Bathurst Times (NSW : 1909 - 1925), Friday 27 June 1913, page 4


DRAMA IN REAL LIFE.

LETTER TO EARL. ''I AM GOING TO SHOOT THE GIRL.'' LONDON, Wednesday

Great interest is manifested in the sensational charge against the daughter of Arthur Orton, tho notorious claimant to the Tichborne estate.

When the case was called on at the Bow-street Police Court yesterday, the accused, who calls herself Theresa Doughty-Tichborne, protested that she did not intend to do any harm to Miss Greville, her only motive in writing to the Earl of Granard being to attract attention to her case. In the course of her letter to the Earl, the accused refers to the ap-proaching marriage of my cousin, Sir Joseph Doughty-Tichborne, and con-tinues, 'I have asked you to use your influence to make them give me some of the money they stole from us, but you do nothing. It is nothing to you if I starve, as long as you and your wife can give parties and flaunt about with people, who, if they knew the truth, would be ashamed to know you.'' ''You cannot hide any more, for I am making you an acccesory before the fact bv telling vou that I am going to shoot that girl rather than Sir Joseph should marry her, for they will live on my money. As there is a God in hea-ven, I am going to do it.'' The Tichborne case, of course, pos-sesses a special interest for Australia, for it was from Wagga that the notori-ous character who posed as the real Sir Roger Tichborne came. It was in the late sixties, after the death of the eleventh baronet, Sir Alfred Joseph Tichborne, that the famous Wagga but-cher, Thomas Castro, otherwise Arthur Orton, came forward to personate Sir Roger Tichborne, the presumptive heir to the family estate in England. Sir Roger had sailed for Rio de Janeiro from New York in April 1854, bv the ship Bella, which was lost at sea. The imposter's case collapsed completely, and the 'claimant,' as he was called, was sentenced to 14 vears' imprison- ment for perjurv. Orton died in 1898.