Irvin’ recently acted here in New York in a play founded on the scholar-assassin, Eugene Aram; Bulwer has made a fine novel on him; Hood has written a splendid poem about him; and it has been generally supposed that his case stood alone in the history of crime. But it don’t.
There once lived right here in New York for several years that man who in learnin’ was Eugene Adam’s equal, if not his superior, and who committed not one crime but several, for the sake of learnin’ and gettin’ a chance to show his learnin’ and by it to benefit his fellow men. And, like Eugene Aram, this man died on the gallows, notwithstandin’ his learnin’.
This American Eugene Aram in New York was called various names at various periods of his strange career. While in this city he called himself William Howard–”Professor” Howard–and brought with him a “student” by the name of Charles Thompson. He had rooms in Delancey street, lived very plainly and worked very hard. He wrote five or six hours every day on a treatise which he called by the title of “The Universal Method in the Formation of Language.” The idea of this work was to show that there are certain principles which apply to all languages under heaven, and that if you only acquired those principles, why you could easily understand, write and speak all languages, Greek and Sanskrit as easily as French or Dutch.
This was a big thing if true, and Professor Howard certainly seem to think it was true; for he set to work to prove it, and showed a most wonderful amount of knowledge in general and about languages in particular.
When not writin’ about languages he was givin’ lessons in ‘em, and it was by this teachin’ that he supported himself and his companion, Thompson, who was very unlike his room-mate, never studyin’ or writin’, but lookin’ mysterious and drinking beer–two very easy things to do, if someone pays your bills.
Among the professor’s pupils was a young lady in Brooklyn, at whose house he gave two lessons a week. This lady took a great fancy to him, and probably would have made a fool of herself with him, had not her parents taken decided measures, and had they not, among other things, found out that this Howard, as he called himself, had a wife or mistress livin’.
After which interestin’ discovery the accomplished Professor Howard and his companion vanished from New York.
This man’s whole life was a series of mysterious appearances and disappearances, till he got caught and caged at last. Nobody ever seemed to know anythin’ about his early history, only that he was born in Canada.
When about sixteen years of age he suddenly turned up as an applicant for a lawyer’s assistant and got the place. The lawyer to whom he became clerk had a large and fine library, not only of law books, but science and general readin’, and by handlin’ the books in this library the young chap, whose real original family name was Ruloff, conceived the idea of devotin’ himself to learnin’, and got mad on this notion, got downright crazy to do somethin’, anythin’, in the way of book learnin’. He always hated handwork, scorned manual labor and dressed elegantly, though plainly, and some people said he really worked with his head only to save himself from havin’ to work with his hands. But from all I have been able to find out, this was not so. Bad as he turned out to be, he had a real, wild love for learnin’ for its own sake, and there can be no reasonable doubt that he was actuated by a sincere desire to benefit the public by his learnin’, according to his own notions.
His industry was wonderful, somethin’ gigantic. He was known to sit up all night studyin’ and readin’, sometimes two and even three nights “hand runnin’.”
None are all evil, and certainly this Ruloff must be credited with education, industry and a sincere desire to, in the long run, benefit his fellow-men by his discoveries in the principles of language. But, outside of these points, he was a sort of devil incarnate.
He got a knowledge of legal quibbles while with the lawyer, which served him admirably in his scrapes later on; then he studied chemistry a bit; and kept the pot boilin’ by clerkin’ in a country store for a year; but no matter what else he was doin’, or tryin’ to do, he was meditatin’ on his good idea of a universal method in language and doin’ his best to develop it into shape.
After a while he needed more books for his studies than he could afford to buy, so he tried unlawful means to get ‘em, got found out and was compelled to leave Canada in disgrace. He drifted into New York State, and then, after mysteriously disappearin’ a while, turned up as a driver on the Erie Canal. But even in this lowly station his education told, and in a little while he left canalin’ and settled down near Ithaca, in this state, as a school teacher.
