THE TRUE EUGENE ARAM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15411, 20 September 1913, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE TRUE EUGENE ARAM.

In " Eugene Aram : His Life and Trial," Mr. E. R. Watson tells the story .of Eugene Aram, the usher, who was hanged on. August 6, 1759, for a murder comI mitted on February 8 in the year 1744-5. Mr. Erio Watson has no difficulty in showing that Aram is not in the least entitled to a hero's pedestal. The murder of Daniel Clark, the " weedy, stammering, pock-broke", cordwainer, or shoemaker, of Knaresborough, was as sordid a one as the calendar contains. Contrary to all modern notions on the subject, he seems to have had a perfectly fair trial, and the contemporary opinion as expressed by Bristow was that "Aram's sentence was a just one." With Bnlwer's novel, as Mr. Watson says, " came the turn of the tide." This was in 1831, and more than 50 year 3 later a writer in the excellent Leisure Hour said :— "uhe real story is so little known, and doubts of so impressive a character have been brought to bear upon the extent to which Aram was involved, that it even seems mysterious how a verdict of guilty should ever have been returned, and it is certain that no one could convicted at the present day upon such evidence as condemned him. Mr. Watson is convinced that Aram it was who with his pick not having the fear of God before his eyes"— knowingly! and wilfully break the cobbler's skull. He nevertheless believes that the true story of the murder lies buried with its perpetrator:— " Whether, killed in the cave or carried there dead, that Clark met his death through a preconcerted scheme of murder admits of no doubt. The occasion was chosen when the protection of his servant and the company of his wife were both withdrawn; that simple robbery was the motive, and that the killing of Clark formed no part of " the premeditated design' of Aram, at least, as Bulwer pretends, will not bear a moment's scrutiny. ; The robbery of Clark by persons perfectly well known to him' could only have resulted in their conviction and execution unless thoy fled their country. Everything Saints to a well-conceived scheme of murer. The time chosen, which would leave many hours of darkness for the burial of the body, the care with which the body was stopped, the cunningly-selected site for the interment, the speedy despatch when once the marriage portion had been paid over, all point more to a calculated crime than to a crime of impulse. That the site was selected by Aram with a view to the artful defence that he subsequently set up is, perhaps, no very forced conclusion. The cave he then knew to have been occupied by a hermit, and many years later, in 1833, the bones of a recluse were discovered just outside it." The scholarship of Eugene Aram, which ought, perhaps, to have counted against him, has in some way been held to palliate his crime. His celebrated defence, which ho read to the court, has won the praise of many distinguished critics—Samuel Parr, Smollett, Paley, and others. Mr. Watson describes it as the most singular apologia, in existence. " None, not even that of Socrates, condescends so little to any notice of so vulgar a thing as evidence. < Was this famous speech or essay the prisoner's own composition? From internal evidence Mr. Watson decides that it was, and he sums it up as the effort of a scholar, not of a barrister. The failure "to present any consistent view of the defence— reconcile the various conflictrng statement* of the accused— deal though it could, in a written- speech, be only by way of anticipation, with the case for the Crown-all these defects point to the address, masterly in some respects admirable in its literary finish, as the work of a man indeed " wholly unacquainted with law, the customs of the Bar and all judiciary proceedings.'" '

After Aram's execution his body bung in chains 'upon Knaresborough Forest," and his widow, who had given evidence against him, would some times stroll out to look at it.