Eugene Aram

Eugene Aram (1704 – 16 August 1759) was an English philologist, but also infamous as the murderer celebrated by Thomas Hood in his ballad, The Dream of Eugene Aram, and by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his 1832 novel Eugene Aram.

Aram was born of humble parents at Ramsgill, Yorkshire. He worked in a counting house in London as a clerk, then returned to Yorkshire to set up a school. Whilst still young, he married and settled as a schoolmaster at Netherdale, and during the years he spent there, he taught himself Latin, Hebrew, and Greek.

In 1734 he removed to Knaresborough, where he remained as schoolmaster till 1744. 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, leaving his wife behind. In London he found employment as an usher in a school at Piccadilly and learned Chaldee and Arabic.

For several years he travelled through parts of England, acting as usher in a number of schools, and settled eventually at the Grammar School at King's Lynn, in Norfolk. During his travels he had amassed considerable materials for a work he had projected on etymology, entitled A Comparative Lexicon of the English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Celtic Languages. He was undoubtedly a pioneer in the field of philology, who realised, 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.

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