OBSERVATIONS. (Hansard, 16 March 1877)

§ MR. WHALLEY,

on rising to call attention to Correspondence with the Home Office relating to the Tichborne Claimant, now suffering penal servitude under the name of Castro alias Orton, soliciting inquiry into the circumstances connected with his trial and conviction, together with Documents in the nature of evidence in support of such application, and especially Affidavits by Charles Orton, the brother of Elizabeth Jury, and Mary Ann Tredget, the sister of Arthur Orton, said, that he felt embarrassed how to justify himself in introducing the Tichborne case again before the House. Nothing could be more satisfactory than the manner in which the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary answered Questions on ordinary occasions; but he (Mr. Whalley) confidently asked hon. Members whether that course had been pursued by the right hon. Gentleman and also by the Secretary to the Treasury in answering Questions on this subject. It would have been much better to have disposed of the subject in a straightforward manner by giving a direct answer to the Question rather than presuming on the incompetency of any particular Member that put the Question, 80 because until that was done the Question still remained upon the Paper. He had presented Petitions signed by 300,000 persons arraigning the administration of justice in this case, and preferring charges against those who tried him which no Judge had ever before allowed to remain on the Table of the House without demanding a full inquiry. He took upon himself the responsibility of substantiating the charges so made before any tribunal that House might appoint for investigating them. Besides the pressure that was put upon the Press during the trial not to speak or discuss the points and circumstances as they arose, the Press had, by some extraordinary circumstance, omitted to notice the action of public opinion in favour of the Claimant which had not abated since the trial. He wished to know why an officer of that House was selected to pay Charles Orton 21s. a-week for more than 12 months to keep his address secret and to communicate with him under a fictitious name. He asked why this man was not called on the trial. He declared that the man had been tampered with by the Treasury, and that a direct bribe was given to him by his retention by the Solicitor to the Treasury of 21s. a-week for the express purpose of preventing the unhappy man now in Dartmoor from obtaining the benefit of this man's evidence. How the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, so intelligent, courteous, and able a person, could lend himself to such a proceeding he could not imagine. He could prove by documents in his pocket that this man was paid this money for more than 12 months. He had asked a Question on the subject the other evening of the Secretary to the Treasury, who, however, declined to reply to it on the ground that he had answered a similar Question nearly two years since; but when he turned to the answer given by the hon. Gentleman in August, 1875, he found that he had on that occasion also declined to give the information asked for. He believed it was true that nearly £10,000 had been paid for the bringing up of witnesses from all parts of the world by the Treasury, at the expense of the public, but they were afterwards kept back because it was found that their evidence would be adverse to the prosecution, and he regarded the 21s. a-week paid to Charles Orton as nothing less than hush money. 81 He could not help expressing his surprise that the Home Secretary who manifested so much courtesy and ability on every other subject should make this case an exception. ["Oh!" and "Divide!"] He would, however, again ask him why he did not lay before the Judges who tried this case the evidence brought before the Home Office showing that there had been a miscarriage of justice. The right hon. Gentleman said it would be a bad precedent to lay before the Judges evidence which would have been brought before the Court, because in Court the witnesses could be examined and cross-examined. He (Mr. Whalley) regarded that dictum as a very startling one, and it did not accord with his own experience as to the practice in such cases. In two cases of murder he had been partially instrumental in rescuing persons who had been convicted from the penalty of death, and that penalty had been remitted entirely in consequence of evidence brought forward by himself and others after the trial. If the Home Office had excluded from consideration the evidence that should have been produced at the trial those men must have suffered capital punishment. A great doubt existed in the case, and that doubt would probably have been removed if Charles Orton and his sisters had been called at the trial. The prosecution had spent about £300,000 in prosecuting the defendant, and he himself and others had been fined and imprisoned for taking his part. But he did not complain on his own account; he never did so. All he asked was that the right hon. Gentleman should lay before the Judges the additional evidence which had been procured, and which to his mind was very important. Six persons had all sworn that in 1854 they boarded the Osprey in Melbourne Harbour, and that they saw and spoke to a body of men who represented themselves as having been saved from the wreck of the Bella. One or two of the witnesses, moreover, swore