Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For bonus episodes, early access, add-free listening, and access to our chat community, sign up at restishistorypod. Com. That's restishistorypod. Com. It is but seldom in actual life that the tragic and dramatic notes of action and feeling are struck with the force and frequency with which they were sounded in the Titchborne case. This strange episode indeed may be regarded as having been a species of moral tornado, which sweeping suddenly into the social midst, swept men from their feet in its rushing and conflicting currents, were excited every human passion: prejudice, justice, anger, bitterness, heroic disinterestedness, sordid cupidity, ambition, devotion, cowardice, courage. In a word, every man's strength or weakness, the whole gamut of human, motive, and emotion, raging and swirling about one last large, melancholy, monstrous, mysterious figure. Tom, those were the words of Arabella Kenneley, who was a eugenicist, a novelist, and anti-feminist. She was also the daughter of an eccentric Irish barrister called Edward Kenneley. She is talking about the Titchborn case, the greatest trial of Victorian England, arguably the most exciting and dramatic trial in all British history, which forms the centerpiece, as do those words, of Zadie Smith's brilliant novel, The Fraud, which you've been reading.

Now, you don't normally read fiction, Tom. It's fair to say because you don't write books that are imaginative.

Is that the case? I do make exceptions for our greatest living novelists, Dominic.

People that you meet at dinner parties. Is that not the case? That's what you said to me?

No, not at all. I did happen to meet Zadie at a party. Of course. She did mention that she had been writing a book on the Titchborn claimant, and my ears immediately picked up because, as you say, this is an absolutely incredible story. I mean, it has curses, it has disputed inheritances, it has mad attempts to pass off various identities, and it's a case that obsesses Victorian Britain for years and years and years. The moment the fraud came out, I did indeed rush out and.

Read it. I thought you can say I did rush out and suck up to the author. But no.

You read the book. She doesn't need my praise. She's the most garlanded novelist of modern Britain. But what I will say is that it weaves in the facts of this extraordinary case with all kinds of meditations on fiction, on race, on empire, on all kinds of things, but it brilliantly articulates why this case obsessed people. I'm just going to read a very short passage. This is about a servant girl in the household of the novelist, William Harrison Ainsworth. I think he's the guy who basically invents the legend of Dick Terpin. I mean, he was a very, very prolific Victorian novelist who no one reads now. Anyway, so this is a servant girl in his household who ends up marrying him, and she becomes obsessed by the story of the Titchborne claimant. No story captured her quite like the saga of the Titchborne claimant. It had everything: tofts, Catholics, money, sex, mistaken identity, and inheritance, high court judges, snobbery, exotic locations, the struggle of the honest working man as opposed to the undeserving poor, and the power of a mother's love. Dramatic stuff, Dominic. We thought, I mean, an ideal subject for the rest is history, and who better to talk about it than Zadie Smith herself.

Hello. Who joins us?

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Welcome to the Rest of History, Zadie.

Thank you.

That's a characteristically long buildup. Normally when you go on a podcast, I imagine people introducing you, bring you on immediately.

No, it's nice.

But we like to keep people waiting. We like to increase the tension.

It's good. Well, it's like a Victorian novel.

Yeah, big intro. Thank you.

All right, so the Titchborne case. For people who don't know anything about it, which I'm guessing is the vast majority of people, in very, very broad terms to start with, explain what it is and maybe what drew you to it.

I've been doing a few readings in my experiences. When you start trying to explain the case, then the event is over. By the time I get to the end of the trial, there's no time for the event, but I'll try and do it as quickly as possible. A Catholic aristocrat young man called Sir Roger Titchborn, he was going to Jamaica. He was going on his year-off adventure. The boat went down with everybody on board, everybody died. But his mother, who was French and hated the family she'd married into, decided that he was still alive and put adverts all around England and then all around Europe and finally all around Australia, offering larger and larger amounts of money for the return of her son, which seems unwise and like a temptation to fraudsters. About 20 years later, a man does turn up with a black Jamaican with him who was a servant of the Titchborn family. Together they arrive in Paris, where Roger's mother was and say, Well, I'm your son. The problem with it was that the son was tall and thin. This man who was called Arthur Autom, was about 300 pounds.

He's a large man.

