Mother Is Convinced She’s Found Missing Son, But People Notice Something’s ‘Off’

Panicking for her family’s future, Lady Tichborne sought out a clairvoyant. Whatever Lady Tichborne was hoping to get out of a psychic reading, we highly doubt she expected to hear what the clairvoyant had to say. “Your eldest son,” she told a mystified Lady Tichborne, “is alive and well.”

The psychic’s message came at a time when the public was eager for news about the Bella wreck. Rumors were already swirling that some of the crew had been rescued by a passing ship; now that a psychic claimed it was so, people couldn’t help but keep hope alive…especially Lady Tichborne.

Refusing to grieve any longer, Lady Tichborne immediately sprung to action. She took to the papers, advertising a “handsome reward” to anyone who knew anything about where Roger could be. And when it came to possibly seeing her son alive, she didn’t hold back in the ad.

She not only described in detail who Roger was and what he looked like, but also how he was the heir to his deceased father’s vast estate. She mentioned how people could study the ship’s roster themselves, and reiterated how a “most liberal reward” would be given to anyone with information. Despite causing a stir, it would be a decade before she uncovered any promising leads.

10 years later, a man from Wagga Wagga, Australia, found himself in a bind. He was a butcher named Thomas Castro, and his debts were crushing him. Pressed for cash and for time, the desperate butcher made a shocking claim: he was a survivor of a shipwreck.

Castro also claimed that he owned several properties in England. Still, it wasn’t until he held up his pipe — which was engraved with the initials “RCT” — that his lawyer made the connection between his client and the long lost son of Lady Tichborne.

Castro’s lawyer pleaded with his client to come clean about being Roger Tichborne, but the butcher wouldn’t budge. It was almost as if he didn’t remember the shipwreck or his past life as an almost-Baronet at all! But when his lawyer mentioned Lady Tichborne, everything changed.

Almost as if someone had flicked a switch in his brain, Castro finally admitted that he was, indeed, the believed-to-be-dead Roger Tichborne. When Lady Tichborne heard the news, she immediately reached out to him. It wasn’t long before Castro/Tichborne was en route to England.

When Roger Tichborne left for Jamaica, he was tall and lean and spoke with a French accent; now he was squat, nearly 400 pounds, and spoke with a hybrid British/Australian accent. The differences raised a few eyebrows, but not Lady Tichborne’s, who was desperate to see her son in the flesh.

And when Lady Tichborne first laid eyes on her long-lost son, she immediately knew it was him, despite the apparent changes. Since her other son Alfred had recently succumbed to alcoholism, finally finding Roger alive and well was a relief…even if his story didn’t make much sense.

With that, “Roger” made arrangements to move to England permanently. He was a little strapped for cash, but his mother had no problem lending him some, and she also wasn’t bothered by her son’s insistence on creating a will, something he’d shown no interest in doing before.

The will, which “Roger” wrote up at the urging of the same lawyer who discovered him, was filled with odd details that some people couldn’t help but question. For instance, the will contained notes about family properties that didn’t exist, and Roger even referred to his mother as Hannah Frances, which was weird, considering how Roger’s mother’s name was Henrietta.

But Lady Tichborne, a few family friends, and even the family doctor all agreed that the man standing before them was the real Roger. It helped that Castro/Roger was able to provide very specific details about Roger’s childhood, such as his favorite fly fishing tackle and the name of his childhood dog.

Still, there were details beyond his weight gain and accent that got under people’s skin. Besides not knowing his mother’s first name — a reason for suspicion if we’ve ever heard it — “Roger’s” letters were also filled with too many spelling and grammatical errors for such a well-educated man.

When forced to converse with his French family and friends, he could barely manage the simplest French phrases, despite having been raised in Paris. Any memories about his boarding school days, which he’d once held dear, were all but gone. Whenever someone brought up these irregularities, however, Roger had a simple explanation.

The shipwreck had been so traumatic, he explained, that his mind had never been the same. That’s why he couldn’t remember key details about his childhood, and that’s why he treated people he’d once known like strangers. Besides, his mother believed he was who he said he was. Why would anyone question a mother’s intuition?

Well, this excuse was only viable for a few years before Roger’s only real advocate — his mother — died in 1868. Now alone in the world and backed up against a wall, “Roger Tichborne” was forced to prove in court that he was truly the lost Baronet of Tichborne.

As it turned out, the Roger Tichborne sitting in a courtroom trying to prove his identity wasn’t as smart as the Roger Tichborne who’d departed on the Bella. It didn’t take long for residents of Wagga Wagga to talk to investigators and identify Tichborne as someone else other than Roger Tichborne or even Tom Castro.

They referred to him as Arthur Orton, the London-born son of a butcher who’d at one point moved to Australia and taken the name Tom Castro. When he saw the posters about Lady Tichborne’s search for her son, he had an epiphany.

Orton/Castro had seen the advertisements and decided this would be a great way to raise his social standing. He’d paid — or, more likely, promised to pay — two former Tichborne servants in exchange for specific information about the real Roger’s life. Even with all this out in the open, however, “Roger” refused to admit defeat.

He claimed in court that he didn’t know anyone by the name of Arthur Orton. The court prepared to compile more than 200 witnesses to Orton’s identity theft, but in the end, it wasn’t even necessary: a quick doctor’s examination proved that the real Roger had had tattoos that the fake Roger didn’t possess.