speak several languages, and who must have been well aware of the nature and effect of what they were doing, and the serious shock that was likely to be given to commercial credit by the course they were pursuing. Those who acted in such a manner must expect, when they were reached by the arm of the law, to receive a terrible retribution at its hands. So far as they were concerned he could not see any distinction in their cases, and if he could have conceived any case of forgery worse than theirs, he would have considered whether he might have been justified in refraining from going to the full extent of the law in the present instance. He was unable to conceive a worse case, and he therefore "felt it to be his duty to order each of them to be kept in penal servitude for life, and he also made an order that each of them should pay one-fourth of the expenses of the prosecution." As the words came solemnly from the judge's lips. a low, indescribable murmur ran through the court. It was not astonishment, not protest, not approval; but it was an expression, or so it seemed, of pervading awe. The four men literally shrank as they heard it.

They were then taken, strongly guarded, through the door at the back of the dock.

During the detention of the prisoners at Newgate an attempt was made to procure their escape. Certain relatives of the prisoners Bidwell and Macdonnell have been for some time in London, and three of the warders who were found to have been in communication with them were watched by detectives. On August 21, matters having come to a crisis, the senior sheriff went into the gaol, and in the presence of Mr. Jonas, the governor, a rigid inquiry was instituted. The result was to leave no doubt that a sum of 1007. had been given to each of these three warders to assist in freeing the prisoners; and they would have been on duty on the following night, and have had charge of the four prisoners, and then the affair was to have come off. These men were searched, and a large sum of money was found upon them, and one had in his possession letters that he was to have delivered for another prisoner, contrary to the gaol regulations. They were all three at once suspended, and the man who had the letters was given into custody, and was taken to Guildhall and remanded. It was understood that a part of the plan proposed to be carried out was to attempt to rescue the prisoners from the dock while the trial was proceeding, and in order to prevent this the ordinary entrances of the court have been kept locked, and an extra number of police placed on duty in the court and the passages leading to it. Several police-constables were also placed on duty inside the gaol. One of the warders is said to have confidentially told a friend he was to receive 10007. and go to Tasmania.

The fraud has been more than once characterized during the trial as the most extensive which had ever been attempted by similar means; and as it is also probably the most elaborate, the following connected account of the proceedings will be read with interest :

According to Macdonnell, a precaution which is customary in America in cashing accepted bills is omitted in England. It is usual there to send round the acceptances to the persons accepting to be "initialled," and it was when it was discovered that this formality was dispensed with in London he saw his way to this attempt. However, Austin Bidwell, George Bidwell, and Macdonnell came to this country in the spring of last year, and there is no

doubt that they proceeded without delay to set on foot a scheme of fraud. By the unsuspecting good-nature of a tailor in Savile-row, Austin Bidwell procured in May an introduction to the Western Branch of the Bank of England, and for some months patiently left in deposit there, under the name of Warren, a sum of about 20007. It was not until September that he commenced any larger transactions; he then asked the manager to sell for him 80007. of Portuguese stock, and he drew 20007. on account. He represented himself as an American contractor for introducing Pullman's cars into Europe, and said he was building them at Birmingham. Having thus established some credit with the Bank, the conspirators proceeded to acquaint themselves with the names and position of the great commercial houses of this country and of Europe, and for this purpose during September and October they were actively engaged in various cities of the Continent. An illness of Macdonnell seems to have delayed their "operations; " but between November and January George Bidwell procured a large number of genuine bills, which served two purposes. These were paid into Warren's account, and thus maintained his credit; but they also served as models for the intended forgeries. As soon as this was accomplished the scheme was ready to be put in practice; but the prisoners foresaw a further difficulty. When the forged bills had been discounted, how were they to distribute the plunder without affording a clue by which they might all be traced? Austin Bidwell, whose guilt would, of course, be at once known, was to be out of England before the bills were presented; but how were the others to escape? For this purpose an account was opened in another name at the Continental Bank, so that the money obtained on the account of Warren at Burlington Gardens might be paid to the credit of Horton in Lombard-street, and there drawn out in another form. Moreover, George Bidwell and Macdonnell, as the direct agents in the forgery, thought it prudent to shield themselves by employing a fourth agent to deal with the money. For this purpose Noyes was summoned from America, and as he too would obviously be implicated in the crime as soon as it became known, he took the precaution of advertising for a place as clerk, and making a formal engagement with Horton, or Austin Bidwell. The design was evidently that, when the forged bills matured, Macdonnell and George Bidwell should have followed Austin Bidwell abroad, that Noyes should be the only agent upon whom the authorities could lay their hands, and that he should be able to represent himself as an innocent dupe. But who was to present the bills at the Bank of England? Austin Bidwell, as we have said, was away, Macdonnell and George Bidwell were to be kept in the background, and Noyes was to be confined to his apparent clerk's work in the City. At this point Austin Bidwell's imaginary factories at Birmingham came into play. Having one day refreshed his credit by presenting for sale a genuine bill of the Messrs. Rothschild, he informed the manager that his business at Birmingham was becoming very active, and that in the course of the next month he expected his transactions to be very large. His next communications, accordingly, or rather the next communications in his name, were addressed to the manager from Birmingham. Macdonnell and George Bidwell proceeded to transmit in quick succession from Birmingham, under cover of letters, purporting to be written by Austin Bidwell, the forged bills they had prepared, and by the end of February forgeries to the amount of 102,2177. were actually discounted at