Very large man. The son was educated, grew up speaking French. Arthur Orton did not speak French, was not educated, was a butcher from Waping, had a thick cockney accent. Despite all of this, the mother said, That's my son. For reasons maybe of perversity or of genuine longing. Anyway, she said it, gave him £1,000 a year and then promptly died. That was the problem, starting an enormous court case because Sir Roger Titchborne was owed this enormous estate in Hampshire, but also like a substantial part of central London. All that bit around Topland Court Road, Doughtie Street, it was big.

They'd married into the Doughtie family, hadn't they? Which had brought the Titchborns all this extra money and land.

It was a double clan, a lot of land, a lot of money. And so it started a court case that lasted for a year and a bit, at which point he was found to be lying. Then there was a criminal case after that. Altogether it's about two and a half years in court.

Yeah. This is in the 1860s and 1870s, isn't it? Yeah. It's reported in gazettes and in scandal sheets. The amazing thing about it is it captures the public imagination as much as it does because from the way you described it, it sounds like a bizarre Victorian case that would proceed in the courts and ultimately who cares? But actually, it's that reading that Tom just did earlier suggests. It's something that had all these issues because it had London, Australia. He'd got shipwrecked in South America, hadn't he? Right, first. Hadn't he been going to Valparaiso?

In Chile.

Chile, yeah. And race, obviously, because, as you said, there's the black guy who's with him, who's an old servant of the family. Is that right?

Andrew Bogle? Yeah, and giving testimony every day in court. I mean, that was quite a sight. I thought after I finished it, it dawned on me that when you have a Jamaican, an Irish lawyer from Cork who's very eccentric and a working class Englishman, you're basically dramatizing in the center of English power the whole problem of the 19th century, which is, Oh, God, the Jamaicans. Oh, God, the Irish. Oh, God, the working classes. These are three things that people are really wanting to think about. Suddenly they're being dramatized daily in the Queen's Court. It didn't really occur to me when I was writing it, but when you step back, you can see the obsession.

But also that sense of people from different classes and different backgrounds being brought together is very reminiscent of Dickens, who appears as a figure in your novel. Are those great portmanteau Victorian novels? There is a quality of this whole case about that. No court case in a Victorian novel is worth anything without an ancestral curse. What's even better is that the Titchborn claimant features an ancestral curse that supposedly goes back to the 12th century. I wonder, before we get into the absolute details of the case itself, could we go back to the story of the Titchborn doll and the curse that visits itself upon the Titchborn family?

I find this part of the story really disturbing because I like to think of myself as a rational actor interested in rational things. But this story, it is a curse and it does come true. There is a previous Sir Roger Titchborn, hundreds of years earlier, who has a sick wife, Lady Mabela. As she's dying, she has this concern about the poor in Hampshire, and she says she wants something to be kept for them. She decides, I don't understand the logic of this really, but she decides to crawl around the land.

To crawl?

To crawl.

Well, she's very ill, isn't she?

She's ill. She doesn't have an option, Dominic, is what I'm saying. She can't walk, so she crawls.

No one would carry her.

No, apparently not. It's a poor show. It's so weird, but it's a bet. On her deathbed, she bets that as far as she can crawl with this lit candle round the land and then closed it symbolically, that amount of land will be given every year. Whatever grows on that land will be given every year to the poor. So she manages 23 acres, which on your death bed... It's not bad. Even on a good day, I'm not walking 23 acres.

Well.

Crawling. Certainly not on my hands.

And knees. Tom, you'd do that. You'd absolutely do that, wouldn't you?

Just for spite.

I would. Three stingy netles and everything. If it was for the good of the poor, Dominic, I would do it. Right.

To spite your husband. So she does it and the promise is made. She said, If you don't do that after I'm dead, if you don't give the profit from this land to these poor people, there will be a curse on you. There will be seven brothers born and then seven sisters, and then the family will fall into ruin. That was the curse. Quite dramatic.

It was seven, isn't it? It's always seven.

It's always seven. They did do the dove for a long time, giving this profit every year, giving the corn. But then it got a little bit wild. Like so many poor people were turning up that the family disliked the amount of charity they were having to give, so they shut it down. It's amazing. When they shut it down, the curse begins to come into effect.

We love a curse.

Yeah, it is pretty wild. Sir Henry Titchborn, who's Roger's uncle, did have, I think it's seven daughters, there was one son who died. Sir Roger Titchborn ends up being the only proper descendant. Then, of course, this drama and the family falls into ruin.

Sir Henry Titchborn, that's 1803, he's captured by the French and he's held as a prisoner in the Napoleonic Wars. There's a very complicated series of marriages and stuff like that. We end up with a guy called James, who's his son, I think, is that right? Yeah.

