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The Defence of Eugene Aram, for the murder of Daniel Clarke.

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