the Bank; the money was duly transferred to Horton's account, and then a further device was resorted to for the purpose of obliterating traces of the transaction. Notes were obtained from the Continental Bank; these were then taken by one of the conspirators to the Bank of England and exchanged for gold, and then, in the course of the same day, another of the conspirators took the gold back to the Bank and obtained other notes for it. The proceeds were then invested in various American securities, and large sums were actually sent to New York. Success seemed complete, when one day two bills were handed to the Bank on which the date of acceptance had, by an oversight of the forger, been omitted. The Bank, still suspecting nothing wrong, sent to the acceptor that the omission might be supplied; the forgery was discovered, and the whole scheme collapsed.

The Times understands that the prosecution are in possession of the following facts:-Macdonnell, who has Irish connexions, in company with Austin Bidwell, visited Ireland in the autumn of 1871. On that occasion they altered a cheque on the Bank of Ireland from 37. to 30007., and obtained money on it from a bank at Belfast. They subsequently went to Manchester, where by similarly altered cheques, and a forged letter of introduction from one of the leading mercantile houses in London, they obtained a large sum from Messrs. Heywood. They then left England. In April, 1872, Macdonnell, with the two Bidwells, arrived in England from America, and went to lodgings at Enfield-road, Kingsland. After being fitted out by the tailors, they left at the end of the month, Austin Bidwell and Macdonnell proceeding to Berlin and Dresden, George Bidwell to Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Lyons, taking with them forged letters of introduction of the manager of the Union Bank of London, and forged letters of credit of the Bank of North and South Wales, Liverpool. By means of these letters, and bills drawn under the forged letter of credit, they obtained 80007. in cash, and with this they returned to London, but not to their old lodgings. In the following month the three sailed by the "Lusitania" from Liverpool for Buenos Ayres. There they obtained from one firm-whose name it is unnecessary to mention --10,000l. under forged letters of credit and of introduction of the London and Westminster Bank. The three then separated, but again met in London in August of last year, and it is probable, as stated by Macdonnell, that the scheme was at that time settled of forging bills for discount at the Bank of England. Communication was then entered into with Noyes, alias Hills. With regard to him it appears that he had been recently released from the State prison of New Jersey, having been sentenced, in January, 1869, to seven years' imprisonment for uttering a forged cheque on a bank. On the urgent appeals of his friends and relations a pardon was granted to him in March, 1872. He arrived in England in December, and the forgeries were then in preparation. It is further stated that the forgers were all well known to each other in America.

II.

THE TICHBORNE CASE.