It's so like a.

Victorian novel. I know. Where's the family tree?

Yeah, carry on. Who is married to a French woman, descended from the Duke of Bourbon, called Henriette, is that right?

Yes.

Roger Titchborne is their son.

That's it.

He ends up becoming the heir to the entire estate, Roger Titchborne. I'm looking at a photo of him. He looks quite dashing, posh.

Yeah, he looks dashing. He looks like he'd be played by a young.

David Niven. He was dashing. Is it fair to say he was not brilliant? He was a bit of a disappointment to them, I think. He was sporty but violent, not particularly academic in school.

Oh, he was violent.

Yeah, he was always wandering around with a gun. He played the tuber, apparently really bad.

That's not violent, I.

Don't think. No. Well, the servants would complain it was a violent noise, but he was a somewhat unimpressive type, I think. But his mother absolutely adored him and there was no expectation of him becoming the heir because there were all these other children, but they kept on being girls. Then the one boy died. So suddenly it was him.

1853, he goes off to South America. Basically, you said, on his gap year.

Yeah.

So he's how old then? He's in his early 20s.

Is he? Early 20s. Having had the unimpressive school career and military career in Ireland.

Yeah. But weirdly, before he goes, he leaves some sealed letters behind.

Oh, God, yeah. It's like.

A- And no one knows.

What's in them. It's like a telling novela. Yes, he leaves some sealed letters buried somewhere in the grounds of Titchborne House. Yeah.

As you do, I always do that.

When I go away. As you do. Have you ever found? I missed this. Are they still there waiting with a terrible secret or something?

No, they were found and destroyed. That allowed it to be this black box in the middle of the trial. What was in them?

Because was there not later said? Yes. That there was a sex scandal?

There is a sex scandal.

That was to do with the letters. But actually, then other people said the letters were all about the disposal of fields.

And stuff like that. I don't think there was any sex, but it blew up the trial. In the middle of it, when he's still trying to prove that he is Sir Roger Titchborn, he's asked, If you are Sir Roger Titchborn, you'd know what was in those sealed letters. He spontaneously makes up this incredible story that he had impregnated his cousin. It was instructions as to how to deal with the pregnancy. Can you imagine?

You've got to go big with something like that, haven't you? Yeah.

But that's what's so amazing about Arthur Orton is that he's got that Trumpian instinct of- Lie big. -the bigger the lie, the better. Just if you're going to lie, go all the way.

But let's just stick with Roger. Sorry, Roger's in South America. Yes.

He's a tuber playing Bertie Wooster.

Yeah, that's fair.

But more violent. But we're into Zadee.

Yeah, a little more violent.

A violent tuber playing Bertie Wooster. Yeah.

He's been messing around in Buenos Aires and stuff. Then he's going to Jamaica and his ship capsizes, is that right? Yeah. It's wrecked or whatever. That's the end of him.

Or is it?

But his mother, because she's French, Tom, she doesn't give up. Well, she's also Victorian.

French and Victorian. It's practically inexcusable.

She consults Clare Boyce, doesn't she? And the Clair Boyens say, Listen, he's alive. He's out there.

And she.

Completely believes it.

She believes it. Everybody in the family tries to stop her doing this, but she's completely obsessed. The adverts, when they reach Australia, they're also given to agents who actively help look for missing people. That is also a slightly distorted business. You're paying someone to actively find someone hundreds of thousands of miles away. The whole system is ripe for manipulation, I'd say.

And so while this is going on, while her agents are out looking for her son in the hope that he's not drowned, who.

Is.

Laying claim to the Titchborn estate?

It's about to go to a baby son who has been born. There's one more child. Previously to that, his uncle, Henry, is in the house, I think. He has it for the moment, waiting for a child of his to take it over. But by the time Arthur Warton comes back, there's a tenant in there, Mr. Lushington, who is just renting the place because the titchborns at that point are not as rich as they once were. So it's Lushington who gets chucked out for this whopping butcher.

But are there people, I mean, titchborns or relatives of titchborns or whatever who stand massively to gain if Sir Roger is indeed proven to be drowned or lose out if he is proved to be alive?

Yes, his uncle is the one who would gain most. Right. And anybody who comes from his uncle's line, I mean, it is still an enormous amount of land. So yeah, he has to be dead as far as they're concerned. But I think even more of their worry is that this unknown butcher is going to take over everything they have. That is the motivation.

