The Chieftain: Victorian True Crime Through The Eyes of a Scotland Yard Detective

by Payne, Chris

  Arson – London’s Burning

  At 12.55 a.m. on 20 September 1871, a fire was reported to Richard Gatehouse, the keeper of the fire escape opposite Shadwell church. The informant, a young man, said that a fire had just broken out at Sufferance Wharf on Wapping Wall and he assisted the fireman, William Padbury and Gatehouse, with the fire engine. When reaching the fire they found a wagon-load of straw ablaze on the ground floor, which had spread to the upper floor of the warehouse above. The fire took about an hour to put out, at which point the young man helped the firemen to return the equipment to Shadwell church, where he was given the standard reward of ‘half a crown’ (2s and 6d) for the call and his trouble, and he signed the receipt as ‘W. Anthony’.146

  After lobbying by insurance companies, a publicly funded fire service in London had been established after the passing of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act in 1865. Alongside the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the London Salvage Corps had started its operations in 1866; their responsibilities included salvage work after a fire had taken place.147 One of the Salvage Corps employees, Thomas Meechan, had been investigating a number of fires of unknown cause, including one in July where the Holborn Fire Station had been called out by a man living at 2 Parker Street, Drury Lane. On the night of 26 September 1871, Meechan took the Shadwell fireman, Padbury, to Parker Street to see if the Holborn fire alert and the Wapping Wall alert might have been given by the same man. Using the ruse that they had lost the receipt that had been signed by the informant at Wapping, they knocked at the door and found the man that Padbury recognised as W. Anthony. However, Anthony said, ‘You must be mistaken, I don’t know where Wapping is, I was never up there’.148

  Armed with this denial that Padbury knew to be false, Meechan and his superiors decided to call in the police. Clarke picks up the story:

  On 29th September, I received information about this fire at Wapping Wall, and next evening, Saturday, about 10 o’clock, I went with Meechan to the corner of Parker Street, near No. 2 – Meechan pointed out the prisoner to me as one of two men, and I went up to him and said ‘Anthony, I want to speak to you about some money you received for calling fires’ – He said ‘What is it’ – I said ‘I will tell you directly,’ and I took him to the corner of Long Acre – I then told him I was an Inspector of police, and should arrest him on a charge of wilfully setting fire to a wharf in Wapping Wall on the night of 19th September – He said ‘I know nothing about it; I never was there’ – He repeated that several times, and I took him to King David Lane Station [Shadwell], and charged him with the offence – After the charge was entered, the inspector asked him if he could read or write – he said ‘No’; and then, after some hesitation said ‘Only my name, I can write my name’ – He did not write at the Station, he was not asked to do so. – He gave his name, William Anthony, Parker Street, Drury Lane, and said he was a blacksmith.149

  Anthony appeared at the Thames Police Court on 2 October. In addition to Clarke’s preliminary evidence, P.C. William Waller confirmed that he had seen Anthony opposite Shadwell church early in the morning of 20 September. Clarke also stated that there was evidence (from other signed reward receipts) that Anthony had called out the fire brigade at thirty-six fires, where the destruction of property amounted to £100,000 (equivalent to c. £4.5 million today).150 Anthony was remanded in custody and by 17 October was suspected of having set fire to at least 109 buildings, houses, factories and other premises in London in the last two years: ‘There was a large attendance of people whose premises had been destroyed and of others who were anxious to see a person accused of incendiarism on so very extensive a scale, merely for the purpose of the fee of half-a-crown…’151

  No doubt because of the seriousness of the case, Harry Poland had now taken over from Clarke the formal prosecution of Anthony, on behalf of the Treasury. At the 17 October hearing, witnesses had also been located who recalled seeing Anthony near the scene of the Wapping Wall fire before he had called out the fire brigade. Anthony, who represented himself, continued to deny the charges.152

  On 7 November, additional detailed evidence emerged that Anthony had called out the fire engine and helped in the pumping at a fire at some workshops in Hampstead, and at a corn-chandlers workshop at Chalk Farm. By 29 November, Clarke’s enquiries had unearthed a total of 150 probable fire setting offences, and he was engaged in the investigation of eighty-five others, or as Harry Poland said: ‘Every day they obtained fresh information about the prisoner, who had in two years set fire to 150 places and caused immense losses. Inspector Clarke, the detective officer, had been engaged in the investigation of those cases for six weeks daily, and had not done with them yet.’153 Anthony again claimed that all the witnesses were mistaken.

