identical with Arthur Orton (1834–1898), the son of a Wapping butcher, who had deserted a sailing vessel at Valparaiso in 1850, and had received much kindness at Melipilla in Chile from a family named Castro, whose name he had subsequently elected to bear during his sojourn in Australia. It was shown that the claimant, on arriving in England from Sydney in 1866, had first of all directed his steps to Wapping and inquired about the surviving members of his family. It was discovered, too, that Roger Tichborne was never at Melipilla, an assertion to which the claimant, transferring his own adventures in South America to the account of the man whom he impersonated, had committed himself in an affidavit. These discoveries and the deaths of Lady Tichborne and Hopkins were so discouraging that the “claimant” would gladly have “retired” from the baronetage; but the pressure of his creditors, to whom he owed vast sums, was importunate. A number of “Tichborne bonds” to defray the expenses of litigation were taken up by the dupes of the imposture, and an ejectment action against the trustees of the Tichborne estates (to which the heir was the 12th baronet, Sir Henry Alfred Joseph Doughty-Tichborne, then two years old) finally came before Chief Justice Bovill and a special jury at the court of common pleas on the 11th of May 1871. During a trial that lasted over one hundred days the claimant exhibited an ignorance, a cunning and a bulldog tenacity in brazening out the discrepancies and absurdities of his depositions, which have probably never been surpassed in the history of crime. Over one hundred persons swore to the claimant’s identity, the majority of them—and they were drawn from every class—being evidently sincere in their belief in his cause. It was not until Sir John Coleridge, in a speech of unparalleled length, laid bare the whole conspiracy from its inception, that the result ceased to be doubtful. The evidence of the Tichbornes finally convinced the jury, who declared that they wanted no further evidence, and on the 5th of March 1872 Serjeant Ballantine, who led for the claimant, elected to be non-suited. Orton was immediately arrested on a charge of perjury and was brought to trial at bar before Chief Justice Cockburn in 1873. The defendant showed his old qualities of impudence and endurance, but the indiscretion of his counsel, Edward Kenealy, the testimony of his former sweet-heart, and Kenealy’s refusal to put the Orton sisters in the box, proved conclusive to the jury, who, on the one hundred and eighty-eighth day of the trial, after half-an-hour’s deliberation found that the claimant was Arthur Orton. Found guilty of perjury on two counts, he was sentenced on the 28th of February 1874 to fourteen years’ penal servitude. The cost of the two trials was estimated at something not far short of £200,000, and of this the Tichborne estates were mulcted of fully £90,000. The claimant’s better-class supporters had deserted him before the second trial, but the people who had subscribed for his defence were stanch, while the populace were convinced that he was a persecuted man, and that the Jesuits were at the bottom of a deep-laid plot for keeping him out of his own. There were symptoms of a riot in London in April 1875, when parliament unanimously rejected a motion (by Kenealy) for referring the Tichborne case to a royal commission, and the military had to be held in readiness. But the agitation subsided, and when Orton emerged from gaol in 1884 the fickle public took no interest in him. The sensation of ten years earlier could not be galvanized into fresh life either by his lectures or his alternate confessions of imposture and reiterations of innocence, and Orton sank into poverty and oblivion, dying in obscure lodgings in Marylebone on the 2nd of April 1898. (T. Se.)
TICINO (Ger. Tessin, anc. Ticinus), a river of Switzerland
and north Italy, which gives its name to the Swiss canton of
Ticino (q.v.), and gave it in classical times to the town of Ticinum
(Pavia). It rises at the foot of the Gries Pass to the west of
Airolo; from Airolo to the Lago Maggiore its valley bears the
name of Val Leventina, and is followed as far as Bellinzona
by the St Gotthard road and railway. It flows through Lago
Maggiore, leaving it at its south end at Sesto Calende, and thence
flows S.S.E. into the Po, which it joins a little way south of
Pavia.