So let's look at the butcher then.

Yes.

So how is it that he appears on the scene?

I think coincidence plays an incredible role. When you look at the photo that was published in all the newspapers of him and Sir Roger, of course, there's 300 pounds between them. But I have to say the eyes are similar. Oh, it's very tangible. The eyes are similar.

It was enough. They're different, man.

I'm just looking at the photos. I know they're different men. But can you see? I mean, the photos, even I began to convince myself at certain point, but the eyes are a bit similar. At some point, somehow in Sydney, he came across Andrew Bogle. So Andrew Bogle had this long, incredible life of being an enslaved man in Jamaica, then plucked off the plantation by Sir Henry to be a page for him for 20 years, then released by the family. He'd married a white English woman, had a couple of kids, she died. Then he married another English woman and they moved to Australia. He was living in Sydney with these children. His wife had died again, he was alone. And somehow he came across Sir Roger.

Sir Roger being the butcher.

Yeah, the butcher. He says he recognized him. It seems impossible to me.

I've got a question about all that. Yeah. You were saying about the people who do the finding? Yeah. So eleven years have passed. We're now in 1865, since 1854, when Roger was lost. There's a bloke who in a splendidly Australian thing, he's from Wagga Wagga. He's from Wagga. This bloke from Wagga Wagga pitches up and says, I think you're Roger Titchborn. That's it. William Gibbs, I think his name is the Wagga Wagga man. Is the Wagga Wagga man really the architect of all this? Basically, he's doing it for money. He's found a bloat that looks like Titchborn. He finds the servant and he says, I'll put the two together. It's in everyone's interests that you recognize each other.

That's it. It's put together. The gardener, weirdly, of the Titchburns is also out there, a man called Gilfoil, also in Sydney. I think it's put together. I like to think that Bogle maybe at some point was sincerely convinced of this. But the moment he says he recognizes Sir Roger, the Titchburn family, who up to that point had given him a 50 pounds a year annuity, stop it immediately. That fact is very interesting that he lost everything he had, his only means of support by supporting this claim. I think the English public took that either as an example of his complete sincerity, like you're willing to lose everything to support this man. Or, of course, the other argument is you're in for a penny hoping for a pound, right? You give up 50 pounds hoping for a much bigger win further down.

The line. You say in the novel that whatever side of the thing a person was on, admiration for Bogle appeared universal. When they go back, he is seen as a figure of the utmost moral quality.

Because I think either he's sincere or he's extremely cunny. In both cases, that's a reason for admiration in terms of the working classes watching this case.

And which do you think he is?

You can't ask a novelist that.

I think it's possible for people to convince themselves of anything. I think it's a mixture of both. There's a story by Bourgays where he implies that Bogle is just an incredible fiction writer, basically, and he's there for a personal reparations, which makes perfect sense. How better to get your just desserts out of the English government than messing with their court system for two years and then taking the reward. I mean, that does make sense.

Your description of him. I thought he sounds like Morgan Freeman. In the adaptation of the novel, he'd be played by Morgan Freeman. I went and looked up a photo of him, and he does look a bit like Morgan Freeman.

He does. He had this innate nobility in the trial transcripts while everybody else is really behaving so badly. The lawyers are ridiculous, the witnesses are ridiculous, the whole behavior of the courtroom is absurd. He just is this calm center. He seems to speak the truth. He's sometimes witty, he's sometimes painful to listen to, he's confessional, but he seems sane, where everybody else seems somewhat out of their minds.

Before we go to the break, let's get the claimant, who we've sometimes called Alton, and we've sometimes called him Roger Titchborn, but let's just call him the claimant. Let's get him to England. They've got together in Sydney. I mean, this is such a complicated story that we're really only scratching the surface. I know. In Sydney, he makes some bad mistakes, doesn't he? He gets his own mother's name wrong, which I think is a giveaway.

I think. And the whole lack of French.

The lack of French.

Yeah, and he doesn't speak French. Roger, because his mother was French, had been raised speaking French, really is his first language. So one would think those two crucial details.

You'd think.

But he sails for England, doesn't he? He manages not to sink the ship despite his enormous weight.

Yeah. Doesn't he go to France?

I mean, that's an amazing scene. They go on the boat and some money has been sent to them. Quite painfully, I think he takes the good seat on the boat and Paul Bogle and his family are in third class with the rest of money in, and then they get to Paris. Even as they get there, Arthur is a bit nervous about it, understandably. It's a big lie, and this is the crunch point. Instead of going to the mother, hides in a hotel room with a handkerchief over his face and says he's not feeling well, he's not feeling well, loads of excuses. Then the mother finally says, Well, I'm coming to you. Then he darkens the room, she walks in, he's like, Don't look at my face. I mean, it's so absurd. He turns to the wall and she's like, No, Roger Daugther, let me see your face. His hand is trembling. This is the moment. You take it off, there she is. You've got to England. It's come this far. You might think, Well, I did my best. That's the moment where she says, No, that's him. He's unbelievable. He must have been amazed himself that he got that far.

It's incredible. Unless he was, in fact, Sir Roger Titchpoint.

Stop it.

Well, so the case is deepening. I think we should take a break here. And when we come back, we will find out what happens to Sir Roger, aka Arthur Orton, akaThe Claimant. A giant, the chinstrap beard had receded many inches to make room for the several extra stone gained since last photographed, and every button strained at the sheer girth of the man. That is Zadie Smith's description of the claimant in her new novel, The Fraud, this colossally large man who claims to be Sir Roger Titchborn, who previously been very silt-like and has vanished in the ocean and now the claimant is claiming to be him and has come. Where we left him, he was in Paris. He had just met his mother, or is she his mother? And, Sadie, what happens next after Sir Roger's mother recognizes this guy who claims to be her long-last son?

Well, she gives them £1,000 a year. I mean, it's just incredible. What an achievement. And then dies very inconveniently for Arthur Orton/ Sir Roger. She dies and suddenly he is without any support. Nobody else in the Titchborn family will claim him. And he is somehow emboldened. I mean, I would run away at that point, but he just doesn't. He decides to fight the case and basically sue the family. That's extremely bold, right?

Very.

You're suing them to get the tenant out of your pretend house. Yeah. That's really amazing.

I'll tell you a detail that I think is telling, actually. I said, is he Sir Roger Titchborne? But I don't think he is a big spoiler. Because when he first got to London, he had made a special trip to Wapham and inquired after the Orton family. Now, the Ortons are the Butchers. That's the Butchers family. Now, if he was really Sir Roger Titchborn, there's no way he'd have gone and inquired after a Butchers family.

This was brought up in court, and his explanation was, You know what? I met Arthur Orton in Australia and he couldn't come and I just thought I should go and say to his family, He's doing well. He's fine. He's alive.

That's very plausible.

That part of the testimony went on for literal months. Over and over again, that story was repeated. During the trial, he is secretly paying various of his Orton relatives to say that they don't recognize him.

He's paying them to do that? Yeah. Right.

He's secretly paying them.

Where is he getting his money from?

Well, that's the other thing, the subscription fund. The minute the money is taken away from him by the Titchborns, the working people of England, mostly who gathered in support of him, started the fund to.

Support the case. This is like the housemaid who marries.

Who marries William Maynesworth. They were really obsessed with him. That part of the case is what interested me most because though it all sounds crazy, in the context of the time, working people in these courts were getting screwed on a daily basis. That's fair to say, right? Like your working class son steals a sheep, might find himself sent to Australia, might find himself hung at Tyburntree. This had been going on for a long time in a court which was almost exclusively populated by upper middle class juries and aristocratic judges and lawyers, I think that the masses in England saw this as an opportunity to say, Let's have one of our own win for once. Though the logic of that, of course, is demented.

Yes. Because the bind is that if he is one of their own, then he can't be Sir Roger. Right.

It doesn't make sense.

But if he is, then they're rallying to the cause of a posh aristocrat.

Right. The analogy in my mind, the first time I read it, is O. J. It's a similar situation where an obvious lie is being used to reveal a different truth about the court system.

But just one other thing that you bring up brilliantly in the novel is the way in which this does have the quality of some melodrama.

I.

Mean, it seems so implausible and extraordinary as to be fictional. So you have a great description of people coming to watch it as though they're going to the music hall. The people had come prepared. They had wrinkle pots and paper cones of chestnuts to accompany the entertainment and laughed and applauded the cross-examinations exactly as if at the music hall. I think.

The line between court and theater at that moment in British jurisprudence history is quite thin. When you're reading the court transcript, it's funny. Above all, it's funny. What we would consider normal behavior in the courtroom now doesn't exist. Like a summing up can literally take two and a half months.