  At his Old Bailey trial on 13 December 1871, Anthony defended himself against the indictment of setting fire to the warehouse at Wapping Wall. After some legal discussion the judge, Mr Justice Grove, also allowed witness evidence on the association of Anthony with other fires. Apart from the battery of witnesses from the police and fire services, Charles Chabot confirmed that the handwriting on thirteen different receipts signed ‘W.Anthony’ was the same. The jury recorded a ‘guilty’ verdict, and Anthony was sentenced to twelve years’ penal servitude.154 The Pall Mall Gazette was not happy: ‘In the good old times arson was punishable with death, and now it is often visited with the punishment next in severity to hanging … Where the crime has unquestionably been systematically carried on, it is surprising to find only twelve years’ penal servitude awarded…’155

  The Liverpool Mercury focused on a more positive aspect, noting that whereas the fires from unknown causes in the metropolis had for some time numbered twenty-five or thirty per month they had, since the apprehension of the prisoner, dropped to three.156 Police orders reported: ‘Commendation and reward granted to a Detective Inspector – The Solicitor to the Treasury having highly eulogized the services of Chief Inspector Clarke, in connexion with the case of a man named Anthony … the Secretary of State, on the recommendation of the Commissioner, has authorized a reward of £5 being paid to him for the skill displayed.’157

  The huge variety of cases that Clarke tackled between 1868 and 1871 are vividly illustrative of the criminal and social environment of the time. The mental and physical pressures of the job must have been considerable, yet he seems to have thrived on the challenges as well as the increased responsibility that promotion to chief inspector brought. During these four years he had further demonstrated his ability to work with prosecution teams to assemble cases that would usually lead to convictions. He had also shown that he could be trusted to deal effectively with situations that were politically sensitive, such as the Irish Ambulance Corps, where a step in the wrong direction might have compromised Britain’s position of neutrality between the combatants in the Franco-Prussian War. His investigations of gambling premises also delivered what his political masters wanted, though they would not have made him the most popular man in Britain. His relationship with the public, and with certain politicians, would also be tested in his next major case.

  5

  THE TICHBORNE CLAIMANT, THEFT AND FRAUD

  1872–75

  Poor old Roger Tichborne now,

  Is on his trial again,

  They will not rest contented,

  They never will refrain;

  From doing everything they can,

  To strike the fatal blow.

  If money can only do it now,

  To prison he must go.

  Anonymous1

  Between March 1872 and April 1874, Clarke’s life was dominated by the longest-running sensation of the Victorian age, the case of the Tichborne Claimant. This divided the British nation between those who enthusiastically supported a man who had returned from Australia to claim his inheritance, and those who considered his claims implausible and fraudulent. Matters were only resolved at great length, and at great cost, in the courts. To set Clarke’s involvement into context, it is first necess
ary to provide some background information.2

  The Tichborne Claimant

  The Tichbornes were one of the oldest families in Hampshire, owning Tichborne House and its associated estate close to Alresford. On 5 January 1829, Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne was born in Paris, the first child of James Tichborne and his French wife Henriette. Roger’s parents were far from compatible and he spent most of his early years in France, away from his father. He was educated in a French-speaking community dominated by a doting and over-attentive mother. At his father’s insistence, Roger was sent to an English boarding school at the age of 15, but nonetheless only spoke English with a French accent. In 1848, Henriette purchased a commission for her son in the 6th Dragoon Guards, and he served for several years with his regiment, mainly in Ireland. When on leave, Roger stayed at Tichborne House and, after some time, developed a romantic attachment to his first cousin, Katherine Doughty, daughter of Sir Edward Doughty the ninth baronet. Katherine’s parents were uncomfortable with the developing relationship and matters came to a head in February 1853 when Roger was forbidden to see Katherine by her father, although she managed to persuade him to sanction their marriage in three years’ time on the understanding that she would be prepared to consider other potential suitors in the intervening period. Roger’s reaction to this disappointment was to cash in his army commission and to travel to South America, arriving in Valparaiso, Chile, in June 1853. The continent was evolving as an increasingly important trade partner for British merchants, and also provided an array of animals and plants of interest to naturalists and to the hunting and shooting fraternity. In an apparently unrelated series of events, some three years previously a young cabin boy from Wapping, Arthur Orton, had also arrived at Valparaiso, had jumped ship there and spent time travelling in Chile before returning to Britain. In 1852, Arthur Orton immigrated to Australia.3

  While in Chile, Roger Tichborne received news that his father had become the tenth baronet of Tichborne, following the death of Sir Edward Doughty. Roger was now next in line to inherit the title and the Tichborne estates but, for the moment, he continued his travels. In January 1854, he journeyed to Rio de Janiero via Buenos Aires, before deciding to seek a passage for Kingston, Jamaica, on board the Bella. The ship left harbour at Rio on 20 April 1854, and was never seen again. It was believed to have foundered in a storm with the loss of all hands and its only passenger, Roger Tichborne. On receiving the news, Henriette was distraught and refused to believe that Roger had perished. After receiving information some years later from an old sailor that crew members from a ship called the Bella had been heard of in Australia, she decided (after her husband’s death in 1862) to place newspaper advertisements offering a reward for information on the whereabouts of her missing son. Nothing substantive was forthcoming, but Henriette then came across an advertisement placed by Arthur Cubitt, the Sydney-based owner of the ‘Missing Friends Agency’ and, with his help, her advertisement was circulated in the Australian press.4

  Amongst those who read the advertisement in 1865 was the wife of William Gibbes, a lawyer in Wagga Wagga (a small town in New South Wales), who at the time was acting on behalf of a client, Tomas Castro, a butcher in the town who was in the process of being declared bankrupt. Mrs Gibbes had noticed that, despite his Spanish-sounding name, Castro spoke with an English accent and had also made passing references to a shipwreck and to some entitlement to property in England. Following discussion with his wife, Gibbes decided to speak to Castro about his identity. The outcome of their conversation was that Tomas Castro emerged into the limelight as the rediscovered ‘Sir Roger Tichborne’. As he subsequently pursued his claims to the baronetcy and to the Tichborne estate he became universally known as the ‘Tichborne Claimant’. The name he had used in Australia of ‘Tomas Castro’ he claimed to have adopted from a man he had met during his travels in Chile.5

  Following correspondence with Henriette (by then the Dowager Lady Tichborne), and helped financially by her and Gibbes, the Claimant and his family set sail for England, eventually arriving on Christmas Day 1866. Though details were not to emerge until later, one of the first visits that the Claimant made shortly after arrival in London was to Wapping High Street, where he knocked at the door of a house that had been (but was no longer) the family home of the Ortons, and visited the Globe public house where, in conversation with the landlady and her mother (who felt she had recognised him), he denied being Arthur Orton. His next visit was to Alresford, near Tichborne House, where he stayed in the Swan public house under an assumed name, though he did tell the landlord that he was the long-lost Roger Tichborne but didn’t wish the Tichborne family to know it until he had visited his mother. It was not until the 10 January 1867, in Paris, that the Claimant and Henriette came face to face; he was indisposed in bed, claiming seasickness as the cause but, despite his ailment, the Dowager Lady Tichborne immediately recognised her ‘son’.6

