EUGENE ARAM.* STEVENSON in his youth confessed himself fascinated by
the strange figure of Hackstoun of Rathillet, who at the murder of the Archbishop on Magus Moor stood apart, with his hand at his mouth, revolving a private scruple of conscience. It would be unfair to put the austere Covenanter on the level of the criminal schoolmaster of Knaresborough, but the crime of the latter has interested posterity for much the same reason that Hackstoun caught the fancy of Stevenson. The psychology of the thing puzzles the ordinary man. There have been many criminals who were men of culture—Villon, for example, and Wainwright the poisoner, who was the friend of Lamb and De Quincey and wrote " precious" prose; but in Aram we have a sober scholar, whose passion was one of the driest of studies—comparative philology, and whose life in its out- ward incidents seemed peculiarly staid and decorous. Whence came the motive for his sordid crime P What kind of life did he lead between the murder and his arrest ? Hood and Lytton have tried to provide an answer out of their imagina- tions, and we have the tragic figure of the conscience-stricken dominie doing penance in long years of agony for his momentary fall. The existing lives of Aram, hastily pre- pared for popular consumption, seemed to corroborate this picture. Mr. Eric Watson, in the volume before us, has devoted immense research and ingenuity to getting at the truth. He has carefully examined the material in the Record Office, he has searched the files of contemporary newspapers, and he has ransacked eighteenth-century literature for references to the subject. He investigates the case from a lawyer's point of view, and finds that the men of letters have distorted the facts. There can be no doubt about Aram's guilt, and his trial was perfectly fair. There was ample motive for the crime, and the schoolmaster was not the high-minded and scrupulous being he has been painted, but a hard, self- indulgent fellow with little conscience to trouble him. We, must allow his scholarship, but scholarship, unfortunately, is no guarantee of virtue. Mr. Watson has shown himself indefatigable in research, and it is difficult to question his conclusions. A slightly more urbane method of controversy would have made his work more attractive, for he brings too heavy ordnance of contempt against ancient bookmakers like Scatcherd and Bell, and he wrangles with Lytton as if the novelist had offered his work as accurate history.
Aram was born in 1704 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the son of a gardener who had emigrated from Nottingham. shire. He was a precocious scholar, and at sixteen entered a counting-house in London, but his health broke down and he returned to his native district to take up schoolmastering. He continued to improve his education, even after he had married a woman of his own class and settled down to an ill- paid job at Knaresborough. Here be made several acquaint-
" Eugene Aram: His Life and Trial. By Eric B. Watson. "Notable English 'Trials" Series. London: W. Hodge and Co. [5s. net.] antes—Daniel Clark, a weedy young shoemaker, who was about to marry a young woman with a dowry ; Houseman, a. weaver ; Terry, a publican or "ale-draper," as they said in Yorkshire; and Mr. Francis Iles, who seems to have acted the
part of a receiver of stolen goods. Aram was notably impecu- nious, and Houseman and Terry were rogues of a high order,. and it would appear that the trio, assisted by Iles, had begun, to experiment in robbery. Presently Clark's approaching.
marriage suggested a profitable speculation. The weak young man was induced to order all the goods he could get.
on credit with a view to his wedding. On the evening of February 7th, 1744-45, he left his home, saying that he was going to see his wife. Houseman, Terry, and Aram met him and collected the various goods which he had acquired..
He was murdered by a blow on the back of the head from some blunt instrument, and his body was buried in a place called St. Robert's Cave on the banks of the river Nidd. As he did not appear, it was believed that he had. absconded, and be was " papered " throughout the country..
Aram, who was now flush of money, continued for a little- while longer at Knaresborough, and then bolted to London, leaving his wife and children unprovided for. In the metro- polis he seems to have indulged his taste for good living as long as his money lasted. Then he became a tutor, and later was reduced to the hard work of transcribing Acts of Parliament for registration in Chancery. In the beginning of the year 1758 he secured the ushership of the Free- Grammar School in the town of King's Lynn, where he speedily won a position in local society. He appeared as a grave, studious man, fond of the company of his social superiors and very popular with the boys.
Meantime strange things were happening at Knaresborough Early in August 1758 some human remains had been found. at a place called Thistle Hill, and the memories of the inhabi- tants went back to the absent Clark. Houseman was arrested on the evidence of Anna Aram, Eugene's wife, and under examination by the justices told a long story of bow he and Aram had left Clark on the night of February 7th, 1744-45. On his removal to York he confessed that Clark was murdered. by Aram, and that the remains were in St. Robert's Cave.. A warrant was therefore issued for Aram's arrest, and since he had been recognized at Lynn by a Yorkshire drover, justice soon laid hands on him. He was brought back to Knares- borough, and behaved with complete composure, even when- confronted with the wife whom he bad deserted. He mado flo long statement, in which he admitted being concerned with. Clark and Houseman in an attempt at fraud, and declared that Clark and Houseman and Terry had gone into the cave to- beat out the plate while he stayed outside, and that afterwards Houseman told him that Clark had gone off. He was committed to York prison, and in August 1759 was tried before Mr. Justice Noel, Sir Fletcher Norton conducting the prosecution for the Crown. The trial seems to have been fair enough according to the canons of the day, though Norton, on the evidence of Mansfield himself, was not the most scrupulous of prosecutors. Houseman turned King's evidence, and Aram's fate was sealed. The evidence for the Crown implicated Aram by proof of motive, opportunity, and subsequent conduct inconsistent with innocence. The prisoner read a long and able defence, in which be dealt with one point only, the weakness of the proof of the• corpus delicti, the absence of any determining evidence that. the body found in the cave was really Clark's. It availed, him nothing ; the jury found him guilty without leaving the box, and he was duly hanged at the Knavesmire on the outskirts of York, and his body exposed in chains in Knares- borough Forest.
Was Aram guilty ? Was he legally and justly condemned l What were his real character and attainments ? These are the questions which Mr. Watson sets himself to answer at length. There seems little room for doubt on the first point. Whether he struck the blow or not, the fact that he was present for an unlawful purpose when Clark came by his death made him technically guilty of murder. Nor can there be any real doubt that the body in the cave was Clark's, for it must be remembered that the remains were found only by Houseman's direction, and of Houseman's guilty relation with Aram and Clark there can be no question. The identity of the remains, however, was the weak point in the prosecution, and Aram, with considerable acuteness, directed his defence to this point. The medical evidence as to the body was, like all similar medical evidence at the time, exceedingly unsatisfactory; but the identity may fairly be regarded as having been proved indirectly and circumstantially. Houseman's evidence was not the determining fact in Aram's conviction, for the chain of circumstantial evidence was complete without it. Morally, the justice of the conviction was overwhelming. Aram was a singularly callous and cold-hearted ruffian, and there is no evidence that his conscience was ever troubled for a moment by his past. The one redeeming trait in his character was his love of learning, which he pursued in the face of poverty and vicissitudes. His verse is not of much account, being no more than the kind of Popian couplet which most well-educated men of his day would turn ant. But his fragmentary " Essay Towards a Comparative Lexicon" shows not only wide linguistic knowledge, but a genuine grasp of principles and ascholar's insight. As Dr. Garnett has pointed out, he was the first man to light upon the important philo- logical truth—the affinity of the Celtic to other European languages. "It is hardly too much to say that had he enjoyed wealth and leisure he might have advanced the study of comparative philology by fifty years." He was a born criminal and a born scholar, and the combination is rare, for there is no trace of decadence in his intellectual gifts. On that side be is conspicuously logical, well-balatieed, and modest. The men of letters, though often astray in their facts, have after all shown a sound instinct in selecting this particular criminal for their attention, for he provides contrasts rare in the history of crime—" the decent, humane, erudite pedagogue, sought out by parson and by squire, and the professor of murder as a fine art."
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