Yes. Well, talking of the courtroom, there's one character in particular. We alluded to him right at the beginning. Here's this bloke from court called Edward Kineley. Kineley, yeah. I mean, he puts on one of the most extraordinary performances actually in the history of the British courts, doesn't he? So he is acting-.

In the second case.

So there's been a first case which he loses, which goes on for 27 years or whatever.

So the second case, he is now the criminal, someone who has pretended to be somebody else.

So it's Oscar Wilde.

Yeah.

Exactly. Oscar Wilde-esque. Yeah. That the guy who brings the case then finds himself on trial.

Right. It's the flip. And when the flip happens, Kineley is his defense lawyer. Again, it reveals something about English law at that time that previously in another life, Connealy was a poet. He gave up poetry. He retrained as a lawyer. But training as a lawyer at that point is, as far as I can see, a very loose system, because what he's basically doing in court is just telling very, very long stories.

That's what we do.

Yeah, just like a podcast or like a novelist without much rational bounds to them. Unfortunately for ditch born and everyone involved, Kineley was also I would say, quite profoundly mentally ill.

He's bonkers. Yeah. I was reading up on him. Tom, you'd.

Love him. He's got a great beard, that W. G. Grace beard.

He wrote a pantomime in verse about Goethe.

Yeah, just for starters.

Then he wrote a book called The Book of God, in which he said he was the 12th messenger of God descended, get this, from two very dissimilar people, Jesus and Genghis Khan.

Wow! I think we're all descended from Genghis Khan, to be fair. Are we? I think that's what genetics proves, I think.

That's one of those twist of facts that I find very implausible, ultimately.

Now, Adam Ruthord is always telling me this, and I don't understand it, but apparently it is true.

Kineley believed that, and he also had like, Steve Banner-like theories of history, of centuries turning in a certain direction all to the apex of him. He was basically the resolution of history. We were just waiting for the arrival of Kaneley. This is the man who was the lawyer on the case.

Is that because, as it were, real lawyers?

Almost all lawyers said, no, thank you. He was one of the last people who would accept it. While running the case was also building a political movement around the case. He began this thing called the Magna Charter Association, which took up a series of political positions, including anti-vaxing positions, fascinating.

Because I found that amazing.

Yeah, it is amazing.

This is what the Titchborne-Gazette they're pushing out, aren't they? And it's focused around making the case that he is Sir Roger.

But it has supplementary causes. Yeah.

For who knew the true intentions of these rich men and their needles.

Yeah. Their favorite things were, let's make Titchborn win this case. It was anti-Catholic. There was a big anti-Catholic strain in it, anti-vax, somewhat chartist. Its best parts were an enormous coalition of people wanting more rights for the working man. But inside it were all these extreme fringe elements, and Kaneley was running it outside of.

The courtroom. So how much does this case, before we get back to the second trial, just on all that, the newspapers, the people raising money, just listening to you talking about it, it's impossible not to think of all the conspiracy stuff that flourishes today, driven by a new media, by social media. How much is this basically... I mean, I don't try comparison, actually, but I've started, so I'll continue.

Go on, go for it, Dominic. In for a penny, in for a pound, like the butcher, going hard.

I love a try comparison. How much is this effectively a Victorian equivalent of the ferment of mad theories and paranoias about rich elites and all that stuff that we have now, and driven by new newspapers and.

Stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, I started it before Trump and all of that, but the analogies are impossible to avoid. I think it's just because they're both studies in populism. I think I got very used to the critique of right-wing populism, but this is something different. This really is left-wing populism. It's quite irrational. It's class-based. But also, fascinating to me, it did work. One of the complaints of the people was that these courts were prejudiced against them, particularly the juries. And in the second trial, under this enormous public pressure and rhetoric, which was passing around about the class based system in the courts, the jury was then deliberately filled with only working people. And I think that might be one of the first times that happened in England. So it's an interesting case of what seems to be a deeply irrational, almost crazy case, working its way through a court and transforming it in some small way. I don't know. Maybe it's an example of how populism, as frightening as it sometimes can be, does also function in some way and is a weird machine for manipulating people's emotions to some political end.

To what extent do you think this vast populist enthusiasm for the claimant is making fantastical figures out of both the claimant and Andrew Bogle, who is the chief substantiating witness. Because you give a brilliant backstory of Andrew Bogle, his father, who was taken from Africa and experience of the plantations before the abolition of slavery. How much of that is based on fact?

I mean, that's all fact. I mean, everything that happens in the plantation scenes happens on those plantations. One of the amazing things about writing this book is that UCL have digitized every plantation in Jamaica. You can get very granular, every name, every job.

Every child. We know exactly which plantation and he was born on.

Yeah, exactly. He was on hope. We have all the details. I had all the facts, which was an incredible thing. But I think what interested me and interested Bourgays is these Victorian lives that passed through so many situations. How extraordinary to be born in that situation and then come to London, then find yourself in the high court. It was so hard to imagine what a life was that where you were in so many different worlds simultaneously. But he did become a legend. And those meetings that Titchborne or Arthur held all around the country, they were held in the same places where, for example, Dickens spoke, where political rallies were held. They look like Trump rallies, like you turn up in town, hundreds and hundreds of people come. There are banners, there are people screaming and shouting, and there is a lot of paraphernalia. Like if you go to junk stores now, you can still find little models of boggle and Titchborne plates, cups. It's extraordinary to me that it was that popular and then so completely forgotten. That's the other thing.

Also they are fabricating witnesses, aren't they? They come up with a dame called Jean Louis, who claims to have been a steward on the ship that had rescued Sir Roger from drowning and then taken him to Melbourne.

He's a paid actor. Yeah, a false flag, as they would say these days.

A recently released convict.

Yeah. You're watching a court system in which it's perfectly normal to say we're going to have 210 witnesses. It wasn't a practical system. I think part of the effect of this trial was that the English legal system looked at itself and said, This can't continue. You can't call 250 witnesses.

This post-states, John Dyess and John Dyess, has Dickens already written bleak House at this point?

One of the questions was, did Dickens go to this trial? But then, of course, I realized he's dead just before it. He missed the trial that he would have adored.

Yeah, so bleak House is 20 years before this, actually.

No, it's a perfectly the Kenzian trial, but he is dead before it. But Elliot is there. George Elliot went to see it. I don't know what she made of it, but I love the idea of her sitting there watching this.

It's much more Dickens than George Elliot, isn't it? The whole shenanicans.

Yeah, it's not to her taste at all. She doesn't like this amount of irrationality and poor behavior.

Very poor behavior. Yeah, we've had a lot of poor behavior in the rest of history, but we've never had poor behavior like this.

This is actually the longest trial in English history, I think, isn't it?

I think McLybel takes it, actually, in the 90s.

Okay, but.

Until- Until then, yeah, it's the longest.

But it actually ends so quickly. There's a big issue of tattoos, isn't there? Yes.

Of course there is.

There's not the moment that basically this case falls apart because there's a bloke who was at boarding school with him. We always love a boarding school story, Tom.

Stonyhurst, is it?

Stonyhurst, a Jesuit boarding school. I mean, who would go to a Jesuit boarding school? Bonkers. Anyway, that's by the by. He's gone to this school and a bloke pitches up who says I was at school with him and he had some very distinctive tattoos. Seems odd that a teenager would have loads of tattoos, but well.

Who knows? They did it to each other, maybe just inked each other. Inked each other? Yeah, inked each other. That sounds odd, but you know what I mean. Probably your friends did it. But that's what did for him. I think it's a bit like Trump and Stormy Daniels. It's not the thing you think is going to take you down. It's always.

Some-al Capone and the tax return.

Yeah, it's always some small thing. In the end, not having a tattoo on his.

Arm-was the killer.

-was the end of.

It, yeah. Because the jury say to the judge, We've heard enough. We don't need the other 3,000 witnesses. Yeah, that's it.

Two and a half years were good. It was a tattoo. That was it. Suddenly he was imprisoned for 14 years, I think. By the time he was released, he was like a broken man. He then did confess to being Arthur Orton to a newspaper to get some money. With that money, set up a cigarette shop in Islington.

But years later, right?

Years later.

And paid by a newspaper.

But then he retracts it, doesn't he?

Then he retracted it again, still playing the game and then died broke, destitute. Then to bring the story full circle, was buried right next to my house, which is how I came to know about all of this in the first place in Paddington Cemetery, off Willsden Lane. Is that so? Yeah.

But buried as who?

Well, this is the thing. When it was announced he was going to be buried, and the case had been... It was a long time since it had happened, and you think most people have forgotten about it. But suddenly everybody was interested again. There's a photograph you can see online of 5,000 people in Welsdon Lane. Wow. 5,000 came to see him buried. The Titchborn family, for some reason, though they had fought him all those years, said, Fair play, you can have a little cardboard thing on top of the coffin saying Sir Roger Titchborne.

