by Paul Collins
TJS Stone, Report of the Trial of Prof. John W. Webster
TNY Trial of Professor John W. Webster (New York Daily Globe / Stringer & Townsend transcript)
TTD The Twelve Days’ Trial of John W. Webster (published in London)
*As Webster’s notes to his defense counsel are variously inconsistently numbered and unnumbered, for convenience I’ve cited the scan numbers assigned to the online copy at mdhistory.net (goo.gl/V7ogji).
Prologue
xv“Dickenized”: Longfellow, letter to Charles Sumner, 8 December 1867, Letters 5:191.
xvstreets swept for his arrival: New York Tribune, 3 December 1867.
xveight thousand tickets: Dickens, Letters of Charles Dickens, 11:492ff.
xv“our men sit outside the room door”: Ibid., letter to Mary Dickens, 21 November 1867, 11:480.
xv“The city has increased enormously”: Ibid.
xv“So many years”: Longfellow, Works. 20 November 1867 journal entry, 14:100.
xvihiked at least seven miles: Dickens, letter to Georgina Hogarth, 26 November 1867, Letters 11:489.
xviLittle Nell Cigars and Pickwick Snuff: New-York Tribune, 3 December 1867.
xvi“Cambridge is exactly as I left it”: Dickens, letter to John Foster, 22 November 1867, Letters 11:485.
xvi“you couldn’t fire a revolver”: Quoted in Howells, “The White Mr. Longfellow,” 328.
xvi“Boston audiences are proverbially cold”: Longfellow, letter to Charles Sumner, 8 December 1867, Letters 5:191.
xvi“laughed as if he might crumble to pieces”: Fields, “Glimpses of Emerson,” 459.
xvi“I thought the roof would go off”: New-York Tribune, 3 December 1867.
xvi“The manager,” he reported: Dickens, letter to John Foster, 5 January 1868, Letters 12:5.
xvi“I have tried allopathy”: Ibid.
xvii“all the spirits ever heard of”: Dickens, letter to Charles Fletcher, 24 February 1868, Letters 12:57.
xviiOliver Wendell Holmes Sr. as his visitor: Payne, Dickens Days in Boston, 210.
xviithe job of a physician, Dr. Holmes would muse: Howells, “The White Mr. Longfellow,” 330.
xviithey made their way through the snow: Dickens, letter to Wilkie Collins, 12 February 1868, Letters 12:9.
1. The Way into Harvard
3“ICE! ICE! ICE!”: CC, 12 July 1849.
3one of the hottest weeks of the year: CC, 12 July 1849.
3early Monday morning: Harvard University, Catalogue, 40.
3tumblers of lemonade: Hill, Harvard College, 90.
4“Young men, some standing, others sitting”: Quoted in Bentinck-Smith, The Harvard Book, 168.
4John Quincy Adams: Rantoul, Report of the Harvard Class of 1853, 15.
4Moses Henry Day: Ibid., 77.
4William Dorsheimer: Ibid., 78.
4Nathan Henry Chamberlain: Ibid., 56.
4Samuel Shaw: Ibid., 236.
4Albert Browne: Ibid., 46.
4John Daves: Ibid., 74.
4Translate those into Latin: Quoted in Bentinck-Smith, The Harvard Book, 169.
5he very nearly failed to get in: College Courant (New Haven, CT), 14 January 1871.
5“The average number of people that pass”: Higginson, Contemporaries, 174. The brother of Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., John emerges from Higginson’s account as the very model of a Cambridge eccentric: a man whose background, education, and holdings were both impeccable and in utter neglect. He was Harvard ’32 and Harvard Law ’39 but had no interest in practicing law or indeed in taking any job at all. Instead, he lived with his mother and played whist with the poet James Russell Lowell. His most notable expenditures were the coins he left on his window seat, which he handed out to passing children and tramps.
6Cambridge Furniture & Carpet Ware Rooms: Ford, The Cambridge Directory and Almanac for 1850, 168.
6students had to provide their own: Hale, A New England Boyhood, 172.
6“large, with pleasant, high windows”: Alpha, “My Room,” 349.
6“to form groups at the corners of streets”: “Progress of Cholera,” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 382.
7“Death,” it announced: CC, 6 September 1849.
7ten-cent horse-omnibus ride: CC, 12 July 1849.
7poured sulfuric acid: Vaille and Clark, The Harvard Book, 2:142.
7arrived in their nightgowns: Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 312.
7chapel was unheated: Smith, “Recollections by the Author of ‘America,’” 162.
