Arthur Orton lived the high life by impersonating a wealthy heir lost at sea

Arthur Orton was a fat butcher when he duped the mother of a wealthy heir into believing he was her skinny, French-speaking son.

The real Roger Tichborne spoke French and was skinny but that wasn’t a match for Arthur Orton’s lies.

Arthur Orton was working as a butcher in Wagga Wagga when he spotted a newspaper ad from the mother of a wealthy heir feared lost at sea.

So Orton pulled off one of the greatest swindles in history, impersonating Sir Roger Tichborne and hoodwinking even the man’s distraught mother.

Orton is the subject of a new episode of the free In Black and White podcast on Australia’s forgotten characters, with historian Jim Haynes:

The tale appears in Haynes’ new book, Great Australian Rascals, Rogues and Ratbags.

Orton grew up in Wapping in London, went to sea as a cabin boy, spent a year in Chile then moved to Australia.

Meanwhile, the real Roger Tichborne, heir to the valuable Tichborne estates and baronetcy, was declared lost at sea in 1854 after a shipwreck.

An obese Arthur Orton convinced many he was the much slimmer Roger Tichborne. Picture: National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

Roger Tichborne, heir to vast estates in England, vanished at sea.

Orton and a solicitor friend sensed an opportunity when Tichborne’s mother placed ads promising a “handsome reward” for anyone with information about her beloved son.

“Evidently, Arthur had enough knowledge of the family to not only claim that he knew about the lost Tichborne heir, but that he was him,” Haynes says.

“And through a weird series of circumstances, his claim is accepted by a certain number of people, and the mother sends a massive amount of money out to help him.”

Even Roger Tichborne’s mother was duped in the scam.

A scene from the Tichborne trial in 1873.

Newspapers began describing him as the lost heir of a fortune, and Orton was given hotel stays on credit.

“People start giving him money on the basis that when he wins the case they’ll all be hugely rewarded, and he does this for quite a number of years and through two massive court cases in Britain,” Haynes says.

But impersonating Sir Roger was no easy task.

The real Sir Roger was raised in France, spoke French as his first language, and spoke English with a heavy French accent, while Orton spoke no French at all.

Great Australian Rascals, Rogues and Ratbags.

Author, historian and entertainer Jim Haynes.

Although Orton, who eventually weighed 170kg, was physically much larger than the scrawny Sir Roger, with lighter hair and different shaped ears, the discrepancies did not appear to bother Sir Roger’s mother, who refused to believe her son had drowned.

She identified him as her son after a meeting in a darkened room.

Haynes says Orton became the most famous person in Britain as the public followed the two court cases with fascination.

“There were operas about him, there were plays about him, everyone made jokes about Sir Roger Tichborne, there were dolls, there were souvenirs,” he says.

Eventually, Orton was jailed for perjury, but the mystery lingered, and some people believe to this day he really was Sir Roger.

To learn more, listen to the interview in the In Black and White podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or web.

See In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper Monday to Friday for more stories and photos from Victoria’s past.