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Arthur Orton (20 March 1834 – 1 April 1898), the son of a London butcher, went to sea as a boy, spent a year in Chile, and worked as a butcher and stockman for squatters in Australia in the middle-to-late 1850s. He has generally been identified by legal historians and commentators as the "Tichborne Claimant", who in two celebrated court cases both fascinated and shocked Victorian society in the 1860s and 1870s. In 1866 Thomas Castro, a butcher from Wagga Wagga in Australia, claimed to be Roger Tichborne, the heir to the Tichborne estates and baronetcy who had been declared lost at sea in 1854. During the protracted court proceedings that followed Castro's claim, evidence was produced that Castro might in fact be Arthur Orton, attempting to secure the Tichborne fortunes by imposture. The verdict of the jury in ''Regina versus Castro'' (1873–74) was that Castro was not Roger Tichborne, and that he was Arthur Orton. He was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment for perjury. After his release he lived in great poverty, still insisting that he was Tichborne. In 1895 he confessed to being Orton, but retracted almost immediately. He died in 1898; the Tichborne family allowed a card bearing the names "Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne" to be placed on the coffin. Commentators have generally concurred with the court's verdict that the Claimant was Orton, but some 20th-century analysts have raised uncertainties about this accepted view, and have suggested that although the Orton identity remains the most likely, a lingering doubt remains. ==Biography== Orton was born at Wapping, London, the son of George Orton, a butcher and purveyor of ships' stores.〔 Michael Roe, '(Orton, Arthur (1834–1898) )', ''Australian Dictionary of Biography'', Vol.. 5, Melbourne University Press, 1974, p. 374. Retrieved 2009-11-02 〕 He left school early and was employed in his father's shop. In 1849,〔 he was apprenticed to a Captain Brooks of the ship ''Ocean''. The ship sailed to South America and in June 1849 Orton deserted and went to the small Chilean country town of Melipilla. He stayed in Chile for a year and seven months and befriended the Castro family.〔 Orton then went back to London as an ordinary seaman. In November 1852 he sailed for Tasmania aboard the ''Middleton''〔 and arrived at Hobart in May 1853. There, Orton worked for several butchers. There is some evidence he was a heavy drinker; and for minor trade malpractices, he appeared before magistrates.〔 The Hobart Mercury of 1 Aug 1855 reports on the case of 'Fane v. Orton' in the Mayor's Court in which the City Surveyor brought a charge of 'offering for sale...unwholsome meat, unfit for human food' against 'Arthur Orton, butcher, Macquarie-street' to which Orton pleaded guilty. In October 1855, Orton appeared on a charge of obtaining money under false pretences brought by Frederick Dight, after Orton had been a witness against Dight in an earlier Supreme Court trial, but the case was dismissed. From 1855 to the mid-1860s there is little detail about his life, but he appears to have pursued gold prospecting, mail-running and pastoral station hand-work, with a suggestion of bushranging and even murder.〔 Orton left Hobart as a passenger on schooner 'Eclipse' on 16 November 1855 bound for Port Albert on the coast of Gippsland, Victoria. He worked for some time on squatters 'runs' in the district.〔 While employed at one he was said to have written 'on a fly-leaf of one of the station novels' and this was later offered as evidence that Orton did not have the education that would have been expected of Tichborne: "This day i have received a letter from Donald MacDonald. With the Seal Broken. i Arthur Orton here make a vow on this Book. Although not a Bible. It bear a cross, That i am a man of Bone Blood and flesh. That i will find out the Man if Possible. That broke the said Seal. And that i will punish him according to the laws of, My Countrie. In May 1856, he appears in a subscription list, donating £2, for 'the Patriotic Fund from the Upper District of Gippsland' as a stockman and 'one of the men' of 'Mewburn Park'. In April 1859, a letter to the editor of the 'Gippsland Guardian' mentions Orton, 'who was in charge of the Dargo station', and recounts Orton's testimony in relation to 'the mysterious disappearance of William Henry Clare alias Ballaarat Harry, and Thomas Took'. Orton's letters to England while he was in Hobart showed he was fond of dogs and children and affectionate towards his girlfriend in Wapping.〔 However a personal notice in a Hobart newspaper from May 1856 – 'If this should meet the eye of Arthur Orton, formerly of 69, Wapping, London, by applying on board the "Irene", he will hear of his friends.' – after he had departed for Victoria raises the question of when the correspondence may have ended. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Arthur Orton」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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