7Absence, perversely, only cost two points: Ibid.
8“cooked in a dirty copper boiler”: Batchelder, “The History of ‘Commons’ at Harvard—II,” 732.
8chairs in the dining hall were bolted: Hale, A New England Boyhood, 197.
8smashed in an 1818 student fracas: Morison, Life and Letters of Harrison Otis Gray, 1:254.
8only one-sixth of the students: Harvard University, Twenty-fourth Annual Report, 9.
8Harvard’s freshman curriculum: Ibid., 30.
8Schmitz’s A History of Rome: Ibid., 17.
8“Nuper divitiae avaritiam”: Livy, Livy: Selections, 2.
9“the fifteen smartest Fellows”: Emerson, letter to William Emerson, 14 June 1818, Letters, 1:85.
9the Navy Club: Vaille and Clark, The Harvard Book, 2:357.
9regattas held on the Charles River: “Notes on Our Naval History,” 247.
9That fall saw four boats: Ibid., 251.
9decked in duck pants: Ibid., 250.
9“Upon these floats”: CC, 30 May 1868.
9Society to Discourage the Perpetration: Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 183.
9production of battling gentleman nitwits: Garrison, An Illustrated History of Hasty Pudding Theatricals, 40.
10“Let me get at him”: Morton, “Slasher and Crasher,” 24.
10“an annual frolic”: William Sturgis Bigelow, A Memoir of Henry Jacob Bigelow, 9.
10“Saw his leg off!”: Thoreau, Letter from Augustus Peabody to HDT, 30 May 1836, Correspondence, 5.
10After two college servants were overcome: Hale, A New England Boyhood, 184.
2. On Pins and Crowbars
11snowed out for days: Gallenga, Episodes of My Second Life, 152.
11nearby was a fresh wreck: BT, 3 November 1849.
11bounded up the building’s front stairs: William Sturgis Bigelow, A Memoir of Henry Jacob Bigelow, 213.
11spacious three-story brick building: BA, 6 November 1846. The layout of the building is noted in this account of its opening; it being made of brick is noted in various later accounts, including Moses King, King’s Handbook of Boston (Cambridge, MA: Moses King / Harvard College, 1881), 127.
12Paul Revere had both a grandson and a great-grandson: Harvard University, Catalogue, 20. The descendants were Edward H. Robbins Revere and John Philips Reynolds.
12“Gentlemen of the Medical Class”: Henry Jacob Bigelow, An Introductory Lecture, 3.
12Three of the school’s seven professors: Harvard University, Catalogue, 61. Specifically, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and John B. S. Jackson in 1847 and Henry Jacob Bigelow in 1849. Their close colleague Jeffries Wyman, though technically not on the Medical College faculty, was also hired by Harvard in 1847.
13His lungs had suffered from youthful overindulging: William Sturgis Bigelow, A Memoir of Henry Jacob Bigelow, 15.
13“We still linger upon the lower steps”: Henry Jacob Bigelow, An Introductory Lecture, 4.
13students also included a number of MDs: Harvard University, Catalogue, 17.
13“Pain, but recently an object of insuperable terror”: Henry Jacob Bigelow, An Introductory Lecture, 13.
14Roxanna Cook case: Emancipator & Republican (Boston), 15 December 1848.
14“Suppose that a severe blow”: Henry Jacob Bigelow, An Introductory Lecture, 14
15“tumors, out-growths, or diseased enlargements”: Advertisement for Henry J. Bigelow, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 27 April 1853, n.p.
<
br /> 15It proved to be a needle: CC, 6 September 1849.
15“A good sized crowbar”: Henry Jacob Bigelow, An Introductory Lecture, 15.
15clattering down eighty feet away: Vermont Mercury, quoted in Macmillan, An Odd Kind of Fame, 36.
15“about half a teacupful of the brain”: Henry Jacob Bigelow, “Dr. Harlow’s Case of Recovery,” 16.
15“in a day or two”: Ibid., 17.
16“inseparable companion”: Harlow, “Recovery from the Passage,” 277.
16“no longer Gage”: Ibid.
16“WONDERFUL ACCIDENT”: quoted in Macmillan, An Odd Kind of Fame, 36.
16“the greasy feel and look of the iron”: Henry Jacob Bigelow, “Dr. Harlow’s Case of Recovery,” 15.
16a talking mynah bird in his consulting room: William Sturgis Bigelow, A Memoir of Henry Jacob Bigelow, 169.
16Bigelow had nearly been kicked out of Harvard: Ibid., 11.
