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THE TICHBORNE CASE.The Tichbome cause has reached an important stage. The case for the claimant has closed. During the Christmas holidays the public will have leisure to compare notes, and interchange speculations on the most perplexing, the most interesting, and the most dramatic trial that has come before an English court of law during the present generation. We of course do not intend to offer any arguments on the question at issue. The well-established principle that prescribes to the English Press a general forbearance from criticism while a case is yet under trial is so wholesome and useful in general, that we are not disposed to grumble even when, as all general rules do, it produces in particular instances some little inconvenience. In this case, however, there is all the less reason for complaint, because no reasonable and practical manor journal would venture on committing to print any premature opinion on the merits of a dispute so extraordinary and so bewildering. Indeed, it may be taken for granted that, however the Tichbome case is finally decided—assuming that the final decision does come this side the Greek Kalends—there will remain many disinterested and impartial persons firmly convinced that the wrong side has triumphed. Questions of disputed identity have always been the puzzle of history and the delight of romance. Was it the real Sebastian of Portugal who came back long after the Battle of the Three Kings to claim the crown ? There were romancists at least who loved to think it was. Was the Duke of Monmouth actually executed, or was some wretched substitute found, and did the real Duke live for long years after? Was the Rev. Eleazar Williams, of Wisconsin, who died only some dozen years ago, the true Dauphin, heir of Louis the Sixteenth, whom history in general regards as having perished miserably in the Paris prison? There are scores of sane and reasonable persons who will almost go to the stake for their conviction that the Wisconsin missionary was the Child of France. When a once notorious member of Parliament committed suicide on Hampstead-heath, we can all remember how that many men who had known him in life insisted that the evidence of identity was partial, unsatisfactory, and worthless ; that the body sworn to be his was not his, and that an evasion of criminal justice, not a suicide, was the crowning act of his career, in England. There was a case only the other day which attracted little or no attention, and yet was strikingly significant of the difficulties that surround the question of identity. The body of a woman was found. A gentleman who had full opportunity to examine the features and the clothing positively affirmed that the body was that of his wife. Yet it subsequently appeared on the most conclusive evidence that he was mistaken. Nor is the difficulty lessened when the dispute is as to a living person. The believers in the Rev. Eleazar Williams were convinced chiefly ^ by their conversation with him, and their oral examination of him. In truth, it would not be difficult for a bold and clever impostor to get up an imposing and perplexing case if he choose to pass himself off for somebody whom he had known, or heard much of, and whom he believed to be dead. But, on the other hand, it would be possible to find so many defects of memory in the narrative of an honest and genuine claimant as to excuse any sceptical person who declined to believe in his identity. It is not strange that this Tichborne case, which on Thursday concluded its seventieth day of hearing, should have excited so universal an interest. The mere story of a wild young heir who, having gone to sea and been lamented as lost, suddenly turned up again after the lapse of years, would have in itself enough of the material of the marvellous to light up quite a little flame of curiosity. When the interest is further and immensely increased by the fact that his claim is challenged, his identity disputed, that he is alleged to be not the rightful heir, but quite a different man, then obviously we have elements enough for an exciting sensational romance or drama; and that which excites in fiction excites ten times more in reality and a court of law. But the absorbing peculiarities of the Tichbome case are far from being exhausted in this statement. In most other instances of disputed identity—historical or fictitious—there _ is a striking personal likeness to support the claim. In several cases of real life which were distinctly proved to be impostures the whole idea of setting up the claim originated in the existence of this likeness. There is one recorded story which used to be celebrated, in which two men became acquainted in a foreign country. They were first drawn together by each remarking that the other resembled him. They grew familiar, and each learned the whole of the other’s story. One was a man of some property, who had quarrelled with his wife, and in a burst of anger left her, and hid himself away in laborious exile. After a while, this man died, and then the other was seized with a bold idea, He came back to England, represented himself as the exile returned, and for a short time deceived everyone, including even the wife, only to be at last discovered. But one remarkable peculiarity of the Tichbome case is, that no such obvious and striking resemblance exists between the man who went away and the man who has returned. _ This, again, only increases the difficulty, instead of clearing the way. It may be contended for as enhancing the probabilities of the one side as well as on the other. If, on the part of the defence, it be asked, how comes the claimant, if he be the real heir, to have changed remarkably in personal appearance? it may be asked on the claimant’s part, what but a simple conviction of right could have induced a man to ™n.ko a claim which was not better supported by superficial evidence ? The same observation will apply to the incongruities of manner and mental culture on which the long and trying cross-examination of the Attorney-General so persistently dwelt. We are not even suggesting an opinion either way, but merely pointing out some of the many perplexing peculiarities which belong to the case, and which keep public curiosity and attention for ever on the stretch. The case for the claimant has, therefore, been supported by an exhibition of such a variety of kinds of evidence as to embrace nearly all subjects of individual and human interest. Lawyers and soldiers, young ladies and old wives, sailors and doctors, travellers and stockbrokers, the physiologist, the anatomist, the photographer, the painter, the hairdresser from Clonmel, and Captain Burton from the Passes of the Andes—the laundress who washed the shirts years ago, and the nominal defendant, who saw the claimant for the first time the other day—all these, and a whole host of others, have been summoned, to embrace in their collective testimony every incident, feature, and possi • bility of a human character and career. On Wednesday it was proposed that the inquiry should enter into the realms of psychology and even of metaphysics. It seemed possible that not merely might the jury have been called upon to decide between the authority of rival professors of the art of mnemonics, but even that the great dispute about Intuition and Experience—between the Idealists and the Sensationalists—might have found a new arena and a new audience in the Tichbome case. We may look for a revival of the keenest sensation on the 15th of January, when the case for the defendants is to be opened. Nothing could be more important for the plaintiff than to keep on calling witness after witness who should acknowledge a belief in his identity. But it is possible that to the highly stimulated palate of the public all this had a lack of fresh and piquant relish. Now that we are going to hear the other side, we may be sure that every ear will be on the stretch once more. It is due in any case to this trial to say ’that for the seventy days which it has already occupied it knew and tolerated no rival in popular attention. Those were evil times for the sensation novelist, whose three volumes were forced into unequal competition with the morning papers and the Tichborne trial. Some humourist has told of an evening he spent at the old Coburg Theatre, and how the attention of the audience, at a most thrilling moment of the drama, was wholly withdrawn from a sword combat of Bix on the stage to watch a genuine fight between two sailors in the pit. In something of the same fashion has the reality of the Tichbome case triumphed over the wildest mysteries of the romancist. We pity the writer of fiction whose sensation romance has to appear on the 16th of January next, the day when the morning papers come out with the first reports of the adjourned Tichborne trial.—Daily News.
Newspaper Details
Sun and Central Press
London, Middlesex, GB
Sat, Dec 23, 1871
Page 5
Full Page
Clipped by
University O.
IA, USA 24 Jan 2025
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