Eugene Aram

Early life

Aram was born of humble parents at Ramsgill, Yorkshire. He worked in a counting house in London as a clerk, then returned to Yorkshire to set up a school. Whilst still young, he married and settled as a schoolmaster at Netherdale, and during the years he spent there, he taught himself Latin, Hebrew, and Greek.

In 1734 he removed to Knaresborough, where he remained as schoolmaster till 1744. In that year a man named Daniel Clark, an intimate friend of Aram, after obtaining a considerable quantity of goods from some of the tradesmen in the town, suddenly disappeared. Suspicions of being concerned in this swindling transaction fell upon Aram. His garden was searched, and some of the goods found there. As, however, there was not evidence sufficient to convict him of any crime, he was discharged, and soon after set out for London, leaving his wife behind. In London he found employment as an usher in a school at Piccadilly and learned Chaldee and Arabic.

Travels

For several years he travelled through parts of England, acting as usher in a number of schools, and settled eventually at the Grammar School at King's Lynn, in Norfolk. During his travels he had amassed considerable materials for a work he had projected on etymology, entitled A Comparative Lexicon of the English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Celtic Languages. He was undoubtedly an original philologist, who realised, what was then not yet admitted by scholars, the affinity of the Celtic language to the other languages in Europe, and could dispute the then accepted belief that Latin was derived from Greek.

Aram's writings show that he had grasped the right idea on the subject of the Indo-European character of the Celtic languages, which was not established until JC Prichard published his book, Eastern Origin of the Celtic Traditions, in 1831. But he was not destined to live in history as a pioneer of a new philology.

Trial

In February 1758 a skeleton was dug up at St Robert's Cave in Knaresborough, and some suspicion arose that it might be Clark's. Aram's wife had more than once hinted that her husband and a man named Houseman knew the secret of Clark's disappearance. Houseman was at once arrested and confronted with the bones that had been found. He affirmed his innocence, and, taking up one of the bones, said, "This is no more Dan Clark's bone than it is mine." His manner in saying this roused suspicion that he knew more of Clark's disappearance. When questioned, he contested that he had been present at the murder of Clark by him and another man, Terry, of whom nothing further is heard. He eventually implicated Aram and also gave information as to the place where the body had been buried in St Robert's Cave, a well-known spot near Knaresborough. A skeleton was dug up here, and Aram was immediately arrested, and sent to York for trial. Houseman's testimony was admitted as evidence against him.

Aram conducted his own defence, and did not attempt to overthrow Houseman's evidence, though there were some discrepancies in that; but made a skilful attack on the fallibility of circumstantial evidence in general, and particularly of evidence drawn from the discovery of unidentifiable bones. He brought forward several instances where bones had been found in caves, and tried to show that the bones found at St Robert's Cave were probably those of some hermit who had taken up his abode there.

Death

He was found guilty, and condemned to be executed on 6 August 1759, three days after his trial. While in his cell he confessed his guilt, and threw new light on the motives for his crime, by asserting that he had discovered an affair between Clark and his own wife. On the night before his execution he made an unsuccessful attempt at suicide by opening the veins in his arm with a razor.

Eugene Aram was hanged at York's Tyburn in an area of the Knavesmire on 16 August 1759. His skull is preserved in King's Lynn museum.

Aram in literature

Thomas Hood's ballad, The Dream of Eugene Aram centres on Aram's activity as a schoolteacher, contrasting his scholarship with his hidden murderous urges. Bulwer-Lytton's novel Eugene Aram creates a Romantic figure torn between violence and visionary ideals, an image that is also portrayed in W.G. Wills's play Eugene Aram, in which Henry Irving took the principal role.

Eugene Aram is also referenced in the third to last stanza of George Orwell's 1935 poem "A Happy Vicar I Might Have Been".

P.G. Wodehouse, in several of his fictional works, references Eugene Aram, and often quotes from the last two lines of Hood's poem: "And Eugene Aram walk’d between, / With gyves upon his wrist."

Note: the phrase 'I slew him', does not occur in Hood's poem.

Eugene Aram is also referenced in the eighth chapter of E. Phillips Oppenheim's novel, The Great Impersonation:

Eugene Aram is mentioned by Dr. Thorndyke in Chapter 11 of the R. Austin Freeman 1911 novel The Eye of Osiris, where Thorndyke expounds on the difficulty of disposing of the human body: