Blood & Ivy
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37“It haunts me like a vision”: JHL, 22 April 1848.
37midnight prank of rolling cannonballs: Muzzey, “College Life Under President Kirkland,” 138.
5. A Bad Business
41long, vertiginous spiral staircase: The trapezoidal steps and spiderweb transom are still visible in the house today.
41his manservant, Patrick: TGB, 42.
41stopping by before the clock had chimed nine: TJS, 30.
41“I will be there at half past one o’clock”: TDM, 8.
42Beacon Hill Reservoir, opened its valves: Bradlee, History of the Introduction of Pure Water, 117.
42population had already more than doubled: Gibson, Population of the 100 Largest Cities, unpaginated. Boston’s population was 61,392 in the 1830 census and 136,881 in the 1850 census.
42“procuring elastic pipes”: CC, 12 July 1849.
42“a perpetual supply of pure water”: Bradlee, History of the Introduction of Pure Water, 108.
42wooden benches had been replaced: Barber, Boston Common, 158.
42throw out the scruffy boys bathing in the Frog Pond: Ibid., 159.
42“Some of the patients bathe six times a day”: Historic Americana Auction, Shaw letter dated 18 July 1849, in Lot 573, “Robert Gould Shaw Archive.”
43“stimulating diet is fuel to their disease”: George Parkman, Management of Lunatics, 18.
43gentlemen parted by the Merchant Bank on State Street: TGB, 42.
43tens of thousands of dollars at a time: Final Report of the Committee on the Erection of the New Jail, 38.
43the imposing exterior columns: Drake, Old Landmarks and Historic Personages, 94.
43“The devil you have!”: TGB, 104.
43a sizable fortune from his father: Records of Proceedings of the City Council of Boston, entry for 27 December 1909, 784–85.
44a proposed new bridge, he lobbied against: Salem Gazette, 13 January 1826.
44extending a wharf, he lobbied for it: BA, 23 February 1846.
44for 111 real estate transactions: Sullivan, The Disappearance of Dr. Parkman, 4.
44hired his own agent, Mr. Kingsley: TGB, 33.
44“I should think”: Ibid., 162.
44Merchant’s Bank was still an outpost: Drake, Old Landmarks and Historic Personages, 94.
44whipping post, a brutally stout wooden beam: Ibid., 93.
44inaugurated by the carpenter who built them: Winsor and Jewett, The Memorial History of Boston, 1:506.
44“SYMPATHY FOR MURDERERS”: BB, 23 November 1849.
44he’d sent a fellow to prison: BA, 24 August 1849.
44an Irishman who’d stolen: BH, 3 August 1849.
44$1,500 in cash, plus over $300 in checks: Weekly Messenger (Boston), 23 May 1849.
45Officer Clapp discovered: BT, 18 May 1849.
45as he reported to work in the morning: Weekly Messenger (Boston), 23 May 1849.
45“Never go to law”: BH, 20 December 1849.
45cart was loaded with pig iron: TGB, 55.
45Two horses could be expected to steadily: “Notes on Roads and Railways,” 180.
46hauler being named Marsh: TGB, 55.
46stopped for a moment to gawk: Ibid., 54.
46driver at least showed enough forbearance: TJS, 35.
46rolling their heavy castings: Ibid., 55.
46donated it for the new Medical College: Holmes, The Benefactors of the Medical School, 31.
46Parkman George, physician, house 8 Walnut: The Boston Directory (1849), 225.
47He’d suffered poor health in his own childhood: Holmes, The Benefactors of the Medical School, 17.
47Harvard at scarcely fifteen: Ibid., 19.
47the local rate for house calls: Boston Medical Association, Boston Medical Police, 17.
47surgeon for the Massachusetts militia: Holmes, The Benefactors of the Medical School, 21.
47offered some of his many homes as field hospitals: Ibid., 28–29.
47a riverside lot he’d sold to the city: Final Report of the Committee on the Erection of the New Jail, 38.
47the death of a prostitute, Pamela Percy: Salem Gazette, 17 April 1821.
47Jonathan Houghton: Haverhill Gazette, 21 January 1826.
47“I have no doubt but that the deceased died”: Masonic Mirror (Boston), 21 January 1826.
48in the doorway of the local corner grocer: TDM, 10.
48some thirty-two pounds of it: TGB, 57.
48cut off a six-pound portion: Ibid.
