Theresa Doughty Tichborne
[1][6] In 1884, her father, who had been found not to be the missing heir, Sir Roger Tichborne, and sentenced for perjury in 1873, was released,[7] and Theresa acted as his secretary during his mid-1880s lecture tour.
[1] She was also to reveal, in 1924, that it was during this time that her father told her that he was Sir Roger Tichborne, and had shot, and killed, Arthur Orton, in Australia before taking his name.
[2] In June 1913, Theresa was remanded 'on a charge of threatening to murder' Miss Denise Fulke Greville, fiancée of the then baronet Sir Joseph Tichborne.
[11] At the remand hearing, held at the Bow Street Police Court in London, Theresa 'protested that she did not intend to do any harm to Miss Grenville' and 'her only motive' in writing to Granard (who was married to wealthy American heiress Beatrice Mills) was 'to attract attention to her case'.
When the prosecutor stated that 'The defendant represents herself to be the daughter of Arthur Orton', she responded 'I never said so, I said Sir Roger Tichborne'.
[13][14] The following year, as 'Theresa Alexander', she was successful in her application to the court to have her sister stand surety on her £100 twelve-month good behavior bond.
[15] In September 1923, Theresa appeared at the Clerkenwell Police Court charged with 'publishing a defamatory libel concerning Sir Joseph Tichborne'.
[16] Described in a news report as a 'tall woman of dignified appearance', she was said to have sent 'a series of amazing letters' in which she claimed Sir Joseph Tichborne had bribed her to commit suicide.
[16] In the earliest letter, sent to the Coroner of Brockenhurst, where she was living, she wrote: "A man named Draper came to see me last Saturday, and told me he was from Sir Joseph Tichborne.
[16] Theresa was brought to trial in October 1923 and was sentenced to one year in prison for 'writing threatening letters' and attempting to 'extort money from the Tichborne family by threats to kill them'.
In it she said that during her time in HM Prison Holloway she believed herself to be dying and wrote to the Home Office to confide a secret she said her late father had told her in 1885: 'I'm Roger Tichborne.
