Eugene Aram was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 philologist, but also infamous as the murderer celebrated by Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood was a British humorist and poet. His son, Tom Hood, became a well known playwright and editor.-Early life:...

 in his ballad, The Dream of Eugene Aram, and by Bulwer Lytton

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC , was an English politician, poet, playwright, and novelist. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling dime-novels which earned him a considerable fortune...

 in his 1832 novel Eugene Aram

Eugene Aram (novel)

Eugene Aram is a melodramatic novel by the British writer Edward George Bulwer-Lytton first published in 1832. It depicts the events leading up to the execution of Eugene Aram in 1759 for murdering his business partner....

.

Early life

Aram was born of humble parents at Ramsgill

Ramsgill

Ramsgill is a small village in Nidderdale, North Yorkshire, England about two miles south east of Lofthouse. It lies near Gouthwaite Reservoir. It is chiefly known for the Yorke Arms, a Michelin-starred restaurant on the village green....

, Yorkshire

Yorkshire

Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

. While still young, he married and settled as a schoolmaster at Netherdale

Netherdale

Netherdale, is an area of Galashiels, a town in the Scottish Borders.It is perhaps best known as being the home of Gala Rugby Club, Gala Fairydean Football Club and more recently the professional Border Reivers rugby union team. Gretna F.C...

, and during the years he spent there, he taught himself both Latin and Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

.

In 1734 he removed to Knaresborough

Knaresborough

Knaresborough is an old and historic market town, spa town and civil parish in the Borough of Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, located on the River Nidd, four miles east of the centre of Harrogate.-History:...

, where he remained as schoolmaster till 1745. 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

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, leaving his wife behind.

Travels

For several years he travelled through parts of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, acting as usher in a number of schools, and settled eventually at the Grammar School at King's Lynn

King's Lynn

King's Lynn is a sea port and market town in the ceremonial county of Norfolk in the East of England. It is situated north of London and west of Norwich. The population of the town is 42,800....

, in Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

. During his travels he had amassed considerable materials for a work he had projected on etymology

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...

, entitled A Comparative Lexicon of the English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Celtic Languages. He was undoubtedly an original philologist, who realized, 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

Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

 character of the Celtic language, which was not established until JC Prichard

James Cowles Prichard

James Cowles Prichard MD FRS was an English physician and ethnologist. His influential Researches into the physical history of mankind touched upon the subject of evolution...

 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 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

Robert of Knaresborough

Robert of Knaresborough was a hermit who lived in a cave by the River Nidd, Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. He was a local man by the name of Robert Flower , the son of a mayor of York. He lived in various places in the vicinity of Knaresborough before taking up residence in a cave by the river...

, a well-known spot near Knaresborough. A skeleton was dug up here, and Aram was immediately arrested, and sent to York

York

York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...

 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 skillful attack on the fallibility of circumstantial evidence

Circumstantial evidence

Circumstantial evidence is evidence in which an inference is required to connect it to a conclusion of fact, like a fingerprint at the scene of a crime...

 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

Hermit

A hermit is a person who lives, to some degree, in seclusion from society.In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a Christian who lives the eremitic life out of a religious conviction, namely the Desert Theology of the Old Testament .In the...

 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

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 by opening the veins in his arm.

Eugene Aram was hanged

Hanging

Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...

 at York's Tyburn in August 1759. His skull is preserved in Kings Lynn museum.

Aram in literature

Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood was a British humorist and poet. His son, Tom Hood, became a well known playwright and editor.-Early life:...

'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.

The spirit of Aram "possessed

Demonic possession

Demonic possession is held by many belief systems to be the control of an individual by a malevolent supernatural being. Descriptions of demonic possessions often include erased memories or personalities, convulsions, “fits” and fainting as if one were dying...

" Derek Acorah during Most Haunted Live in 2004 while they were in search of the ghost of Dick Turpin

Dick Turpin

Richard "Dick" Turpin was an English highwayman whose exploits were romanticised following his execution in York for horse theft. Turpin may have followed his father's profession as a butcher early in life, but by the early 1730s he had joined a gang of deer thieves, and later became a poacher,...

.

Eugene Aram is also referenced in antepenultimate stanza of George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

's 1935 poem "A Happy Vicar I Might Have Been".
P.G. Wodehouse's character Bertie Wooster

Bertie Wooster

Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves novels of British author P. G. Wodehouse. An English gentleman, one of the "idle rich" and a member of the Drones Club, he appears alongside his valet, Jeeves, whose genius manages to extricate Bertie or one of...

 recalls in the story "Jeeves Takes Charge", first published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1916, that he memorized a poem about Eugene Aram when he was a boy. He says that he cannot remember much of the poem, and the words he does remember are not in Hood's ballad. Bertie has stolen his uncle's manuscript memoir and is worried about hiding it when he recalls the story of Aram.
Bertie references the poem again in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, published in the United States on March 22, 1963 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, and in the United Kingdom on August 16, 1963 by Herbert Jenkins, London...

when he recalls being recently "entertained" in Totleigh Towers.
In Summer Lightning

Summer Lightning

Summer Lightning is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 1 July 1929 by Doubleday, Doran, New York, under the title Fish Preferred, and in the United Kingdom on 19 July 1929 by Herbert Jenkins, London...

, Ronnie Fish is compared to Aram:
Wodehouse referenced Aram even earlier, in Chapter 21 of his 1905 novel The Head of Kay’s, when the hero Fenn loses his school cap in a possibly incriminating situation, and notes, when it reappears, that:

Much later, in Chapter 6 of the 1954 Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on October 15, 1954 by Herbert Jenkins, London and in the United States on February 23, 1955 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, under the title Bertie Wooster Sees It Through...

(American title: Bertie Wooster Sees it Through) after being hauled before the Vinton Street Magistrate, Bertie tells his butler: