The court decided that the claimant, who called himself Thomas Castro, was in fact Arthur Orton. Born in London in 1834, the son of a butcher, Orton had gone to sea as a boy and worked his passage to Australia (via Chile). The claimant was sentenced to fourteen years in jail, but he claimed until his dying day (in 1898) that he was in fact Tichborne. The Tichborne family allowed a card bearing the name "Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne" to be placed on his coffin.
Most historians have agreed with the court, but a lingering doubt remains.
The case was such a cause celebre that the Music Hall artiste Harry Relph took the stage name Little Tich – a reference to his portly figure, which was like that of the claimant but in miniature. This is the origin of the nickname Tich (or Titch) for anyone of diminutive stature.
© Haydn Thompson 2017–20