Andrew Bogle

The case of the Tichborne Claimant gripped the Victorian imagination like few other events. Sir Roger Tichborne, heir to the Tichborne estate, had been reported dead in 1854, drowned during a shipwreck while returning from Chile. In 1866 he miraculously resurfaced, working as a butcher at Wagga Wagga in Australia. He travelled to England and tried to claim his inheritance. When his civil suit collapsed, and it became apparent he was in fact one Arthur Orton from Wapping, he was subsequently put on trial for perjury.

Andrew Bogle was a former slave from Jamaica and one-time valet to Roger Tichborne's uncle, Sir Edward Doughty Tichborne. On his retirement he had emigrated to Sydney in Australia and it was here that he became involved in the story of Arthur Orton. As a former Tichborne servant, his evidence was considered invaluable and he became one of the Claimant's principal supporters and a key witness in the courtroom. He and his son Henry travelled with the Claimant to England, where they acted as his constant companions and supporters. Opinion, then as now, remained divided between those who considered Bogle an honest old man who had been duped by the Claimant or a rogue who was party to a conspiracy to defraud the Tichborne estate.

Photographed by Maull and Co. of London.