16turned rather childish and profane: Harlow, “Recovery from the Passage,” 279.
17life mask: Macmillan, An Odd Kind of Fame, 42.
17“a common skull”: Henry Jacob Bigelow, “Dr. Harlow’s Case of Recovery,” 21.
17“Remarkable Stalagmite”: Macmillan, An Odd Kind of Fame, 45
17over the Smith & Clark pharmacy: Mumford, The Story of the Boston Society, 5.
17the “Med. Fac.”: “The First School at Newtowne,” 194.
18even he could be prevailed upon to contribute: “Suspected Murder of George Parkman, M.D.,” 367.
18“The iron entered there and passed through my head”: Harlow, “Recovery from the Passage,” 275.
18“The leading feature of this case is its improbability”: Henry Jacob Bigelow, “Dr. Harlow’s Case of Recovery,” 19.
18“as if it had been a pie-crust”: William Sturgis Bigelow, A Memoir of Henry Jacob Bigelow, 120.
18“fell through the decks”: Jackson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Anatomical Museum, 16.
19“very dense and as firm as parchment”: Ibid.
19an essay on the disordered mind of Jonathan Swift: “Suspected Murder of George Parkman, M.D.,” 367.
19conjoined twins from his doctoring days: Jackson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Anatomical Museum, 297.
3. The Skeleton Box
20the inevitable alkali burns and acid splashes: TGB, 258.
20a long table had been shoved up against a corner window: TDM, 24. The illustration in the Boston Daily Mail trial transcript shows some minor additional detail beyond the floor plans provided in the Bemis account.
20just three professors and a six-week term: Warren et al., Report of the Overseers, 4–5. The respective developments noted are: the stethoscope (1816), the AMA (1847), the Lancet (1823), ether (1846), Semmelweis on hand washing and “puerperal fever” (1847), and the graduation of Elizabeth Blackwell (1849).
21a tightly wound private staircase: TDM, 24.
21Monday, the one weekday when he did not: TGB, 21.
21Webster had cut his hand: TJS, 86.
21That vault, he absently asked: TJS, 60.
21“We took up the brick floor”: TGB, 100.
22an outing to scout a new cemetery location: BB, 23 November 1849.
22“It is not alone when the stench becomes”: CC, 4 October 1849.
22“It is a good time now”: TGB, 101.
23Webster’s lab was tucked: TGB, frontispiece. See also the floor plans accompanying the Bemis volume.
23niece up from Connecticut: TJS, 81.
23anatomical mannequins, imported: Sappol, A Traffic of Dead Bodies, 192.
23While in other cities, corpses could be: Ibid., 117.
23sailors were especially prized: Ibid., 116.
23Harvard had some legal right: Small, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 65.
23in bulk on the Manhattan black market: Sappol, A Traffic of Dead Bodies, 115.
23five-dollar fee for access: Harvard University, Catalogue, 61.
24author being a recent dropout: Sappol, A Traffic of Dead Bodies, 216.
24“What possible harm can it do”: Robinson, Marietta, 6.
24“visiting relatives in the city”: Carroll, The Manchester Tragedy, 9.
24“Her body was carried to Boston”: New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette, 15 June 1848.
24“nature was not sparing in its ornaments”: Carroll, The Manchester Tragedy, 7.
25baggage marked GLASS: Ibid., 12.
25“a young girl, 20 years old, perfectly fresh”: Ibid., 18.
25“If I send a man with ten dollars”: Ibid., 19.
25“Never in my practice have I seen anything like this puncture”: Ibid., 20.
25“Bury it”: Ibid., 20.
26“No exertions are spared”: Harvard University, Catalogue, 61.
26“He said I should feel very badly indeed”: Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years, 101.
26You could show the absorption of gases: Webster, A Manual of Chemistry, 119.
26you could separate out the serum: Ibid., 493.
26cook down that serum into pink crystals: Jones, On Animal Chemistry, 29.
27Webster, as a hired expert: New Hampshire Sentinel, 30 September 1847. The example noted here is the poisoning trial of Stephen Harris Jr., though Webster testified in a number of others as well.
27“as much as a pint”: TGB, 101.
27The shelf by the stairs: TDM, 24.
27“Get it full, if you can”: TGB, 101.
27Littlefield gently set the jar down: Ibid., 101.
27“a gentleman’s hands are clean”: Holmes, Puerperal Fever as a Private Pestilence, 60.
