As this trial has excited very extraordinary interest, and presents illustrations of several points connected with Medico-legal investigations, we shall offer to our readers a brief outline of the case, and introduce the ingenious defence which the prisoner composed and read at his trial. In the year 1745, Clarke, a shoemaker, at Knaresborough, in Yorkshire, was induced by Eugene Aram and Richard Houseman, to purchase a variety of valuable articles of plate and jewellery, in consequence of having married a woman who had many rich relations, and who, by an ostentatious display of this kind, might conclude that Clarke was rich, and in consequence of such belief make him their heir. No sooner had Clarke yielded to the persuasion of these men, and became in consequence possessed of many valuable goods, than Eugene Aram and Houseman murdered him, in February 1745, and buried his body in a field near the town, and having shared Clarke’s treasure, they decamped.—Clarke being at the time very much in debt, was supposed to have gone abroad, and every inquiry ceased until the year 1758, when a person, as he was digging for lime-stone near St. Robert’s cave, found the bones of a human body, upon which a conjecture arose that they were the remains of Daniel Clarke, who it was presumed might have been murdered; and as Houseman was seen in the company of Clarke a short time before his disappearance, he was immediately apprehended on suspicion, when having lost his self-possession he imprudently exclaimed that those were not the bones of Clarke, for they were buried in a different place! and subsequently he stated the exact place where they were deposited, and which were found accordingly. Soon after Houseman was committed to the castle of York, it was discovered that Aram resided in the character of a respectable school-master at Lynn, in Norfolk, on which he was taken into custody, and conveyed to York castle, where at the following summer assizes they were tried; after Houseman had given his evidence, and all such collateral testimony had been received as could be adduced on such an occasion, Aram delivered the following ingenious defence.
“My Lord,
“I know not whether it is of right, or through some indulgence of your Lordship, that I am allowed the liberty at this bar, and at this time to attempt a defence, incapable and uninstructed as I am to speak. Since, while I see so many eyes upon me, so numerous and awful a concourse, fixed with attention, and filled with, I know not what expectations, I labour not with guilt, my Lord, but with perplexity. For having never seen a court but this, being wholly unacquainted with law, the customs of the bar, and all judicial proceedings, I fear I shall be so little capable of speaking with propriety in this place, that it exceeds my hope if I shall be able to speak at all.
“I have heard, my Lord, the indictment read; wherein I find myself charged with the highest crime, with an enormity I am altogether incapable of, a fact, on the commission of which there goes far more insensibility of heart, more profligacy of morals, than ever fell to my lot. And nothing possibly could have admitted a presumption of this nature, but a depravity not inferior to that imputed to me. However, as I stand indicted at your Lordship’s bar, and have heard what is called evidence adduced in support of such a charge, I very humbly solicit your Lordship’s patience, and beg the hearing of this respectable audience, while I, single and unskilful, destitute of friends, and unassisted by counsel, say something perhaps like argument in my defence. I shall consume but little of your Lordship’s time, what I have to say will be short, and this brevity probably will be the best part of it; however, it is offered with all possible regard, and the greatest submission to your Lordship’s consideration, and that of this honourable court. First, my Lord, the whole tenor of my conduct in life contradicts every particular of this indictment. Yet had I never said this, did not my present circumstances extort it from me, and seem to make it necessary. Permit me here, my Lord, to call upon malignity itself, so long and so cruelly busied in this prosecution, to charge upon me any immorality, of which prejudice was not the author. No, my Lord, I concerted no schemes of fraud; projected no violence; injured no man’s person or property; my days were honestly laborious; my nights intensely studious. And I humbly conceive my notice of this, especially at this time, will not be thought impertinent or unseasonable, but at least deserving some attention, because, my Lord, that any person, after a temperate use of life, a sense of thinking and acting regularly, and without one single deviation from sobriety, should plunge into the very depth of profligacy, precipitately and at once, is altogether improbable and unprecedented, and absolutely inconsistent with the course of things. Mankind is never corrupted at once, villany is always progressive, and declines from right, step after step, till every regard of probity is lost, and every sense of moral obligation totally perishes.