That's nice of them.

That's so.

Bizarre, isn't it? It's so bizarre. He was buried in a porpoise grave. There was no money to bury him, and there's no stone. It wasn't that official. But apparently, they let this little cardboard sign.

Why did they do that? That's mad.

I don't know. It's sentimental or, Dominic or...

Guilt. Were they admitting? Yeah, guilt. Yeah.

There he lies. I walk past him every day with the dog in this porpous grave.

What happens to Andrew Borgl?

Borges said he was run over in Kings Cross, but that's a romance. It's not true. He just died poor in Kings Cross, also a porpous grave. His mixed-raced son had had, by that point, 11 children. I always assume there are a lot of bogans in England. They're probably white or they might be any other color, I guess. They might have married whoever, but they might not know that they are related to this extraordinary man.

What about titchporns?

The titchpawns continue, I think. There's a few titchporn pubs in Hampshire, which I still haven't visited, which I'm excited by. The house I know doesn't belong to them anymore because I saw it in The Sunday Times for sale one day. Not for very much money, even.

Oh, go for it.

No, I don't think it has much land left. I think it's just the house now. There must be titchpawns around, but I don't think their wealth continued and I don't know if they still get the rents from Doughtie Street.

The baronetzy is expired. I'm looking at it here, 1968.

Yes, that's it.

There you go. Sir Anthony Doughtie, Titchborne.

I'd say one last legacy of this case is our word, Titchy.

Yeah, that part is crazy. For the relief of my readers, I did not add another 58 pages on this topic. I restrain myself, which I thought was good. But there was a music hall figure who apparently looked a bit like Arthur Orton in the face and was quite round, but with the key difference of being four foot six, which is really quite small. He was called Little Titch and was a massive musical star, performed in Blackface a lot of the time, which is fascinating. But his most famous routine was with these two massive ski feet. He was called big boots and he would do a big boot dance in which, you know that bit in smooth criminal where Michael Jackson goes all the way to the floor almost and back again? Little Titch did that first. On the skis, he would go all the way to the floor and back. There's a video of it you can see online. He was an incredible hit. We still say things are titchy because of Little Titch.

Yeah, I had a friend at school when I was eight. I mean, he was just called Titch. Everyone called him Titch. It never.

Occurred to me. Yeah, or where that word came from.

-that he was called Little Titch after the Titchborn claimant.

Kind of perfect that this very musical trial ends up in the musical.

Yeah, still with all the same themes around it, the idea of this black-faced character who's channeling some unseen place that nobody visits and nobody knows about. All the themes just keep on circulating. Center of England, the things on the border, and these strange, irrational actors. Yeah, it's fascinating.

Just a question before we go, Zadi, about your book, The Fraud. Yes. Obviously, we've done however many episodes about history, and we sometimes talk about historical fiction. We talk about Patrick O'Brien or whoever it might be. But for you as a novelist writing about a period of history, do you feel a bit of obligation to the... This is such a detailed story, there are, as it were, so many facts. Do you feel an obligation, a responsibility to keep to the facts? Or do you feel as a novelist, you have free reign, as it were?

I remember hearing Hilary talk about this, Mantell, and I think she's right. If you want to work with history, you want to work with history. The facts are important. They're very important to me. I wouldn't see the point of manipulating them beyond reason. In this case, you barely had to fictionalize. It is a fiction in itself. I didn't change anything, really. The only change is a fictional character outside of the case called Mrs. Touche, who is extended beyond her normal lifespan or realm. But no, to me, the facts are really important. It's like a rearrangement of the facts into fiction, but not an obscuring or a changing of them. It's the truth that fascinates me.

But it's also a novel about Victorian novels to a degree, isn't it?

Yeah. I think I was just interested in everything that Victorian novels hide or obscure. It's so common a Victorian novel for the most useless son of the family to disappear to Jamaica or to Australia, and it's always out of sight. You never quite know where these useless sons are going to. It was an opportunity for me to know myself, to fill in those gaps and write it in full. But the energy of those Victorian novels and the incredible imaginative engine of them is something I've envied all my life. They're such incredible generators of story.

Well, you have done them proud. Wonderful. So, Sadie Smith, thanks so much.

Thanks so much. I loved it.

The novel, The Fraud, is absolutely unmissable. We hope you have enjoyed this extraordinary story. Who knows, the claimant, real or not, you decide. Thanks very much for listening. Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye-bye.