3-065-729 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The End of the Tichborne Trial: the Claimant's farewell, 1874. 'The enormously lengthy trial of Thomas Castro, alias Arthur Orton, the claimant of the Tichborne estates and title, for perjury committed by him...had been continued during 188 days' sittings of the Court...The result is the conviction of the defendant on all the charges in the indictment for perjury, and his sentence to fourteen years' penal servitude - that is, to seven years' penal servitude for each of two different acts of perjury...The Lord Chief Justice, Sir Alexander Cockburn, in his exhaustive charge, which has taken eighteen entire days, has fully treated every part of the case...Mr. Justice Mellor then proceeded to pass sentence upon the prisoner, declaring the entire concurrence of the Judges with the verdict of the jury, dwelling upon the heinous nature of his crime, not only in the gross imposture he had attempted in order to rob an infant of his inheritance, but in the infamous perjuries by which he had supported his imposture, and especially the foul and abominable perjury by which he had sought to blast the character of Lady Radcliffe...the prisoner...now wears the prison dress, has the prison diet, and is employed in picking oakum'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.