It was generally believed, as he promised to make a more ample confession on the day he was executed of every thing prior to the murder, that the whole would have been disclosed; but he put an end to any farther discovery, by an attempt upon his own life. When he was called from his bed to have his chains taken off, he refused, alleging that he was very weak. On moving him, it was found that he had inflicted a severe wound upon his arm, from which the blood was flowing copiously. He had concealed a razor in the condemned hold some time before. By proper and prompt applications he was brought to himself, and though weak from loss of blood, conducted to Tyburn in York, where, being asked if he had any thing to say, he answered, “No.” He was then executed, and his body conveyed to Knaresborough Forest, and hung in chains, pursuant to his sentence.
That Eugene Aram murdered Clark is beyond all question, since we have his confession; that he committed the murder actuated by the cause he alleges, is open to great suspicion. The strange solicitude which all men, even the most vicious, manifest to leave behind a memory mingled with some little good, prompted him, doubtless, to give his crime the ennobling, or, at least, mitigatory motive to which he attributes it. Whether the perpetration of a murder can be justified, even urged by the wrong Aram states himself to have suspected, may be left to the consideration of the casuist; but whether the dreadful act can be extenuated by as deliberate and foul attack on the virtue and character of an innocent and industrious woman, whom he upon all occasions treated with infamous barbarity, is a question we can confidently leave to the judgment and moral sense of every man. That Eugene Aram was leagued with Clark and Houseman in their fraud at Knaresborough, there can be little doubt; that he plundered his unhappy victim after he had murdered him, there can be less; that no sense of domestic injury would urge a man to rob another who had wronged him after he had slain him, needs only to be mentioned to be admitted; and therefore, believing conscientiously from these facts that the charge against his wife was not maintainable, a double indignation is entailed upon the wretch who could add to the measure of his crime this gratuitous calumny.
Notwithstanding these facts and the inferences that every attentive reader must inevitably draw from them, Eugene Aram has been deemed a fit hero for a popular novel; and the execration with which he should have been consigned to posterity has been attempted to be converted into a sentimental commiseration for a gentle student who beats out his friend’s brains on philosophical principles, and converts his property to his own use purely with a view to the interests of science and the intellectual progression of the world at large.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] It is generally believed, and upon good grounds, we imagine, that Aram possessed himself of all the money Clark had received for his wife’s dower, (about one hundred and sixty pounds,) and there were strong circumstances to substantiate it; but it was thought unnecessary, sufficient proof having been adduced without it.
GEORGE BARRINGTON.
George Barrington, whose crimes have justly astonished his contemporaries, was originally a native and inhabitant of Ireland; and, as it will appear in the sequel that the name of Barrington was assumed, let it suffice to remark that his father’s name was Henry Waldron, and that he was a working silversmith; while his mother, whose maiden name was Naish, was a mantuamaker, and occasionally a midwife.
Our adventurer was born about the year 1755, at the village of Maynooth, in the county of Kildare. His parents, who bore a good character for their industry, integrity, and general good behavior, were, however, never able to rise to a state of independence, or security from indigence, owing to their engagement in a lawsuit with a more powerful and opulent relative, in order to the recovery of a legacy, to which they conceived they had a legal right. To the narrowness of their circumstances the neglect of their son’s education is imputed; and, therefore, they were incapable of improving, or of giving a proper bias to those early indications of natural abilities, and a superiority of talents, which must inevitably have unfolded themselves even in the dawn of young Barrington’s existence. He was, notwithstanding these obstacles, instructed in reading and writing at an early age at their expense; and afterwards, through the bounty of a medical gentleman in the neighborhood, he was initiated in the principles of common arithmetic, the elements of geography, and the outlines of English grammar.
This ill-fated youth, however, enjoyed but for a short time the benefits he derived from the kindness of his first patron, a dignitary of the church in Ireland; for the violence of his passions, which equalled at least the extent of his talents, precipitated him into an action by which he lost his favor forever, and which, in its consequences, finally proved his ruin. When he had been about half a year at the grammar-school in Dublin, to which he had been sent by his patron, he unluckily got into a dispute with a lad, much older, larger, and stronger than himself; the dispute degenerated into a quarrel, and some blows ensued, in which young Waldron suffered considerably; but in order to be revenged, he stabbed his antagonist with a penknife; and had he not been seasonably prevented, would have in all probability murdered him. The wounds which he gave did not prove so dangerous as to render the several circumstances of the quarrel which occasioned them a subject of legal investigation. The discipline of the house, (flogging,) however, was inflicted with proper severity on the perpetrator of so atrocious an offence, which irritated the unrelenting and vindictive temper of the young man to such a degree that he determined at once to run away from school, from his family, and from his friends; thus abandoning the fair prospects that he had before him, and blasting all the hopes that had been fondly, though vainly, formed of the great things that might be effected by his genius when matured by time and improved by study.
His plan of escape was no sooner formed than it was carried into execution; but previously to his departure he found means to steal ten or twelve guineas from the master of the school, and a gold repeating watch from Mrs. Goldsborough, the master’s sister. With this booty, a few shirts, and two or three pair of stockings, he silently but safely effected his retreat from the school-house, in the middle of a still night in the month of May, 1771; and pursuing the great northern road all that night, and all the next day, he late in the evening arrived at the town of Drogheda, without interruption, without accident, and in a great measure without halting, without rest, and without food.