Men never liked Ruloff much, never took much stock in him somehow, but he had “luck” with women, and while teachin’ school here, he “magnetized” the handsomest girl in the whole country round, a rich Dutch farmer’s daughter, named Harriet Schultz, and although her folks raised Cain, married the girl.
Then availin’ himself of the chemistry he had picked up, he started a drug store and did pretty well, and for a while he seemed to have a sort of animal fondness for his wife and her little baby; but he soon tired of her and began to regard his family as an obstacle to his studies. This bein’ the case, he at once, in his remorseless, devilish way, removed this obstacle from his path.
One night he locked up the little house in which he lived at an early hour, and apparently retired with his wife and child to bed. But his wife and child were never seen alive again.
No one ever knew, no one knows to this day, exactly how they perished–but they undoubtedly perished that night. Ruloff, as he was known then, called at a neighbor’s house the night after, and sayin’ that his wife had gone with her baby, to visit her uncle, borrowed a horse and wagon to take away a big chest, which his wife had told him to send on to her uncle’s after her. He came back after a few hours with the horse and wagon, but without the chest. It is probable that in that chest the human devil put the remains of his murdered wife and child, carried ‘em to Cayuga Lake, near Ithaca, where he then lived, and dropped the chest into the water. From certain hints he dropped afterward this seems probable, but he was such a liar that even that is not certain. All that is certain is that his wife and child were never seen alive again, and that their dead bodies were never found, either.
This last fact prevented hearing from bein’ hung for their murder, but he was strongly suspected of it. He was finally tried for the abduction of his wife, and bein’ found guilty, was sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor. But even in prison, in the intervals of toil, he studied hard at his languages and did what writin’ he could.
And durin’ his prison life this strange and awful bein’ seems to have, for the only time in his life, learned to love. Though even in this case this very love was a sin, for he fell in love with the pretty wife of a jailor and seduced her, and not only so, but irresistibly fascinated the only son of this woman. The mother later on left her husband and became Ruloff’s mistress, while the son became his accomplice in crime.
It was this infatuated son of an infatuated mother–whose real name was Jarvis–who figured in New York durin’ the sojourn in Delancey street, as Charles Thompson, playin’ the part of “student” and assistant to Ruloff’s “Professor Howard”.
Through the aid of the infatuated Jarvis family, mother and son, Ruloff managed to escape from prison and fled to Pennsylvania. There he utterly disappeared for a space again, and then turned up as another “professor” under another name. Under this new name he also came very near gettin’ a regular professorship in a college.
His next appearance was that of a burglar. He broke into a jeweler’s store and stole over five hundred dollars’ worth of jewelry; not this time to get funds to pursue his studies with, but to get money to supply his mistress’s, the jailer’s wife, necessities with. This was the only time in his life he ever did an unselfish action, and even this was a crime.
He was a first-class criminal, as well as a first-class scholar, and had plenty of quickness and nerve, as well as learnin’, as the incidents connected with this jewelry robbery proved.
Havin’ robbed the jewelry store he rushed off with the stolen stuff in his pocket, and meetin’ a man with a horse and wagon goin’ along the country road, he got a lift and rode along. But ere long there came a lot of men, who stopped the man with the horse and wagon and arrested him for stealin’ the vehicle and horse, as he had really done.
Ruloff was, of course, arrested, too, as bein’ concerned in the stealin’ of the horse and wagon, but he satisfactorily proved his innocence of this crime, and was just goin’ on, a free man, when the hue and cry came along about this jewelry robbery, and Ruloff was once more arrested and searched, and the stolen goods were found on his person.