27a tape measure in his pocket to measure tree trunks: Holmes, “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table,” 361. Though this account is rendered in Holmes’s narrative guise of the “Autocrat,” decades later he would describe the same activity in his 1887 travelogue Our Hundred Days in Europe.
28“Professor Bones”: Tilton, The Amiable Aristocrat, 197.
28“My subject this afternoon”: Ibid., 196.
28“Here, take the bone!”: Kennedy, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 121.
28skeleton boxes maintained for checkout: Ibid., 122.
28John Hathaway worked in the apothecary shop: “Trial for Malpractice,” 16. Hathaway’s name is inconsistently and often incorrectly identified in various trial transcripts; he is John Eaton Hathaway, Harvard Medical Class of 1852. Cf. D. Hamilton Hurd, compiler, History of Worcester County, Massachusetts (Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis, 1889) 2:1568.
29auditing all of Webster and Holmes’s lectures: TGB, 140.
29“I think we shall bleed someone tomorrow morning”: TGB, 101.
4. The Great World Goes Clanging On
30back to his Cambridge home by two: TGB, 253.
30finishing The Seaside and the Fireside: JHL, 19 November 1849.
30“the place we have selected for ourselves”: JHL, 22 November 1849.
31“Harvard Hill”: Dearborn, Guide Through Mount Auburn, 4.
31Lot 580 on Indian Ridge Path: King, Mount Auburn Cemetery, 100.
31“without one feeling of dread”: Longfellow, letter to George Washington Greene, 31 May 1837, The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1:27.
31“The foliage all gone”: JHL, 22 November 1849.
31“Take them, O Grave!”: Longfellow, The Seaside and the Fireside, 50.
31“again the great world goes clanging on”: JHL, 6 August 1849.
32Ground had been broken three weeks earlier: CC, 1 November 1849.
32just north of Harvard Yard: Lovet, “The Harvard Branch Railroad,” 31.
32railway’s board still hadn’t even voted: Ibid., 33.
32“He says,” Longfellow recalled: JHL, 27 October 1849.
32a $1,000 check in the mail: Ibid., 28 November 1849.
2gift from his father-in-law: Charles Calhoun, Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life, 167.
33were Harvard men themselves: Story, The Forging of an Aristocracy, 81, 84.
33A t
ypical Harvard professor’s net worth: Ibid., 84.
33language instructors had earned a stingy $500: Doyle, “Poets Can Be Professors,” 89.
33“four-in-hand of outlandish animals”: Longfellow, letter to Stephen Longfellow, 29 October 1837, The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1:46.
33firing of a German instructor for abolitionism: Johnson, Professor Longfellow of Harvard, 9.
33piled many of their former classes into Longfellow’s: Ibid., 38.
33“a cloud of mystery in his life”: Quoted in La Piana, Dante’s American Pilgrimage, 46.
33real name was Bartolo: Gallenga, Episodes of My Second Life, 62.
34“given up to pawnbrokers, gin-shops”: Ibid.
34“I never drink more than is good for me”: Ibid., 65.
34“like a horse that has once fallen on its knees”: Ibid., 102.
34president of the Boston chapter of the Italian Charitable: BA, 19 July 1842.
34“Mr. Everett cold!”: Gallenga, Episodes of My Second Life, 105.
34“not to be trifled with”: Doyle, “Poets Can Be Professors,” 89.
35“Poor Bachi!”: La Piana, Dante’s American Pilgrimage, 48.
35piano and violin soiree: JHL, 30 October 1849.
35idly wishing that he’d taken up music: Ibid., 10 March 1862.
35treatise on the science of sound: Peirce, An Elementary Treatise on Sound.
35played French horn and attacked the drums: Thorndike, “Henry J. Bigelow,” 233.
35local dancing master led his seven-thirty class: CC, 8 November 1849.
35the town still had no streetlamps: CC, 25 October 1849.
36a stone perron column: JHL, 22 April 1848.
36the attire of a thirteenth-century feudal lord: Homer, Nahant, and Other Places, 48.
36His wife’s grandfather had risen: Wilson, The Aristocracy of Boston, 28.
36“a chateau as Monte-Christo might have lavished”: Hartford Daily Courant, 4 February 1871.
36animal rugs, a fountain of cologne: Kirker and van Zanten, “Jean Lemoulnier in Boston,” 207.
36“young cherubs tumbling about”: Woolson, Browsing Among Books, 228.
36Deacon had bought the furnishings: Kirker and van Zanten, “Jean Lemoulnier in Boston,” 205.
37Gobelin tapestries on the landing: Woolson, Browsing Among Books, 220.