The Fraud

The Fraud is a novel adapted from real-life events and people.

The main character, Eliza Touchet, is based on a real person also named Eliza Touchet. The real Eliza Touchet was indeed close to William Ainsworth. She had a child with him and died before he did, in 1869. This means that the real Eliza Touchet missed the Tichborne Claimant case. Smith uses her fictionalized figure of Eliza to highlight the disparities between men and women in 19th century England. The historical Eliza Touchet also knew Charles Dickens. In this novel, Dickens gifts Eliza a copy of A Christmas Carol, which is based on a real incident: In 2009, Eliza Touchet’s signed and personalized copy of the book became the most expensive Dickens title sold at auction. The connections, therefore, between the real Eliza Touchet and the men in this novel are essentially factual, but Smith uses Eliza’s relative anonymity to infuse her novel with the perspective of a shrewd, intelligent, but imperfect woman.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is a marginal but important character in The Fraud. His role is to challenge William’s career. Dickens becomes so famous—even globally—that when he dies, he is buried in Westminster Abbey alongside other famous writers. Dickens’s career makes William jealous, and there are many implications that Dickens helps to slow William’s literary career down. The two men were once friends, but that ended when Dickens became more famous than William. Charles Dickens was, and still is, one of the most iconic figures in English literature, known for works such as Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, The Pickwick Papers, and Our Mutual Friend. His novels frequently critiqued the flaws in British society, calling special attention to the plight of the poor. In The Fraud, Dickens is a talented but suspicious man whose sexism and ego are often displayed.

William Ainsworth (1805-1882) is also both a character in this novel and a British historical figure. For a time, he was a prolific and successful novelist, ultimately writing 41 books. Eventually, his novels fell out of fashion and his literary reputation was lackluster, especially in comparison with his contemporary Dickens. In the novel, he pushes his literary career into oblivion, never accepting the defeat of his literary ambitions.

The central historical event in The Fraud is the Tichborne Claimant case. Arthur Orton, a butcher in Wagga Wagga, Australia, came forward claiming to be Sir Roger Tichborne, a nobleman who was believed to have died in a shipwreck. Orton claimed that he survived the shipwreck, made it to Australia, but had a damaged memory because of the wreck. In 1871, Orton lost a civil trial for the Tichborne inheritance. He was arrested on charge of perjury for fraudulently claiming the Tichborne inheritance and lying on the stand. He was convicted in 1874 and spent 10 years in prison. He died in poverty in 1898. Arthur Orton is part of this novel, but only marginally. The Fraud is more focused on the trial itself and the others who surround Arthur Orton, such as Kenealy and Bogle.

Andrew Bogle was also a real-life person. Though very little is known of him, which emphasizes how little powerful people cared for the Black people who were intimate parts of their lives, his transcripts from the trial exist.