I see the Tichborne claimant’s time is nearly up, and that his admirers and believers (he has some still) are preparin’ to give him a warm reception when he comes out of prison. And this reminds me that there was an incident in this Tichborne affair that is not generally known.
There recently died in Brooklyn a man called Charles Ogden Ferris, who figured in certain circles here in New York.
This man Ferris was not a particularly smart chap; in fact, he was generally considered by those who knew him as rather slow than otherwise, almost stupid about ordinary matters, uneducated, not quick at anythin’, shiftless and a ne’er-do-well. Yet he certainly originated and attempted a scheme of imposture that was very darin’ and very ingenious. He was a lazy fellow, too; too lazy to work steadily at any trade or anythin’ else, yet he thought out a job which cost him months of weariness and took enough trouble carryin’ it out for nothin’, with no good to himself, to have earned him a good deal of money in any decent occupation.
This Charles Ogden Ferris was born in Brooklyn, of respectable parents. His father died when the lad was very young, and his mother afterwards married again, and subsequently went mad, and died in the insane asylum, which fact may possibly account for some of the eccentricities of her son.
When Ferris was about sixteen years of age he ran off to sea, and stayed away for over sixteen years. He was given up for dead; when suddenly he turned up in Brooklyn, and stayed there long enough to get married to a Brooklyn girl named Williams. A little while after his marriage the civil war broke out between the North and the South, and off went Ferris to the wars, leavin’ his wife and an infant daughter behind him.
Ferris tried the army awhile, then he tried the navy awhile, then he went to California, and then drifted back to Brooklyn again. About this time the great Tichborne trial was takin’ place in England, and everybody was talking about the “claimant,” and whether Arthur Orton was really himself or somebody else, whether he was himself or the lost Tichborne, and other conundrums which, according to some folks’ notions, haven’t been satisfactorily settled up to this hour.
Although not a readin’ man in general, Ferris read everythin’ about this case–took as much interest in it as if he was one of the lawyers, or one of the Tichbornes; and at last wound up by seriously claimin’ that he was one of the Tichbornes; in fact, none other than the missing heir himself.
This at first seems but the mirror crazy freak of a madman; but Ferris wasn’t mad. There was a good deal of method in his madness, generally, and he contrived to make up a very plausible story, which found some very influential advocates, among ‘em one celebrated lawyer, General Barnes, who tried in good faith to push his client’s claim.
Ferris acted on the idea that “a lie that is all a lie can be met and fought outright. But a lie that is half a truth is a harder matter to fight.” He made up a yarn that had a good deal of solid fact in it, points that were absolutely true, and which he had dates and papers to show were true, mixed with things that were utterly false, and yet which might after all have been true, and which nobody could positively know were false but himself.
He first called upon General Barnes at his office, one day, and sent in his card as Roger Tichborne. Upon the general remarkin’ that his name was the same as that of the lost English baronet, he electrified Barnes by assurin’ him that he was the lost English baronet–the identical missin’ heir. Barnes thought he was crazy, first; but before the interview was over he was a warm believer in Ferris bein’ Tichborne.
Ferris had been rehearsin’ for this interview for weeks, and he did himself credit as a first-class actor. He looked, and talked and behaved like a quiet, dignified, educated gentleman, used to wealth, and at the same time experienced in the world.
He confessed to Barnes that he had borne for years the name of Ferris, but that his ancestral name was Tichborne; and then he set to work very plausibly to explain why he had assumed this false name, and why he had never before put in a claim to his “ancestral” acres, not only not claimin’ them himself, but keeping silence all the time durin’ the famous Tichborne suit in England. These were very hard points to get over; but Ferris got over ‘em satisfactorily in the opinion of a good many people not fools ‘emselves.
He explained his taking the name of Ferris by his havin’ met a Brooklyn man named Charles Ogden Ferris, durin’ his travels abroad, who was not only very kind to him, but resembled him very closely, so as often to be mistaken for him, and whom, as we shall see, circumstances led him to personate for a while.
