roger Tichborne ends up being the only proper descendant. And then, of course, this drama and the family falls into ruin. So Sir Henry Tichborne, that's 1803. He's captured by the French and he's held as a prisoner in the Napoleonic Wars. And it's a very complicated series of marriages and stuff like that. Right. And we end up with a guy called James, who's his son, I think.

Is that right? Yes. This is so like a Victorian novel. I know. Where's the family tree? Yeah, carry on. Who's married to a French woman descended from the Duke of Bourbon called Henriette. Is that right?

Yes. And Roger Tichborne is their son. That's it. And he ends up becoming the heir to the entire estate, Roger Tichborne. Yes. And he, I mean, I'm looking at a photo of him. He looks quite dashing, posh. Yeah, he looks dashing.

He looks like he'd be played by a young David Niven. He was dashing. Is it fair to say he was not brilliant? He was a bit of a disappointment to them, I think. He was kind of sporty, but violent, not particularly academic in school. Oh, he was violent? Yeah, he was always kind of wandering around with a gun. He played the tuba, apparently, really badly. That's not violent, I don't think. No. Well, the servants would complain it was a violent noise. But he was a unimpressive type i think but his mother absolutely adored him and there was no expectation

of him becoming the heir because there were all these other children but they kept on being girls and then the one boy died yeah so suddenly it was him yeah so 1853 he goes off to south america basically you said on his gap year. Yeah. So he's how old then? He's in his early 20s, is he? Early 20s. Having had a kind of unimpressive school career and military career in Ireland.

Yeah. But weirdly, before he goes, he leaves some sealed letters behind. Oh, God, yeah. It's like a... And no one knows what's in them. It's like a telly novella. Yes, he leaves some sealed letters

buried somewhere in the grounds of Tichborne House. As you do. I always do that when I go away. As you do. Are these ever found? I miss this. So are they still there waiting with a terrible secret or something? No, they were found and destroyed.

So that allowed it to be, you know, this kind of black box in the middle of a trial. What was in them? Because was it not later said? Yes. That there was a sex scandal. There is a sex scandal. That was to do with the letters. But actually, then other people said the letters were all about the disposal of fields and stuff like that.

I don't think there was any sex, but it blew up the trial. So in the middle of it, when he's still trying to prove that he is Sir Roger Tichborne, he's asked, if you are Sir Roger Tichborne, you'd know what was in those sealed letters. And he spontaneously makes up this incredible story that he had impregnated his cousin. It was instructions as to how to deal with the pregnancy. Can you imagine? You've got to go big with something like that, haven't you?

Yeah. But that's what's so amazing about Arthur Orton is that he's got that Trumpian instinct of... Lie big. The bigger the lie, the better. Yeah. Just if you're going to lie, go all the way... Lie big. The bigger the lie, the better. Yeah. Just if you're going to lie, go all the way. All right, but let's just stick with Roger.

Yeah. Sorry, Roger's in South America. Yes. So he's a kind of tuba playing Bertie Worcester. Yeah, that's fair. But more violent, but more into Zadie. Yeah, a little more violent. A violent tuba playing Bertie Worcester.

Yeah. Okay. He's been messing around in kind of Buenos Aires and stuff. Yeah. And then he's going to Jamaica and his ship capsizes. Is that right? Yeah. It's wrecked orester. Yeah. Okay. He's been messing around in kind of Buenos Aires and stuff. And then he's going to Jamaica and his ship capsizes. Is that right? Yeah. It's wrecked or whatever.

Yeah. And that's the end of him. Or is it? But his mother, because she's French, Tom, she doesn't give up. Well, she's also Victorian. French and Victorian. It's practically inexcusable. She consults Clairvoyance, doesn't she?

And the Clairvoyance say, listen, he's alive. He's out there. Yeah. And she completely believes it. She believes it. And everybody in the family tries to stop her doing this, but she's completely obsessed. And the adverts, when they reach Australia, they're also given to kind of agents who actively help look for missing people.

