Aram (Eugene, executed for the murder of Daniel Clark. The story of Eugene Aram forms the subject of one of Bulwer's novels, and of a poem by Thomas Hood), 1704-1759. "No," on being asked upon the scaffold if he had anything to say.
While acting as an assistant to his father, who was a gardener, he studied mathematics and gave some attention to the languages. On marrying, he became a schoolmaster, and prosecuted his studies with such diligence and success as to obtain a good knowledge of the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, Welsh and Irish languages. In 1759 he was tried for the murder of Daniel Clark, a shoemaker of Knaresborough, and found guilty. At the trial he made an elaborate and able defence, but after his condemnation he confessed his guilt. On the night before his execution he made an attempt to commit suicide, by opening the veins of his arms; but he was discovered before he had bled to death, and the sentence of the law was carried into effect.—Lippincott.
paper containing aram's reasons for attempting suicide, found on the table in his cell.
"What am I better than my fathers? To die is natural and necessary. Perfectly sensible of this, I fear no more to die than I did to be born. But the manner of it is something which should, in my opinion, be decent and manly. I think I have regarded both these points. Certainly nobody has a better right to dispose of a man's life than himself; and he, not others, should determine how. As for any indignities offered to my body, or silly reflections on my faith and morals, they are (as they always were) things indifferent to me. I think, though contrary to the common way of thinking, I wrong no man by this, and hope it is not offensive to that Eternal Being that formed me and the world; and as by this I injure no man, no man can be reasonably offended. I solicitously recommend myself to the Eternal and Almighty Being, the God of Nature, if I have done amiss. But perhaps I have not; and I hope this thing will never be imputed to me. Though I am now stained by malevolence, and suffer by prejudice, I hope to rise fair and unblemished. My life was not polluted, my morals irreproachable, and my opinions orthodox.
"I slept soundly till three o'clock, awaked, and then writ these lines:
"Come pleasing rest, eternal slumber fall,Seal mine, that once must seal the eyes of all;Calm and compos'd my soul her journey takes,No guilt that troubles, and no heart that aches:Adieu! thou sun, all bright like her arise;Adieu! fair friends, and all that's good and wise."
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