‘For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.’ The case of The Claimant, The Medals and The Poem. An article in five fits, Francesca Kettle

This essay explores two artefacts pertaining to the most infamous case of imposture in British legal history. The Tichborne Case was the kind of spectacle on which the nineteenth century thrived; an heir lost at sea miraculously returned, an enormous fortune ripe for the picking, sexual intrigue, class division, hyper-politicised journalism and above all, an almost existential ambiguity around identity. The artefacts include two commemorative medals produced in support of the Claimant, against Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark, a literary satire capable of reducing the entire saga down to nothing but nonsense.