But with the coolest possible assurance, with colossal cheek, he swore he knew nothin’ about this jewelry thus found on him. It had been handed him, he said, by the man who had stolen the horse and wagon, with a request to keep for him till they got to the end of their ride together. It was natural enough that a man who was a thief and had taken a horse and wagon should also steal jewelry. It was also natural that either to prevent suspicion from himself or to cast it on somebody else, the original thief should have handed the stolen goods to somebody else to keep for him until he was out of danger of bein’ caught. So Ruloff’s word was believed. He was let go and the man who stole the horse and wagon was also punished for Ruloff’s stealing the jewelry beside. Certainly even a regular New York or London thief couldn’t have played a neater trick than this.
After this piece of shrewdness and luck, Ruloff again “disappeared” and then again “turned up” under the name of Professor Leurio, in northern New York; his tool, young Jarvis, now callin’ himself Curtis, and pretending to be a commercial traveler.
About this time the great chance of Ruloff’s life, as he thought, opened to him.
A lot of learned men and a lot of cranks, all with a hobby about languages, callin’ ‘emselves by the big name of the American Philological Convention, met at Poughkeepsie, and “Professor Leurio” made haste to read his great work to the convention. He had toiled for years, day and night, at this book. He had committed terrible crimes for it, he had lost his soul for it, and yet when he read it, it didn’t make the hit he expected, it didn’t pay even the interest on what it had cost him, it fell flat on the members of the convention. Maybe they were jealous of the learnin’ it showed, maybe they hadn’t learnin’ enough ‘emselves to appreciate it; any way it didn’t make any impression, and he didn’t get the big money he wanted for the book, he only got laughed at instead. It was a fearful blow. But it was just such a blow as always comes to those who deserve it, and who have defied their God and shirked their duty for a hobby, no matter what.
This wonderfully smart, hardworkin’ man, this Ruloff, alias Professor Howard, alias Professor Leurio, had worked, schemed, sinned, stolen, murdered, suffered and made others suffer, only to get snubbed at last. This retribution would almost have been punishment enough, it was so bitter; but there was more to come.
For Roloff would not submit to snubbin’. He determined to try again and try harder than ever. He didn’t know what repentance or remorse meant, so he began his career of crime again.
To get money to pursue his studies he planned a burglary of a store at Binghamton, in which crime he was assisted by his tool Jarvis and a third rogue called Dexter. In this burglary a man named Mellick was killed by Ruloff while defendin’ the property of his employers, and after Jarvis and Dexter had ‘emselves been slain. Ruloff was caught, tried for the murder of Mellick and sentenced to be hung.
He pleaded his own cause, spoke well, argued well, but the facts were against him and he had to swing.
His peculiar case and wonderful learnin’ and abilities attracted great public attention, and an effort was made to prove him really insane and therefore not really responsible.
But here the man’s vanity of learnin’ ruined him, for when the doctors appointed by Governor Hoffman examined him about his sanity, instead of tryin’ to play off crazy, as he might have done, he got his vanity up at bein’ taken for crazy and showed off just how smart he was.
So the doctors reported he was sane, and he got hung.
He never for one moment showed any sign of remorse, didn’t seem to even know what conscience was, ate heartily, slept well and studied and wrote at his book on languages to the very last moment; then he died, with no more signs of feelin’ than a mannequin.
He was a wonderful man, wonderfully wise, wonderfully wicked. The American Eugene Aram was far ahead in those points of his English original. But what an awful, abominable fool he was after all.
[Editor’s notes: The source for this column was a pamphlet, Edward Crapsey (1871). The man of two lives! Being an authentic history of Edward Howard Rulloff, philologist and murderer. American News Company.
Ruloff’s final crime, capture, trial and execution took place in 1870-71. His theories on language were rejected as crackpot, asserting a conscious design intent, contrary to natural cultural isolation and assimilation.
The crime, capture, and prosecution, and medical afterlife of Ruloff is the subject of a recent book by Kate Winslow Dawson, All That Is Wicked: A Gilded-Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind . Ruloff’s head was separated from his body (to the great disappointment of three different gangs of body-snatchers!) and his brain preserved for study at Cornell University.