that among those men they recognised the Claimant. Further than that, a Mrs. Alexander, who was known to the right hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Gladstone) as a person of respectability, declared that she recognised the defendant as a person whom she saw in Australia in 1835. He also complained that the Government had given Dr. Massey Wheeler an ap- 82 pointment which had taken him out of the country, and deprived the defendant of the benefit of his evidence. If the right hon. Gentleman chose to treat him (Mr. Whalley) with indifference, that was what he was accustomed to; but why should he complain to the House that he was troubled with these Questions being repeated? The evidence to which he was now referring was not old evidence. Every week had brought forth fresh testimony, which had culminated within those very walls in a statement made to him (Mr. Whalley) by one of the Sheriffs of the City of London, to the effect that the Lord Mayor had told him he knew the whole family of the Ortons, and that this man was no more Arthur Orton than the Lord Mayor himself was. This was no ordinary case of a miscarriage of justice. Here was a man who, if the judgment passed upon him was right, had been roaming through the country for seven years under an assumed name and had been raising enormous sums of money from the people on the strength of that imposture—and it was a discredit to the administration of justice in this country that such a state of things should have been possible. On that ground alone it was most important that there should be an inquiry. He held in his hand a printed copy of five letters—he would not trouble the House by reading them—entitled "Junius to Mr. Cross." Whether or not they had been written by the hon. Gentleman who had been the advocate of this man, it was not for him to say; but they were most admirable compositions, and he thought it would be well if the right hon. Gentleman would have them printed and circulated among the Members of the House. Well, those letters distinctly stated, in effect, that the man had been convicted, not in consequence of the evidence against him, but on account of the misconduct of his counsel. In refusing an application for a new trial, the Judges said to the advocate more than once, and almost in so many words" That man was sent to prison on account of your insolence and your misconduct." If that was true, he (Mr. Whalley) should have expected the hon. Member for Stoke-upon-Trent to be present in order to speak in his own defence, but he noticed with sorrow that the hon. Member was not in his place. It was 83 true that this unhappy man had put himself into the hands of his friends, who selected for him his counsel, and he was convicted, he (Mr. Whalley) would not say through the fault of his counsel, nevertheless that learned advocate was extruded from his position as a Bencher of his Inn, and had also been disbarred. This was the result of a fearless advocacy used on behalf of a man who had been unjustly accused, and it among others was in his mind a sufficient ground upon which to ask that further inquiry should be made. There were, without doubt, many hon. Gentlemen—not all, of that he was perfectly sure—who firmly believed that the right man was in the right place—["Hear, hear!"]—who might think that he was not Tichborne—that was to say, that he had put himself forward as Sir Roger Tichborne when he was not Tichborne—and really he (Mr. Whalley) was almost shocked at the eagerness with which hon. Members cheered that sentiment, because the right hon. Gentleman opposite might consent to give an inquiry. Although many hon. Members might believe that this man was not Tichborne, he could not think that there were many who believed that this man was Orton, but who, like the Lord Mayor, would not go the length either of saying that he was not Sir Roger Tichborne or that he was Arthur Orton. Some might say, after such an interminable trial—"We are not going to have the course of affairs in this House deranged in the same way as the business in the Courts of Law; it is only this unhappy monomaniac that we are going to get rid of; "but no question had ever taken hold of the feelings, the patriotism, the good sense, and he might say the Christianity of the country, to the same extent. It was in their hands, and they would demand a hearing for it. This poor man when left to himself, and having peculiar skill in the art of shooting—[Laughter]—why could he (Mr. Whalley) not mention that without being laughed at?—and being deliberately deprived of the aid of the public funds to defend himself was told with ferocity by the Lord Chief Justice that if he dared to go to these rifle matches or any place to solicit money his bail would be estreated, and he would be shut up. In consequence, he (Mr. Whalley) had been compelled to get up subscriptions, which he had also been compelled to spend 84 very freely. Indeed, the last 50 witnesses had been paid for with money out of his (Mr. Whalley's) own pocket. He waited with anxiety to learn whether the Secretary of State would again say that evidence could not be considered now because it was not brought forward at the trial. In conclusion, he assured the House that nothing but his strong sense of the conviction that the man in prison was Sir Roger Tichborne would induce him so persistently to present himself to the House in a manner so obnoxious to it.