The way Ferris explained to Barnes how he had met with himself was really as clever as it was cheeky. And then the way he praised this Ferris (himself) as “the very noblest man he had ever seen” was rich. And then the way he described his own death was fine; according to his account, this Ferris had died on the isthmus under the most pathetic circumstances; alone, with none to close his eyes but the man to whom he had, in his turn, been so kind and friendly. When it came to this part of his “simple, unvarnished narrative,” as Barnes styled it, Ferris shed tears freely, (he was so affected by his emotion and gratitude to his own dead self) and he even affected powerfully the feelin’s of General Barnes, who was no milksop, either. Barnes wrung his hand, and said that his emotion did him credit, which it really did, though not in the sense which General Barnes meant it at all.
He, the livin’ Ferris or Tichborne, promised the dyin’ Ferris that he would transact some business in behalf of some dear ones of his in Brooklyn, and in fulfillment of his promise he went to Brooklyn, after his friend’s death, and, there, bein’ on account of his likeness to his friend, mistaken for him, and findin’ that by takin’ advantage of this mistake he could really best serve his dead friend’s wishes, he, Tichborne, thereafter assumed the name of Ferris, and was known by it–people in Brooklyn and New York takin’ it for granted that he was the simon pure Charles Ogden Ferris they had always known.
This accounted plausibly and credibly for his assumin’ a feigned name, and he equally plausibly accounted for his keepin’ silence so long as to his real identity and claims.
Durin’ his travels he met and engaged a servant, a Frenchman, Jules Berrant, on whom he thought he could depend as a confederate in his scheme.
And here is where he made his fatal mistake. He tried to prove too much by this Berrant, and so came to grief.
All through his narrative he introduced a good many names which had a real existence, and so gave an air of truth to it. He alluded to a bark Restless on which he landed, as Ferris, in New York, described her cargo and her captain, etc. All this was found to be correct. Then he alluded to Moses and Aaron Williams, of New York, who worked in a turpentine and rosin factory on Pearl street, near the East river. These two men were genuine and proved that they had known this man as Ferris. Then he brought in Poillon’s ship yard, in Brooklyn, the employees of which vouched for some facts he stated. He also referred to some military documents and official papers which corroborated certain portions of his narrative. Altogether out of whole cloth he made up a strong case.
But like a good many other clever rogues, he made it too strong; he overdid the matter; he proved too much, and so excited suspicion. Inquiries were set on foot, and the real history of this real Ferris but bogus Tichborne was tracked by detectives, all through his New York, Brooklyn and California career. The bottom facts came out, and the principal proof against him was his own daughter, the child of his abandoned wife, who was livin’ in Brooklyn, and who testified to points which served to show that her father’s story was all a–story.
The man Berrant of also went back on Ferris, and facts were found out about Berrant that hurt his testimony and character every way. He was proved to have been a quack horse doctor, and a horse trader, had lots of aliases, and had been in trouble in Canada several times.
What with Berrant, and his own daughter and the other points developed against him, Charles Ogden Ferris came to grief as a would-be Roger Tichborne, and found it to his interest to leave New York.
But certainly, for a man who passed for lazy and shiftless and stupid, to have put up such a job as this was a wonder in itself.
[Editor’s notes: The opening paragraph of this column is referring to the claim made by a portly Australian butcher named Arthur Orton, aka Thomas Castro, that he was Roger Tichborne, who had been presumed dead in an 1854 shipwreck, though many bodies from that wreck were never found. Orton’s claim had enough plausibility to bring him to England to make a legal claim to his inheritance. His claim was denied.
This column, published in 1884, states that Ferris had recently died. Not at all–he did not pass away until 1907. However, he did vanish between 1885-1890; during those years he was in prison for fraudulently claiming a military service pension. Even after his release, he still insisted he was Roger Tichborne.]
