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February 7th

from an email from a Tichborne case

researcher:

Unfortunately . . . manifold errors which

[were] clarified fifty years ago are being promulgated

again all over the web.

  Your article is a breath of fresh air.

Andrew Bogle was a Black slave on the Hope Estate in St Andrew, Jamaica. He was born about 1801, but nothing is ever said about his parents. He was taken to England in the mid-1820s by Edward Tichborne, who had for some time been managing the estate. Tichborne apparently took Bogle with him without informing anyone of his intentions, which caused considerable annoyance, and employed him in England as his valet. At first Bogle lived with Tichborne and his new wife at Upton House, near Poole, in Dorset. Influenced by his employers he was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church; the Tichbornes were one of the oldest Catholic families in England. At Upton, in the 1830s, he married Elizabeth Young, a White English woman, who had been a nurse in the household of Tichborne's aunt; the marriage took place in the Anglican church in the neighbouring village of Great Canford, as at that time Roman Catholic marriages were still not legally valid. Bogle had two sons by his first marriage, John and Andrew, but his wife died in 1845.

Andrew Bogle continued as Edward Tichborne’s valet when in the mid-1840s Tichborne inherited the Tichborne baronetcy and property. The family moved to Tichborne House in Hampshire, and Bogle’s two sons, John and Andrew were sent to a Catholic school near Reading. In 1853 Sir Edward died, and, shortly after, Bogle was able to retire with a small pension. He decided to emigrate to Australia, possibly encouraged by another retired Tichborne servant who was living in Sydney. Before leaving he married, at St Peter's Roman Catholic Church in Woolwich, Jane Fisher, the Dorset-born daughter of a soldier, who had been a teacher at the village school near Tichborne House. His son Andrew went with them; John was apprenticed to a chemist in Nottingham, but also travelled to Australia when his bad conduct brought about the end of that arrangement.

In Sydney, Bogle for a time kept a restaurant, and his sons started on careers; John continued as a chemist and Andrew junior became a barber and hairdresser. A third son, Henry George, was born in 1856. However, in 1858, a common family tragedy befell Bogle. His wife, then aged 43, gave birth to another son, Edward, but died three weeks later of 'uterine hemorrhage'; the baby only lived for two months. Bogle himself began to suffer severely from rheumatism.

Books about, and references to the Claimant, continue

to appear - a new

book is due out in

April 2007!

AMAZON

Bogle had remained in touch with the Tichbornes and so knew all about the problems caused by the disappearance of one of Sir Edward’s nephews, Roger, who had been in line for the Tichborne baronetcy and extensive property. Roger’s mother never believed that her eldest son had died in a ship-wreck off the coast of South America in 1854. She clung to the rumour that some survivors had been picked up by a ship on its way to Australia, and had advertised in Sydney for any news of him. Bogle and Guilfoyle, the other former Tichborne employee, were among those keeping a look-out.

Then in 1866 a man appeared out of the gold-fields claiming to be the lost heir, and convinced Bogle that he was indeed the Roger Tichborne he had known well as a boy. Bogle and his youngest son, Henry, travelled to England with the ‘Claimant’ and became deeply involved with the whole sorry business. Only Roger’s mother accepted the ‘Claimant’; the rest of the family instituted civil cases against him, and he was soon facing criminal charges. The case that ensued was the longest, 188 days, in legal history in England to that time. The ‘Claimant’s’ case was defeated, and he and two supposed accomplices were given prison sentences; it seemed fairly clear that he was really Arthur Orton, from Wapping, in London’s East End, who had seen the chance of pulling off a grotesque imposture.