48“any time in the afternoon”: TTD, 10.
48“We cannot find fault with such weather”: TGB, 52.
48Might I leave this with you for five minutes?: W. E. Bigelow, The Boston Tragedy, 5. This very early account, published after Webster’s arrest, cites Holland recalling “five” minutes; later accounts of the trial show Holland recalling it as either “five” or “a few.”
49grocer finally peeked inside: TGB, 57.
6. A Gentleman Unknown
50thirteen years of working for George Parkman: TTD, 7.
50Kingsley had come by at three p.m.: TGB, 30.
50Word was sent a block over to Robert Gould Shaw: Ibid., 31
51Bowdoin Square, where the Reverend Francis Parkman: The Boston Directory (1849), 225.
51now in the railway shipping business: BB, 24 February 1848.
51served as city marshal: The Boston Almanac for the Year 1843, 31.
52their fears were immediate and blunt: TGB, 31.
52to the office of John C. Park, Esq.: Ibid., 43.
52he’d added four counterfeiters to his rolls: Emancipator & Republican (Boston), 29 November 1849.
52an assault case between two stage actors: Gill, Selections from Court Reports, 94.
52served side by side with Blake: BA, 31 October 1849.
52Impossible, the lawyer replied: TGB, 31.
52he wouldn’t be out for another fourteen months: BA, 24 August 1849.
53simple silver jug: BA, 18 August 1848.
53the dramatic collapse the summer before: BT, 26 June 1848.
53Tukey had also carried a printer’s apprentice: Daily Crescent (Baton Rouge), 21 March 1848.
54“a voice of cast-iron”: San Francisco Bulletin, 19 June 1863.
54dark and piercing eyes: Bungay, Crayon Sketches and Off-hand Takings, 102.
54profession it was rumored he’d worked: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Francis Tukey, 10. This can at best be called a rumor, as the publication was an anonymously authored (“By One Who Knows Him”) hatchet job published by the Boston Herald, which vehemently opposed Tukey.
54Madam Hufeland: BT, 21 November 1849. Hufeland advertised herself as “The Celebrated German Female Physician” through local ads (e.g. BH, 18 September 1848), most notably selling “Female Monthly Pills” as a “remover of menstrual obstructions,” while cautioning “married ladies against the use of these pills during pregnancy”—common code words in nineteenth-century advertisements to sell abortifacients.
54petitioned the city council to throw Tukey out: Springfield Republican, 9 May 1849.
54his house had had its linens burgled: BT, 25 July 1849.
55trains would be arriving by two p.m.: TGB, 47.
55improper ash disposal: BT, 7 May 1847.
55insufficient snow removal from sidewalks: BT, 28 November 1846.
55“DR. GEORGE PARKMAN”: BT, 24 November 1849. Though many accounts note the later ads, which included a physical description of Parkman and a reward, perusing that evening’s newspapers shows that this more minimal notice without a reward was what initially ran.
56a Journal reporter who had been loitering: TGB, 47.
56Charles Kingsley waited at Dr. Parkman’s mansion: Ibid., 33.
56He picked up the doctor’s trail on Bromfield: Ibid., 34.
56feather selling and shade painting: The Boston Directory (1849), 75.
56Paine & Newcomb’s Fruit and Refreshments: Ibid., 51.
57habitually stopped at Kin
gsley’s: TBH, 10.
57Half a dozen police officers: TJS, 26.
57descended into one damp cellar after another: TGB, 34.
57Grove Street Murder: BH, 30 October 1849.
57“Old fellow, are you following me?”: BB, 30 October 1849.
58the last unequivocal sighting: TGB, 57.
58Can you take the lettuce: Ibid., 34.
7. The Yellow Envelope
59the day constable roster was called: Edward Savage, A Chronological History, 376.
59Derastus Clapp . . . Lucian Drury: The Boston Directory (1849), 19.
59“the Police were not usually overstocked”: Savage, A Chronological History, 375.
59“Officers north of City Hall”: Ibid., 376.
60spreading fifty to sixty miles: TGB, 47.
60ban the pernicious modern practice: BT, 26 January 1850. This became known in Massachusetts (and in many other cities) as the “Sunday Train Bill,” and arguments over implementing or repealing the ban on Sunday travel persisted well into the twentieth century.
60“The general enquiry”: BB, 26 October 1849.
