Scandal and deception - the Roger TICHBORNE case - and a CATER connection

The most frequently found (and distinctive) name in my CATER family is 'John Wyatt CATER'. To date I have identified 15 individuals with this name, living in the UK, USA and Australia.  


This story concerns one John Wyatt CATER, born 1825 in Canterbury, Kent, the son of Wyatt CATER and Catherine ALLEN. John's early life was, I think, disrupted and difficult. 


His father, a mason originally from Stapleton, near Bristol, seems to have travelled to Kent to find work. He married Catherine in St James, Dover, in 1819, and John was their third child (the second child, also John Wyatt, died in infancy).  in 1825/26 the family returned to Stapleton, and a further 4 children were born there, but only one survived infancy.  In 1830 Wyatt was described as a Brick and Tile Maker/Lime Burner in Pigot's Directory of Bristol.


John's father Wyatt died aged 38, and was buried on the same day as his youngest son Robert. John would have been only 8 years old.  In 1841, John's mother Catherine was described as a Pauper: the family were still in Stapleton. John was an errand boy; his elder brother James had taken up an apprenticeship with a mason in Bristol. James later moved north, ending up in Perthshire where he raised a large family.

1841 Census, Stapleton, Gloucestershire

Catherine sadly died in 1844, and sister Mary Ann married in 1846 to a farmer from Worcestershire. Sometime between then and 1850 John sailed to Australia.


John made a life for himself in Wagga Wagga, Australia, where he worked as a baker, although there seems to be little surviving evidence of his life there. I would not have found even this snippet of his adult life, had it not been for his involvement in the case of Roger Tichborne (the story begins about 1865).

Hampshire Museums Service hold archives concerning the case, this is their summary: "The story concerns Roger Tichborne, disappointed in love who is then lost at sea, and a man who, more than a decade later, appears from the Australian outback claiming to be the missing heir. The civil and criminal trials which followed held the record as the longest court case in British legal history until the mid 1990s, and the archive contains photographs of almost everyone involved: - the extended Tichborne family and the Tichborne Claimant, the legal teams on both sides; the witnesses; judges and jurors; and even the court ushers and the boy who sold the newspapers in the street outside."  Their web page describes the case, which was at the time an enormous media event. Unfortunately as John didn't attend the Court case, he is not included in the photograph archive.


The property at stake in the Trial was Upton House, near Alresford, Hampshire.  


John's became involved in the case as he had known the claimant (also known as Arthur ORTON and Tom CASTRO) in Wagga Wagga. As far as I can tell John didn't appear at Court, but sent several letters describing the claimant and giving background information, which were read in Court and have since been published in "The Tichborne Trial"

The shack in Wagga Wagga where Arthur Orton alias Thomas Castro and his wife Mary Ann Bryant lived when first married circa 1865, taken by William Fearne of Wagga Wagga, Australia vol 1, page 62 - Views connected with the Trials.(Hampshire Museum Service)

Internet searches show that the Trial may have ended, eventually, in 1874, but the case has interested writers ever since - in 1929 this piece was published in Cornhill Magazine, and in 1959 Harold T Wilkins wrote a chapter about it in his book Mysteries Solved and Unsolved.  A film based on the story was made in 1998. Even the Simpsons had an episode based on the story "The Principle and the Pauper"!


By the time of the Trial, John Wyatt CATER had retired and the letters read at Court show that he travelled back to England; he gives his address as Worcester and later Perthshire, so it is likely he visited his siblings.  However at some point he travelled back to Australia, and he died there in 1900.