In the month of April this portentous case was once more brought before the long-suffering public, in the form of the "trial at bar" of the "claimant" for perjury, before the Lord Chief Justice Cockburn and Justices Mellor and Lush. Mr. Hawkins, Q.C., Mr. Serjeant Parry, and Mr. Bowen, were for the prosecution; Dr. Kenealy, Q.C., and Mr. McMahon for the accused. As it is absolutely impossible in the compass of a work like this to give anything like a detailed, if even an intelligible, account of this extraordinary trial, we can only throw ourselves on the indulgence of our readers, and refer those desirous of fuller information to the voluminous reports which fill every newspaper of the period. In the year 1874, the fourth, and it is devoutly to be hoped the last, year over which the history of these proceedings will extend, we trust to be able to give some résumé of the whole story, which may be of reasonable length and perspicuity. The narrowness of the issues involved is, as is well known, ludicrously out of proportion to the fabulous expense and more fabulous waste of time involved. The claimant was charged with per-" jury in stating himself to be Sir Roger Tichborne-perjury in denying himself to be Arthur Orton-and perjury in stating that he had seduced his cousin, Lady Radcliffe. Mr. Hawkins, in his opening speech, told the oft-told tale of Roger's early life, his life at Stonyhurst and at home, his love for his cousin, his departure from England, and followed it from his arrival at Valparaiso, on June 19, 1853, until April 20, 1854, when the " Bella," with Roger on board, sailed from Rio for New York, and from that day no more was seen of her, nor of any soul on board of her. The learned counsel then presented the jury with an elaborate sketch of the career of Arthur Orton, with whom he endeavoured to identify the defendant. He gave a graphic narrative of the defendant's second visit to Wapping, on the day after his arrival in England, to see the sisters of Arthur Orton, when he represented himself to be Mr. W. H. Stevens, a reporter for an Australian paper, who knew Orton well. The correspondence which passed between the parties resulted in the two sisters recognizing the defendant, from his letters, as their long-absent brother. A detailed account was next given of the claimant's first visits to Alresford, of his interviews with Mr. Gosford and Mr. Hopkins, with Lady Tichborne in Paris, and with Mr. and Mrs. Radcliffe and Mrs. Towneley at Croydon. Step by step the history of the case was revealed to the jury; how the claimant acquired his information regarding the Tichborne family, and by what means it was sought to prove him to be the real Sir Roger. After referring to the examination which took place at the Law Institution, the learned counsel again referred to the defendant's proceedings with the Orton family, and stated that Charles Orton was allowed by the claimant 57. per month up to August, 1868; and that the two sisters, Mrs. Tredgett and Mrs. Jewry, people he had refused to see, were also in the habit of receiving money from him under various names.

Great care

In the fourth daily instalment of his opening speech Mr. Hawkins passed under review the claimant's proceedings in preparing his case. was bestowed on elucidating the motives of the correspondence opened, in

1867, with Don Castro, of Melapilla; on exposing the inconsistency of dates therein mentioned with those of the real Roger Tichborne's visit to Chili; and on examining the claimant's various excuses for not continuing his journey to Melapilla. The twenty-five days' cross-examination which he underwent last year at the hands of the Attorney-General suggested to Mr. Hawkins instances innumerable of incredible lapses of memory on the claimant's part. He had been hopelessly wrong as to where he spent his childhood in Paris, as to all his early friends and associates, in all his recollections of Stonyhurst, and also as to every incident in his military life.

Mr. Hawkins then went fully into the history of the sealed packet left by Roger Tichborne with Mr. Gosford before he took his departure from England in 1853, and a copy of which had been given by Roger to Miss Doughty, now Lady Radcliffe. This document was in the following terms:-" Tichborne Park. I make on this day a promise that if I marry my cousin, Kate Doughty, this year, or before three years are over, at the latest, to build a church or chapel at Tichborne to the Holy Virgin, in thanksgiving for the protection which she will have shown us in praying God that our wishes might be fulfilled.-R. C. TICHBORNE." It was in connexion with this packet that the defendant had made a deliberate accusation against the honour of Lady Radcliffe-one which the learned counsel characterized in the strongest terms, adding that Lady Radcliffe would state on her oath that the assertion was absolutely without foundation. In commenting at length upon what he termed the improbability of the defendant's account of the wreck of the "Bella," Mr. Hawkins drew especial attention to the fact that two of the names mentioned by the defendant as those of men on board the ship which picked him up at sea actually belonged to men on board the "Middleton," in which Arthur Orton had made the voyage from London to Hobart Town. The learned counsel afterwards referred to various incidents in the defendant's Australian life.

In concluding his opening speech Mr. Hawkins informed the jury that they would have ample data supplied to them for testing the handwriting of Sir Roger and of the claimant. In the latter he pointed out marked peculiarities of spelling, which occur frequently. He wound up by charging the defendant with perjury "the most daring and detestable."-Dr. Kenealy raised a number of technical objections to the form of the indictment and the venue of the trial, which were overruled.-Abbé Salis then took his place in the witness-box, and deposed to his long acquaintance with Sir Roger and his parents while they were in Paris. In contradiction of the claimant's evidence at Westminster, he positively denied that the Louvre was visible from Sir James Tichborne's house in the Rue St. Honoré. In the last interview, before the South American expedition, Roger had shown to the Abbé the tattoo marks on his forearm. His reverence, when questioned about the claimant's identity, replied with emphasis, "He is not Roger Charles Tichborne. There is no resemblance to him."

The Abbé Salis was cross-examined with reference to his knowledge of Sir Roger and Lady Tichborne; and Père Lefèvre, a Jesuit priest, who had been Sir Roger's confessor in France before he went to Stonyhurst, gave evidence regarding his education and character at that period. In his opinion the defendant was not the Roger Tichborne whom he knew in Paris.-M. Adrian Chatillon, the first tutor of Roger, also declared that