  The re-emergence of Sir Roger Tichborne was soon headline material in the national newspapers. Not surprisingly, after a period of thirteen years since Roger had sailed to South America, the Claimant was not recognised by all who had previously known him. Despite receiving Henriette’s recognition, only one other member of the Tichborne family accepted his claim, though some friends of the family and former acquaintances, including the Guildford MP, Guildford Onslow, the Tichborne family doctor and the retired family solicitor, accepted him at face value, as did a number of family servants and former army colleagues. For some, the Claimant displayed knowledge of relevant events and of the Tichborne estate, which in their view could only have come from Roger Tichborne himself. For others, including most of the Tichborne family, the Claimant’s physical appearance, the fact that he no longer had the ability to speak or write in his French native tongue and his lack of awareness of some key issues (including the contents of a sealed package that Roger had left behind at Tichborne House before leaving for South America) rendered him an implausible fraudster. Indeed, while the Roger Tichborne who had left England in 1853 had been lean, the individual who had returned in December 1866 was a hefty 18 stone, and continued to pile on the pounds over the coming years. There were also questions of how Roger Tichborne had reached Australia and why he had never bothered to contact his family until 1866. Though never satisfactorily dealing with the lack of contact, the Claimant explained that after the Bella had sunk, he and others had survived for several days in a lifeboat until they had been spotted by a passing ship, the Osprey, which had rescued the men and taken them to Melbourne.7

  Over the following months and years, the Claimant and his supporters continued to build his case, while the Tichborne family and their agents sought evidence to contest his claims. In June 1867 the Claimant’s solicitors initiated legal action to recover Sir Roger Tichborne’s property and inheritance. Supporters provided some income but the legal process was painfully slow and Henriette, the Dowager Lady Tichborne, died in March 1868, removing the chance that she could provide her personal testimony in court. The case was further delayed by judicial permission in June 1868 for commissions to be dispatched to Chile and Australia to collect information from potential witnesses there; the idea also being that the Claimant himself and his legal team could travel and confront these witnesses. Although the Claimant travelled to Buenos Aires with his legal team, he chose not to travel with them to Chile, giving ill-health and possible threats to his life as reasons for his decision. On his return to London, his explanations did not satisfy his solicitor and many of his financial backers, who withdrew their support, effectively bankrupting him. New solicitors were appointed and they launched ‘The Tichborne Bond’ scheme, which raised sufficient money from his closest supporters and members of the public to provide the Claimant with funds to continue his case.

  As early as March 1867, the Tichborne family had sent an agent to Australia to gather evidence on the background of ‘Tomas Castro’. Several key witnesses were found, including one who recognised a photograph of the Claimant
as someone she had known as ‘Arthur Orton’; other witnesses claimed that ‘Castro’ had learnt his trade as a butcher in London, and another recalled that Orton had come from Wapping. The Tichborne family solicitors then hired Jonathan Whicher, Clarke’s former Scotland Yard colleague who was now operating as a private detective. Whicher began making enquiries in Wapping, soon discovering that the Claimant had visited the area very shortly after his arrival in England in December 1866. Amongst other witnesses, Whicher located Arthur Orton’s former sweetheart, Mary Loder, who identified the Claimant as Arthur Orton.8

  The Claimant’s case, by now a fully blown cause célèbre, finally came to court in 1871 as a civil action: Tichborne v. Lushington, at the Court of Common Pleas before a judge and jury. The ‘Lushington’ referred to was Colonel Franklin Lushington, the legal tenant of Tichborne House who, ironically, was a supporter of the Claimant’s veracity from the knowledge that the Claimant had displayed when he had first visited the Tichborne estate. The Claimant’s legal team consisted of William Ballantine and Hardinge Giffard. The opposing legal team was led by Solicitor General Sir John Coleridge and contained, amongst others, Henry Hawkins (later Lord Brampton). The critical issue in the case was whether the Claimant was indeed Sir Roger Tichborne or whether he was an impostor, previously known as Arthur Orton and Tomas (or Thomas) Castro. The Tichborne case lasted from 10 May 1871 to 6 March 1872. On the 102nd day, 4 March 1871, when the court had just learnt that Roger Tichborne had had a tattoo on his arm, while the Claimant did not, the jury foreman said that they did not need to hear further evidence. After legal discussion the judge decided that the jury’s opinion represented a decision in favour of the Tichborne family, and that the Claimant had committed wilful and corrupt perjury during his examination. The judge then instructed the senior police officer present, Inspector Denning, to prosecute ‘Thomas Castro’, with bail of £10,000 being set. The Claimant was not in court at the time that proceedings concluded, and the police now needed to locate and arrest him. At this point, Denning called on his A Division colleagues, Superintendent Williamson and Chief Inspector George Clarke.9