60houses and vacant lots, sweeping over the half-constructed: TGB, 34.
60the cold was creeping back in: Ibid., 94.
60“There comes one of our professors now”: Ibid., 106.
61“I never knew that Dr. Parkman had disappeared”: Ibid., 127.
62a crony from the local customhouse: TJS, 166.
62gravel spread over its planking: Bowen, Bowen’s Picture of Boston, 85.
62peered in through the window: TGB, 33.
62men took to searching around the docks: Boston Courier, 26 November 1849.
63rumor placed Dr. Parkman in Salem: Ibid.
63“Both had on green pants”: BB, 26 November 1849.
63All of 48 South Russell Street: The Boston Directory (1849), 278.
63reputed to be haunted: BH, 5 May 1848.
63last week he’d hosted a friend’s funeral: BA, 17 November 1849.
63the scene of an ax murder: Life of Michael Powers, 8.
64newly cleaned ax: Hampshire Gazette (Northampton MA), 14 March 1820.
64“large enough to pass his finger into”: Weekly Messenger (Boston), 13 April 1820.
64pitched face-first into the fire: Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, MA), 14 March 1820.
64“The most he could say”: Life of Michael Powers, 15.
64unearthed a sum of over $1,000: BB, 11 May 1848.
65another house reputed to be haunted: Vermont Phoenix, 1 September 1848.
65up and down Leverett Street: Awful Disclosures and Startling Developments, 8.
65“We want to look around this college”: TNY, 26. This entire exchange with Littlefield is drawn from this trial transcript.
66a fifteen-dollar French silver watch: BB, 27 November 1849.
66waxed twine for candlewicks: BT, 28 November 1849.
66a grubby yellow envelope: TJS, 122.
8. Some Aberration of Mind
67“The supposition of those who know him”: Boston Courier, 26 November 1849.
67engaged in subtle blackmail: Jackson, “Digging for Dirt.” Jackson notes that this was a specialty of William Joseph Snelling, a previous editor of the Boston Herald.
67successfully lobbied for new furnishings: BT, 27 November 1849.
68“subject to depression”: Frothingham, Boston Unitarianism, 162.
68breakdown for a substantial part of 1844: Sprague, Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit, 451.
68“conditions of the nervous system”: Francis Parkman, The Francis Parkman Reader, 10.
68He’d begged his friends to warn him: Farnham, A Life of Francis Parkman, 317.
68he’d visited insane asylums: Boston Commercial Gazette, 21 July 1814.
68A week after graduating from the Medical College: Portland Gazette (Maine), 2 July 1814; Columbian Centinel (Boston), 13 July 1814.
68“salutary exercise and employments”: George Parkman, Proposals for Establishing a Retreat, 9.
68the design of its beds: George Parkman, Management of Lunatics, 28.
68“a mile from Boston, on a gravelly eminence”: Ibid., 36.
69“Temperaments, features, humors, are transmitted”: “Evidences of Insanity,” Boston Medical Journal, 14 January 1835, 368.
69“Almost everybody is occasionally indifferent to life”: George Parkman, Remarks on Insanity (Boston, 1818), 3.
69“SPECIAL NOTICE!”: BT, 27 November 1849.
70as much as one of the city’s detectives earned: BH, 18 August 1849.
70I saw him at six o’clock: BH, 26 November 1849.
70“Henri Le Rennet”: Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe, 116.
70sixteen-year-old boy who vanished: Salem Register, 22 January 1849.
71“her friends feel much alarmed”: BT, 15 November 1848.
71Tukey once found a sixteen-year-old girl: Constitution (Middletown, CT), 10 February 1847.
71ticket masters at railroads were also the eyes: BH, 26 November 1849.
71a drunken carpenter recently found: BH, 26 September 1849.
71desperate friends even consulted mesmerists: BT, 15 September 1849. The missing man in question was one James G. Perkins; he was the subject of a number of local articles at the time.
72the deliveryman finally turned up: BH, 18 September 1849.
72the open case of Franklin Taylor: BT, 12 February 1850.
72stopped by the offices of a religious newspaper: BH, 26 November 1849.
73He’d been on the force for some twenty years: Boston Patriot, 30 October 1829.
73The only person with much enthusiasm: TGB, 37.
73Rumors had him begging: Macmillan, An Odd Kind of Fame, 96.
73“Show them everything”: TGB, 109.