And that is also a slightly distorted business. So you're paying someone to actively find someone hundreds of thousands of miles away. The whole system is ripe for manipulation, I'd say. And so while this is going on, while her agents are out looking for her son in the hope that he's not drowned, who is laying claim to the Tichborne estate? It's about to go to a baby son who has been born. There's one more child. Right. Previously to that, his uncle Henry is in the house, I think. He has it for the moment, waiting for a child of his to take it over. But by the time Arthur Orton comes back,

there's a tenant in there, Mr. Lushington, who is just renting the place because the Tichbornes at that point are not as rich as they once were. So it's Lushington who gets chucked out for this whopping butcher. But are there people, I mean, Titchborns or relatives of Titchborns or whatever, who stand massively to gain if Sir Roger is indeed proven to be drowned or lose out if he is proved to be alive? Yes, his uncle is the one who would gain most. Right. And anybody who comes from his uncle's line. I mean, it is still an enormous amount of land. So yeah, he has to be dead as far as they're concerned. But I think even more of their worry is that this unknown butcher is going

to take over everything they have. That is the motivation. So let's look at the butcher then. Yes. So how is it that he appears on the scene i think coincidence plays an incredible role like when you look at the photo that was published in all the newspapers of him and sir roger of course there's 300 pounds between them but i have to say the eyes are similar oh it's edgy dense the eyes are similar it was enough they're different man i mean i'm just i know they're different men but can you see, I mean, the photos, even I began to convince myself at a certain point, but the eyes are a bit similar.

And at some point, somehow, in Sydney, he came across Andrew Bogle. So Andrew Bogle had this long, incredible life of being an enslaved man in Jamaica, then plucked off the plantation by Sir Henry to be a page for him for 20 years, then released by the family. He'd married a white English woman, had a couple of kids. She died. Then he married another English woman and they moved to Australia. And he was living in Sydney with these children. His wife had died again. He was alone. And somehow he came across Sir Roger. Sir Roger being the butcher. Yeah, the butcher. He says he recognised him.

It seems impossible to me. So I've got a question about all that. Yeah. You were saying about the people who do the finding? Yeah. So 11 years have passed. We're now in 1865, since 1854 when Roger was lost. And there's a bloke who, in a splendidly Australian thing,

he's from Wagga Wagga. And this bloke from Wagga Wagga pitches up and says, I think you're Roger Tichborne. That's it. William Gibbs, I think his name is. The Wagga Wagga man. Yeah. Is the Wagga Wagga man really the architect of all this?

So basically he's doing it for money. He's found a bloke that looks like Tichborne. He finds the servant and he says, I'll put the two together. It's in everyone's interests that you recognize each other. That's it. It's put together. And the gardener, weirdly, of the Titchborns is also out there, a man called Guilfoyle, also in Sydney. So I think it's put together. I like to think that Bogle maybe at some point was sincerely convinced of this. But the moment he says he recognizes Sir Roger, the Titchborn family, who up to that point had given him a £50 a year

annuity, stop it immediately. So that fact is very interesting that he lost everything he had, his only means of support by supporting this claim. So I think the English public took that either as an example of his complete sincerity, like you're willing to lose everything to support this man. Or of course, the other argument is you're in for a penny hoping for a pound, right? So you give up 50 pounds hoping for a much bigger win further down the line. You say in the novel that whatever side of the thing a person was on, admiration for Bogle appeared universal. So when they go back, he is seen as a figure of the utmost moral quality. Because I think either he's sincere or he's extremely canny. And in both cases

that's a reason for admiration in terms of the working classes watching this case and which do you think he is you can't ask a novelist that i think it's possible for people to convince themselves of anything yeah i think it's a mixture of both yeah there's a story by borges where he implies that bogle is just an incredible fiction writer, basically, and he's there for a kind of personal reparations, which makes perfect sense. How better to get your just desserts out of the English government than messing with their court system for two years and then taking the reward? I mean, that does make sense. Your description of him, I thought he sounds like Morgan Freeman. In the adaptation of the novel, he'd be played by Morgan Freeman.

I went and looked up a photo of him and he does look a bit like Morgan Freeman. In the adaptation of the novel, he'd be played by Morgan Freeman. I went and looked up a photo of him and he does look a bit like Morgan Freeman. He does. He had this kind of innate nobility in the trial transcripts where everybody else is really behaving so badly. The lawyers are ridiculous. The witnesses are ridiculous. The whole behavior of the courtroom is absurd. He just is this calm centre. He seems to speak the truth. He's sometimes witty. He's sometimes painful to listen to. He's confessional. But he seems sane, where everybody else seems somewhat out of their minds.

So before we go to the break, let's get the claimant, who we've sometimes called Alton, and we've sometimes called him Roger Tichborne. But let's just call him the claimant. Let's get him to England. So they've got together in Sydney. I mean, this is such a complicated story that we're really only scratching the surface. I know. In Sydney, he makes some bad mistakes, doesn't he?

He gets his own mother's name wrong, which I think is a kind of giveaway, I think. And the whole lack of French. The lack of French. Yeah. And he doesn't speak French. And Roger, because his mother was French, had been raised speaking French, really as French. The lack of French. Yeah. And he doesn't speak French. And Roger, because his mother was French, had been raised speaking French, really as his first language. So one would think those two crucial details.

You'd think. But he sails for England, doesn't he? And he manages not to sink the ship, despite his enormous weight. Yeah. Doesn't he go to Franceance i mean that's an amazing scene they go on the boat and some money has been sent to them so quite painfully i think he takes the good seat on the boat and paul bogle and his family are in you know third class with the rest in steerage and then they get to paris and even as they get there arthur is a bit nervous about

it understandably it's a big lie. And this is the crunch point. So he, instead of going to the mother, hides in a hotel room with a handkerchief over his face and says, he's not feeling well. He's not feeling well. Loads of excuses. And then the mother finally says, well, I'm coming to you. And then he darkens the room. She walks in. He's like, oh, don't look at my face. I mean, it's so absurd. And he turns to the wall and she's like, no, Roger Darling, let me see your face. And his hand is trembling. And this is the moment.

You take it off. There she is. You've got to England. It's come this far. You might think, well, I did my best. And that's the moment where she says, no, that's him. It's unbelievable. He must have been amazed himself that he got that far.

It's incredible. Unless he was, in fact that he got that far. Wow. It's incredible. Unless he was, in fact, Sir Roger Tichborne. Stop it. Well, so the case is deepening. I think we should take a break here. And when we come back, we will find out what happens to Sir Roger, a.k.a. Arthur Orton, a.k.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. A giant, the chin-strapped beard had receded many inches to make room for the several extra stone gained since last photographed, and every button strained at the sheer girth of the man.

So that is Zadie Smith's description of the claimant in her new novel, The Fraud, this colossally large man who claims to be Sir Roger Tichborne, who previously had been very sylph-like and has vanished in the ocean. And now the claimant is claiming to be him and has come where we left him. He was in Paris. He had just met his mother, or is she his mother? And Sadie, what happens next after Sir Roger's mother recognises this guy who claims to be her long lost son? Well, she gives him a thousand pounds a year. I mean, it's just incredible. What an achievement.

And then dies very inconveniently for Arthur Orton, stroke Sir Roger. She dies and suddenly he is without any support. Nobody else in the Tichborne family will claim him. And he is somehow emboldened. I mean, I would run away at that point, but he just doesn't. He decides to fight the case and basically sue the family.

That's extremely bold, right? Very. You're suing them to get the tenant out of your pretend house. Yeah. That's really amazing. I'll tell you a detail that I think is telling, actually. So I said, is he Sir Roger Tichepon? But I don't think he is.

