A FASCINATING tale of deception and mystery from Victorian Britain will be featured in a special exhibition to tour Hampshire thanks to a £43,000 Lottery grant.
The Tichborne family were wealthy landowners who in the 1850s lived at the imposing Tichborne Park near Alresford.
In 1854 Roger Tichborne, heir to the family fortune, went missing while attempting to sail to Australia on a world tour.
His devoted mother never gave up hope of finding her son alive and in 1865, 11 years after he was presumed to have died as sea, she advertised for news of him in Australian newspapers.
To her surprise, and to the great suspicion of the rest of the family, she received a response telling her Roger was still alive.
A trial was then held to ascertain whether the claimant, pictured above, really was the missing heir. In the end he was revealed as an impostor. He was really Arthur Orton, a Wapping man who had come across the advert in the paper and decided to try his luck. He was sentenced to 14 years in jail for perjury.
Now, 150 years after the disappearance, the full story, complete with letters, paintings, photographs and cuttings, can be told.
The Heritage Lottery Grant has enabled Hampshire County Council's Museums and Archives service to acquire the collection from a company of solicitors set up by the Tichborne family's lawyer Frederick Bowker.
A touring exhibition, and an Internet site showing the whole collection, is being put together.
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