73officers snickering at him: Ibid., 37.
73“Let us go into Dr. Webster’s apartments”: Ibid., 109.
74“We can’t believe”: Ibid., 154.
74“That’s where I keep my dangerous articles”: Ibid., 109.
74“What place is this?”: Ibid., 171.
75“If we search the college first”: Ibid., 154.
75improbable array of patent-office contraptions: BB, 26 November 1849.
75two seven-year stretches in prison: BT, 24 December 1849.
75machinery for brick manufacturing: BB, 26 November 1849.
75he’d be caught stealing again: BH, 23 April 1857. The thief, Daniel Lombard Jr., did in fact get seven years, and he reoffended almost immediately in 1857 by stealing $500 from a stationery shop. His interest in inventions appears genuine, though: someone by the same name in Boston patented a “rice hulling machine” in 1860 (BT, 25 October 1860).
76Clapp had worked for years as an auctioneer: Boston Daily Advertiser, 11 February 1820.
76tracking down auction room swindlers: Boston Patriot, 12 August 1826.
76“$100 REWARD”: TGB, 48.
76more unconfirmed leads: BC, 29 November 1849.
9. Thanksgiving by the Fire
81twelve thousand on Boston Common: CC, 20 July 1849.
81converting half the inmates: CC, 6 September 1849.
81fond as he was of staying up late, dancing: TGB, 115.
81a new deck of cards: Ibid., 124.
81acknowledgment of the new day: Trenton State Gazette, 25 March 1850.
81they’d stowed a load of soft coal: TGB, 112.
81“a cold-feeling kind of man”: Ibid., 129.
82not just on time but early: Ibid., 112.
82experiments the doctor didn’t want disturbed: Ibid.
82had a trusty utility knife: Ibid., 129.
82thin section of partitioning: TNY, 19 The Globe transcription specifies that the partition was wood.
82Come back!: TGB, 136.
83lay down on the cold brick floor: Ibid., 129.
83Only the professor’s legs were visible: Ibid., 112. Details of the remainder of this section come from the same source.
84
Do you know where Mr. Foster’s is: Ibid., 111.
84“Take that order, and get you a nice turkey”: TJS, 65. Trial transcripts vary about whether Littlefield went out for his turkey on Tuesday or Wednesday, and Littlefield’s own recollection changed on this point. However, all the transcripts note a long shopping trip with Mrs. Littlefield on Wednesday, and a number of them (including the Boston Herald transcript) peg the visit to Foster’s as being on Wednesday. Earlier sources, such as the Pittsfield Sun of 6 December 1849, also note this day.
84corner police watch box: Stark, Stark’s Antique Views, 347.
84sign announcing A. A. FOSTER & CO.: Bergen, Old Boston in Early Photographs, 95.
84occupied by the Millerite: Drake, Old Landmarks and Historic Personages, 367.
84farce titled The Irish Secretary: BA, 27 November 1849.
84Harvard students there: Rantoul, Report of the Harvard Class of 1853, 213.
84seventy-five-cent box seats: BB, 26 November 1849. There were cheap seats there, too—just twelve and a half cents.
84lard, pork, butter, and turkey: Boston Traveler, 9 February 1858.
84Pick whichever turkey you like: TJS, 65.
84order for a bushel of sweet potatoes: TGB, 134.
85made the run out to Cambridge hundreds: Ibid., 147.
85I want a piece about as big as your head: Ibid., 114.
85felt a curious warmth: Ibid., 112.
85ran into the chemistry lecture hall: Ibid., 113.
86muddy tidal flats: W. E. Bigelow, The Boston Tragedy, 8.
86double windows to the lab: TJS, 66.
86Littlefield had never broken into: TTD, 28.
86pitch pine kindling he’d brought in on Friday: TGB, 113.
86furnace was out but still radiated heat: Ibid., 130.
86a broom from the corner of the coal pen: TBJ, 21.
86one was empty, the other nearly so: TGB, 113.
86up the back stairs to the lecture hall: Ibid., 113.
86hard pine steps: Awful Disclosures and Startling Developments, 10.
87days since he’d washed any glassware: TDM, 22.
87perhaps fifteen minutes or more: TBJ, 22.
87probing the frigid and murky water: TGB, 47.
10. The Final Reward
88Dr. Webster had returned unexpectedly: TGB, 253.