TICINO (Fr. and Ger. Tessin), a canton of Switzerland, the only one situated almost wholly on the southern slope of the Alps and inhabited by a population of which the majority is Italian-speaking. It takes its name from the Ticino river, the whole upper course of which (the Val Leventina, with its side glen of Val Blenio, the so-called Riviera, extending from Biasca to near Bellinzona, and the bit beyond Bellinzona), till it swells into the Lago Maggiore, is within the canton. Not far from the head of the Lago Maggiore the lake is increased by the Maggia torrent which is formed by the union of the torrents descending from the mountain glens known as the valleys of Locarno, save the Val Verzasca, the stream from which falls into the lake without joining the Maggia. The third portion of the canton is that called Monte Cenere, including the hilly region between Bellinzona on the Ticino and Lugano, together with most of the lake of that name, and stretching on the south as far as Mendrisio, not far from Como. These three districts were all formerly part of the duchy of Milan till conquered by the Swiss, and in 1803 were joined together to form a Swiss canton of the most artificial kind (Campione, opposite Lugano, is still an Italian “enclave”). Its total area is 1081·1 sq. m., of which 721·9 sq. m. are reckoned as “productive” (forests covering 267·2 sq. m. and vineyards 19·9 sq. m.), while of the rest part is taken up by the Lake of Lugano (the Swiss share of which is 712 sq. m.), and those of the Lago Maggiore (Swiss share 1614 sq. m.), and by 1314 sq. m. of glaciers. In point of size the canton is surpassed by only four other cantons (Bern, the Grisons, the Valais, and Vaud), while only Vaud can boast of a larger vine-growing district. The highest points in the canton are two of the loftiest summits of the two halves of the Lepontine Alps—the Basodino (10,749 ft.) and the Rheinwaldhorn or Piz Valrhein (11,149 ft.) in the Adula Alps. Save the Ticino valley between Biasca, Bellinzona and Locarno, and the environs of Lugano, the canton is principally composed of hills and mountains, and is therefore poor from the material point of view, though rich in fine scenery.
The canton is traversed from end to end, from Airolo at the southern mouth of the St Gotthard tunnel to beyond Mondrisio (about 74 m.), by the main line of the St Gotthard railway, many of the marvellous engineering triumphs of which occur between Airolo and Biasca. From Bellinzona there is a short branch railway to Locarno (14 m.), whence another runs up to Bignasco (1712 m.), while from Lugano there is a mountain line up the Monte S. Salvatore (3004 ft.), and from Capolago another similar line up the Monte Generoso (5591 ft., that summit being just on the political frontier). Till 1859 the canton was legally included in the Italian dioceses of Milan (the portion north of Bellinzona, the Val Leventina and the Val Blenio therefore still using the ancient “Ambrosian Liturgy”) and of Como (the rest of the canton). In that year the Swiss Confederation abolished this foreign jurisdiction, but practically the two bishops named had charge of these districts till in 1888 the purely Swiss diocese of Lugano was set up, being now joined to that of Basel, and governed by an administrator apostolic. In 1900 the population of the canton was 138,638, of whom 134,774 were Italian-speaking, 3180 German-speaking and 403 French-speaking, while 135,828 were Romanists, 2209 Protestants and 18 Jews. Of the German-speaking inhabitants 260 belonged to the hamlet of Bosco or Gurin, situated at the head of one of the side glens of the Val Maggia, and colonized before 1253 from the neighbouring Tosa or Pommat valley (now politically Italian), which is inhabited by German-speaking emigrants from the canton of the Valais. In loco there were in the canton 75,731 women to 62,907 men, the men being in the habit of emigrating in search of work. Up to 1881 Bellinzona, Locarno and Lugano were alternately the political capital, each for six years, but since 1881 Bellinzona is the permanent capital. Yet it is but the second town in size, being surpassed by Lugano (q.v.), while after it come Locarno (q.v.) and Mendrisio (3338 inhabitants). Being practically Italian, though now “Italian Switzerland” the canton has produced many sculptors, painters and architects. But its industrial development is backward, though the opening of the St Gotthard railway has attracted many foreign travellers. Yet the male population largely migrate in search of work and wages as coffee-house keepers (such as Delmonico, of New York), waiters in cafés, masons, plasterers, labourers, navvies. &c. Fruit, chestnuts and wine are among the principal exports. The canton is divided into 8 administrative districts, which comprise 265 communes. The cantonal constitution is still that of 1830. which, however, has been almost mended out of sight owing to the political struggles
