Northern Weekly Gazette. — 1907-03-16 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

NOTORIOUS CRIMES AND CRIMINALS.  XL13.011 16, IV!  mine." His peculiar manner warranted the in. ference that he, at all events, knew where Clark' remains were; and, upon being pressed, he ad. :nitted that Clark had been murdered by Aram and buried in St. Robert's Cave. Search was made, and there, surely, was the skeleton found. That very night, while gentle sleep The urchin eyelids kissed, Two stern-faced men tet out from Lynn, Through the cold and heavy mist; And Eugene Aram walked between, With gyves upon his wrist.  Aram's trial came off at York on August 3rd, i7E.9. Houseman was the only witness against him. He swore that on that February night in 1745 Aram proposed a walk out of the town; that when they came near the field where St. Robert's Cave is Aram and Clark went into it over the hedge, and when they were six or eight yards off t.he cave he heard them quarrelling, and saw Aram strike Clark several times, upon which Clark fell, and he never saw him rise again. It was solely upon this evidence, without any corroboration whatever, that Aram was executed. One has a terrible suspicion about it. Houseman was bound to exculpate himself, bound to try to save his own neck. Why was his word taken? He was admittedly a bad character, whereas Aram was a scholar, a man of moral habits, not likely, u human nature goes, to commit a crime of this kind. In all the annals of our criminal judicature I do not believe that there is a single instance of a pereon being executed upon such unsupported evidence as that of Houseman. But there it was. At the trial, Aram defended himself with extraordinary ability. He laid slight stress on the tainted character of Houseman, who, he may have thought when he prepared his speech, would not be admitted to give evidence. He insisted chiefly on the fallibility of circumstantial evidence; and he made a strong point of the limner ous instances recorded of the discovery of bevitan remains. The speech is said to have impressed the jury, but it did not influence the summing up of the judge. Aram was accord. ingly executed on August 6th, having attempted suicide by opening his veins with a razor. Hs revelted at the indignity of the rope. Before his death he admitted his part in the murder, but alleged (no doubt truly,) that Houseman's ,was the principal hand. A desire to avenge his wife's infidelity with Clark was, according to his own explanation, Aram's principal motive in becoming participator. Aram, says one of his biographers, "was undoubtedly convicted on the testimony of a greater criminal than himself, and his talents and mia fortunes excite so much interest that it would be satisfactory to be able to concur with Lytton that he wee merely guilty of robbery." His guilt certainly went further than that; yet one compamionates him, somehow. William Geodein remarked in connection with his case that, "no man shall die respecting whom it can be reasonably concluded that, if his life were spared, it would be spent blamelessly, honourably, and urefully." Could one have predicted that of Eugene Aram? I think so. "It is hardly too much to say," writes an authority, "that had Aram enjoyed wealth and leisure he might have advanced Ihe study of comparative philology be fifty years." And this was the man whose body was hung in chains at Knaresborough, his wife picking up the bones es they dropped, one by one; his children taking strangers to view their father's gibbet. Let us be thankful that ghastly spectacles of that kind cannot be witnessed now.