Big spoiler. Because when he first got to London, he had made a special trip to Wapham and inquired after the Orton family. Now, the Ortons are the Butchers. That's the Butcher's family. Now, if he was really Sir Roger Tichborne, there's no way he'd have gone and inquired after a Butcher's family. And this was brought up in court.

And his explanation was, you know what i met arthur orton in australia and he couldn't come and i just thought i should go and say to his family you know he's doing well he's fine yeah he's alive um that part of the testimony went on for literal months over and over again that story was repeated and during the trial he is secretly paying various of his Orton relatives to say that they don't recognize him and he's paying them to do that yeah right yeah he's secretly paying them and where's he getting his money from well that's the other thing the subscription fund the minute the money is taken away from him by the Tichbornes the The working people of England, mostly, who gathered in support of him, started a fund to support the case. So this is like the housemaid who marries?

Who marries William Ainsworth. They were really obsessed with him. And that part of the case is what interested me most. Because though it all sounds crazy, in the context of the time, working people in these courts were getting screwed on a daily basis. That's fair to say, right? Like your working class son steals a sheep, might find himself sent to Australia, might find himself hung at Tyburn Tree. So this had been going on for a long time in a court, which was almost exclusively populated by upper middle class juries and aristocratic judges and lawyers. I think the masses in England saw this as an opportunity to say, let's have one of our own win for once. Though the logic of that, of course, is demented. Yes, because the bind is that if he is one of their own, then he can't be Sir Roger. Right. It doesn't make sense.

But if he is, then they're rallying to the cause of a kind of posh aristocrat. Right. The analogy in my mind, the first time I read it, is OJ. It's a similar situation where an obvious lie is being used to reveal a different kind of truth about the court system. But just one other thing that you bring up brilliantly in the novel is the way in which this does have the quality of some melodrama. I mean, it seems so implausible and extraordinary as to be fictional. So you have a great description of people coming to watch it as though they're going to the music hall. The people had come prepared. They had winkle pots and paper cones of chestnuts to accompany the entertainment

and laughed and applauded the cross examinations exactly as if at the music hall. I think the line between court and theatre at that moment in British jurisprudence history is quite thin. Like when you're reading the court transcript, it's funny. Above all, it's funny. And what we would consider normal behaviour in a courtroom now doesn't exist. Like a summing up can literally take two and a half months. Yes. Well, talking of the courtroom, there's one character in particular so we alluded to him

right at the beginning here's this bloke from court called edward canely is it canely yeah i mean he puts on one of the most extraordinary performances actually in the history of the british courts doesn't he so he is acting in the second case so there's been a first case which he loses yeah which goes on for know, 27 years or whatever. So in the second case, he is now the criminal, someone who is pretended to be somebody else. So it's kind of Oscar Wilde. Yeah, exactly. Oscar Wilde-esque.

Yeah. That the guy who brings the case then finds himself on trial. Right. It's the flip. And when the flip happens, Keneally is his defense lawyer. And again, it reveals something about English law at that time that previously in another life, Keneally was a poet lawyer. And again, it reveals something about the English law at that time that previously in another life, Keneally was a poet. He gave up poetry.

He retrained as a lawyer. But training as a lawyer at that point is, as far as I can see, a very loose system. Because what he's basically doing in court is just telling very, very long stories. That's what we do. Yeah, just like a podcast or like a novelist without much rational bounds to them and unfortunately for ditchborn and everyone involved keneally was also i would say quite profoundly mentally ill he's bonkers yeah yeah i was reading up on him tom you'd love him he's got a great beard that kind of wg grace beard he wrote a pantomime in verse about girter

yeah just for starters and then he wrote a book called the book of god in which he said he was the oh yes i love this he was the 12th messenger of god descended get this from two very dissimilar people jesus and genghis khan yeah wow i think we're all descended from genghis khan to be fair. Yeah. Are we? I think that's what genetics proves, I think. That's one of those Twitter facts that I find very implausible, ultimately. No, Adam Rutherford is always telling me this, and I don't understand it, but apparently it is true. Keneally believed that, and he also had kind of like Steve Bannon-like theories of history,

of centuries turning in a certain direction, all to the apex of him. He was basically the resolution of history. Brilliant. We're just waiting for the arrival of Keneally. And this is the man who was the lawyer on the case. And is that because, as it were, real lawyers? Almost all lawyers said, no, thank you. Yeah, right.

Yeah. He was one of the last people who would accept it. And while running the case was also kind of building a political movement around the case. He began this thing called the Magna Charta Association, which took up a series of kind of political positions, including kind of anti-vaxxing positions, fascinatingly. Because I found that amazing. Yeah, it is amazing. This is what the Tichborne Gazette, they're putting out, aren't they? And it's kind of focused around making the case that he is Sir Roger.

But it has supplementary causes, yeah. Yeah, for who knew the true intentions of these rich men and their needles. Yeah, so their favourite things were, let's make Tichborne win this case. It was anti-Catholic. There was a big anti-Catholic strain in it. Anti-vax. Somewhat chartist. Its best parts were kind of an enormous coalition of people wanting more right

for the working man. But inside it were all these kind of extreme fringe elements. And Keneally was running it, you know, outside of the courtroom. So how much does this case, before we get back to the second trial, just on all that, the newspapers, the kind of people raising money, I mean, just listening to you talking about it, it's impossible not to think of all the conspiracy stuff that flourishes today, driven by a new kind of media, by social media. How much is this basically, I mean, I know it's sort of trite comparison actually, but I've started, so I'll continue. Go on, go for it, Dominic. In for a penny, in for a pound, like the butcher. Going hard. I love a trite comparison. How much is this effectively a Victorian equivalent of the

kind of ferment of mad theories and paranoias about rich elites and all that stuff that we have now? And driven by new newspapers and stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, I started it before Trump and all of that, but the analogies are impossible to avoid. And I think it's just because they're both studies in populism. And I think I got very used to the critique of right wing populism, but this is something different. This really is left wing populism. It's quite irrational. It's class based, but also fascinatingly to me, it did work. So one of the complaints of the people was that these courts were prejudiced against them, particularly the juries. And in the second trial, under this enormous public pressure and rhetoric which was passing around about the class-based system in the courts, the jury was then deliberately filled with only working people. And I think that might be one of the first times that happened in England. So it's an interesting case of what seems to be a deeply irrational, almost crazy case working its way through a court and transforming it in some small way.

So I don't know, maybe it's an example of how populism, as frightening as it sometimes can be, does also function in some way and is a weird machine for manipulating people's emotions to some political end. And to what extent do you think this kind of vast populist enthusiasm for the claimant is making fantastical figures out of both the claimant and Andrew Bogle, who is the chief substantiating witness? Because you give a kind of brilliant backstory of Andrew Bogle, of his father who is taken from Africa and experience of the plantations before the

abolition of slavery. How much of that is based on fact? I mean, that's all fact. I mean, everything that happens in the plantation scenes happens on those plantations. And one of the amazing things about writing this book is that UCL have digitized every plantation in Jamaica. So you can get very granular, every name, every job, every child. So we know exactly which plantation he was born on. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He was on Hope and we have all the details. So I had all the facts, which was an incredible thing.

But I think what interested me and interested Borges is these Victorian lives that passed through so many situations. How extraordinary to be born in that situation and then come to London and find yourself in the High Court. It was so hard to imagine what kind of a life was that, where you were in so many different worlds simultaneously. But he did become a legend. And those meetings that Tichborne or Arthur held all around the country, they were held in the same places where, you know, for example, Dickens spoke, where political rallies were held. They look like Trump rallies. Like you turn up in town, hundreds and hundreds of people come. There are banners. There are people screaming and shouting. And there's a lot of paraphernalia. Hundreds and hundreds of people come. There are banners. There are people screaming and shouting.

And there's a lot of paraphernalia. Like if you go to junk stores now, you can still find little models of Bogle and Tichborne, plates, cups. Yeah, it's extraordinary to me that it was that popular and then so completely forgotten. That's the other thing. And also they are fabricating witnesses, aren't they? So they come up with a Dane called Jean-Louis, who claims to have been a steward on the ship that had rescued Sir Roger from drowning and then taken him to Melbourne. He's a paid actor. Yeah, a false flag, as they would say these days.

A recently released convict. Yeah, you're watching a court system in which it's perfectly normal to say, we're going to have 210 witnesses. So it wasn't a practical system. And I think part of the effect of this trial was that the English legal system looked at itself and said, this can't continue. You can't call 250 witnesses. And this post states, jarndice and jarndice,

as Dickens already written Bleak House at this point. One of the questions was, did Dickens go to this trial? But then, of course, I realized he's dead just before it. He missed the trial that he would have adored.ored yeah so Bleak House is 20 years before this actually yeah no it's a perfectly Dickensian trial but he is dead before it but Elliot is there George Elliot went to see it I don't know what she made of it but I love the idea of her sitting there watching this it's much more Dickens than George Elliot isn't it the whole shenanigans yeah it's not to her taste at all she doesn't like this amount of irrationality and poor behaviour.

Very poor behaviour. We've had a lot of poor behaviour in the rest of history, but we've never had poor behaviour like this. So, this is actually the longest trial in English history, I think, isn't it? I think MacLibel takes it, actually, in the 90s. Okay, but until...

Until then, yeah, it's the longest. But it actually ends so quickly. okay but until until then yeah it's the longest but it actually ends so quickly so there's a bit issue of tattoos isn't there yes of course there is there's not the moment that basically this case falls apart because there's a bloke who was at boarding school with him we always love a boarding school story tom stonyhurst is it stonyhurst a jesuit boarding school i mean who would go to a jesuit boarding school bonkers anyway that's by the by he's gone to this school and a bloke pitches up who says i was at school with him and he had some very distinctive tattoos right seems odd that a teenager would have loads of tattoos but well who knows they did it to each other maybe just inked each other inked each other yeah inked each other that sounds odd but you know what i mean like yeah probably your friends did it

but that's what did for him yeah i think it's a bit like trump and stormy daniels it's not the thing you yeah i think is going to take you down it's always some al capone and the tax return yeah it's always some small thing and in the end not having a tattoo on his arm is the killer was the end of it yeah because the jury say to the judge we've heard enough we don't need the other 3 000 witnesses yeah that's it yeah two and a half years we're good it was a tattoo and that was it and suddenly he was imprisoned for 14 years i think and by the time he was released he was like a broken man he then did confess to being arthur orton to a newspaper to get some money.

And with that money, set up a cigarette shop in Islington. But years later, right? Years later. And paid by a newspaper. But then he retracts it, doesn't he? And then he retracted it again, still playing the game, and then died broke, destitute. And then, to bring the story full circle, was buried right next to my house which is how i

came to know about all of this in the first place in paddington cemetery off wilsdon lane is that so yeah but buried as who well this is the thing so when it was announced he was going to be buried and the case had been you know it was a long time since this had happened and you think most people have forgotten about it but suddenly everybody was interested again. And there's a photograph you can see online of 5,000 people in Wilsdon Lane. Wow. 5,000 came to see him buried. And the Tichborne family, for some reason, though they'd fought him all those years, said, fair play. You can have a little cardboard thing on top of the coffin saying Sir Roger Tichborne.

That's nice of them. That's so bizarre, isn't it? It's so bizarre. And he was buried in a pauper's grave. Yeah. There was no money to bury him. And there's no stone. So it wasn't that official.

But apparently they let this little cardboard sign. Why did they do that? That's mad. I don't know. It's sentimental or Dominic or... Guilt. Were they admitting? Yeah, guilt.

Yeah. So there he lies. And I walk past him every day with the dog in this pauper's grave yeah and what happens to andrew bogle borges said he was run over in king's cross but that's a romance it's not true he just died poor in king's cross also a pauper's grave his mixed-race son had had by that point 11 children so i always assume there are a lot of bogles in England. They're probably white or they might be any other colour. I guess they might have married whoever, but they might not know that they are related to this extraordinary man.

And what about Tichbornes? The Tichbornes continue, I think. There's a few Tichborne pubs in Hampshire, which I still haven't visited, which I'm excited by. The house I I know, doesn't belong to them anymore because I saw it in the Sunday Times for sale one day. Not for very much money even. Oh, go for it. No, I don't think it has much land left. I think it's just the house now. There must be Tichbornes around, but I don't think their wealth continued. And I don't know if they still get the rents from Doughty Street. The Baronetcy is expired. I'm looking at it here. 1968. Yes, that's it. There you go. Sir Anthony Doughty Tichborne.

And so the one last legacy of this case is our word titchy. Yeah, that part is crazy. And for the relief of my readers, I did not add another 58 pages on this topic. I restrained myself, which I thought was good. But there was a musical figure who apparently looked a bit like Arthur Orton in the face and was quite round but with the key difference of being four foot six which is really quite small and he was called Little Titch and was a massive music hall star performed in blackface a lot of the time which is fascinating but his most famous routine was with these two massive ski feet.

He was called Big Boots, and he would do a big boot dance in which, you know that bit in Smooth Criminal where Michael Jackson goes all the way to the floor almost and back again? Little Titch did that first. On the skis, he would go all the way to the floor and back. There's a video of it you can see online, and he was an incredible hit. So we still say things are Titchy because of Little Titch. Yeah, I had a friend at school when I was eight.

I mean, he was just called Titch. Everyone called him Titch. Yeah. And it never occurred to me. Yeah, or where that word came from. That he was called Little Titch after the Titchborn claimant. Yeah. Kind of perfect that this very musical trial ends up in the musical.

Yeah. Still with all the same themes around it. The idea of, you know of this black-faced character who's channeling some unseen place that nobody visits and nobody knows about. All the themes just keep on circling. Centre of England, the things on the border, and these strange, irrational actors.

Yeah, it's fascinating. Just a question before we go, Zadie, about your book, The Fraud. Yes. So obviously, we've done however many episodes about history. We sometimes talk about historical fiction. So we talk about Patrick O'Brien or whoever it might be. But for you as a novelist writing about a period of history, do you feel a kind of obligation to the, you know,

this is such a detailed story. There are, as it were, so many facts. Do you feel an obligation, a responsibility to keep to the facts? Or do you feel as a novelist, you have free reign as it were so many facts do you feel an obligation a responsibility to keep to the facts or do you feel as a novelist you have free reign as it were i remember hearing hillary talk about this mantel and i think she's right if you want to work with history you want to work with history the facts are important they're very important to me so i wouldn't see the point of manipulating them beyond reason. And in this case, you barely had to fictionalize. It is a fiction in itself. And I didn't change anything,

really. The only change is a fictional character outside of the case called Mrs. Touché, who is kind of extended beyond her normal lifespan or realm. But no, to me, the facts are really important. It's like a rearrangement of the facts into fiction, but not an obscuring or changing of them. It's the truth that fascinates me. But it's also a novel about Victorian novels to a degree, isn't it? Yeah. And I think I was just kind of interested in everything that Victorian novels hide or obscure. It's so common in a Victorian novel for the most useless son of the family to disappear to Jamaica or to Australia. And it's always out of sight. You never quite know where these useless

sons are going to. So it was an opportunity for me to kind of know myself, to fill in those gaps and write it in full. But the energy of those Victorian novels and the incredible kind of imaginative engine of them is something I've envied all my life. There's such incredible generators of story. Well, you have done them proud. Wonderful. So Zadie Smith, thanks so much. Thanks so much.

I loved it. The novel, The Fraud is absolutely unmissable. We hope you have enjoyed this extraordinary story. And who knows, the claimant, real or not, you decide. Thanks very much for listening. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.