“Again, my Lord, a suspicion of this kind, which nothing but malevolence could entertain, and ignorance propagate, is violently opposed by my very situation at that time with respect to health: for but a little space before I had been confined to my bed, and suffered under a very long and severe disorder, and was not able for half a year together so much as to walk. The distemper left me indeed, yet slowly and in part, but so macerated, so enfeebled that I was reduced to crutches; and so far from being well about the time I am charged with this fact, that I never to this day perfectly recovered. Could then a person in this condition take any thing into his head so unlikely, so extravagant? I, past the vigour of my age, feeble and valetudinary, with no inducement to engage, no ability to accomplish, no weapon wherewith to perpetrate such a fact, without interest, without power, without motive, without means.
“Besides, it must needs occur to every one, that an action of this atrocious nature is never heard of, but, when its springs are laid open, it appears that it was to support some indolence, or supply some luxury; to satisfy some avarice, or oblige some malice; to prevent some real, or some imaginary want; yet I lay not under the influence of any one of these. Surely, my Lord, I may consistent with both truth and modesty affirm thus much; and none who have any veracity and knew me, will ever question this. In the second place, the disappearance of Clarke is suggested as an argument of his being dead; but the uncertainty of such an inference from that, and the fallibility of all conclusions of such a sort, from such a circumstance, are too obvious and too notorious to require instances; yet superseding many, permit me to procure a very recent one, and that afforded by this castle. In June 1757, William Thompson, for all the vigilance of this place in open daylight and double ironed, made his escape; and notwithstanding an immediate enquiry set on foot, the strictest search and all advertisement, was never heard of since. If then Thompson got off unseen through all these difficulties, how very easy was it for Clarke, when none of them opposed him? But what would be thought of a prosecution commenced against any one seen last with Thompson. Permit me next, my Lord, to observe a little upon the bones which have been discovered. It is said, which perhaps is saying very far, that these are the skeleton of a man. It is possible indeed it may: but is there any certain known criterion, which incontestably distinguishes the sex in human bones? Let it be considered, my Lord, whether the ascertaining of this point, ought not to precede any attempt to identify them. The place of their depositum too claims much more attention than is commonly bestowed upon it; for, of all places in the world, none could have mentioned any one, wherein there was greater certainty of finding human bones than a hermitage, except he should point out a church-yard; hermitages, in times past, being not only places of religious retirement, but of burial too. And it has scarce or never been heard of, but that every cell now known contains or contained the relicts of humanity, some mutilated and some entire. I do not inform, but give me leave to remind your Lordship, that here sat solitary sanctity, and here the hermit or the anchoress, hoped that repose for their bones, when dead, they here enjoyed when living. All the while, my Lord, I am sensible this is known to your Lordship, and many in this court, better than to me. But it seems necessary to my case that others, who have not at all perhaps adverted to things of this nature, and may have concern in my trial, should be made acquainted with it. Suffer me then, my Lord, to produce a few of many evidences, that these cells were used as repositories of the dead, and to enumerate a few in which human bones have been found as it happened in this question; lest to some, that accident might seem extraordinary, and consequently occasion prejudice.
1st. The bones, as was supposed, of the Saxon St. Dubritius were discovered buried in his cell at Guy’s Cliff near Warwick, as appears from the authority of Sir. W. Dugdale.
2d. The bones, thought to be those of the anchoress Rosia, were but lately discovered in a cell at Royston, entire, fair, and undecayed, though they must have lain interred for several centuries, as is proved by Dr. Stukely.
3d. But my own country, nay almost this neighbourhood, supplies another instance, for in Jan. 1747 were found by Mr. Stovin, accompanied by a rev. gentleman, the bones, in part, of some recluse, in the cell at Lindholm near Hatfield. They were believed to be those of William of Lindholm, a hermit, who had long made this cave his habitation.
4th. In Feb. 1744 part of Hoburn Abbey being pulled down, a large portion of a corpse appeared, even with the flesh on, which bore cutting with a knife; though it is certain this had lain above 200 years, and how much longer is doubtful, for this Abbey was founded in 1145, and dissolved in 1538 or 9.