by Paul Collins
134“There’s something more in there”: TDM, 30.
135roughly turned it onto its side: TJS, 59.
135a jackknife came clattering out: TNY, 7.
135a human torso: TGB, 172.
135handle was decorated with hunting figures: BT, 3 December 1849.
135newly cleaned and oiled: TGB, 50.
135slid the knife into his pocket: TJS, 98.
135walking stick to scrape the bark: Ibid., 99.
135twine around the back: TGB, 39.
135bared ribs were poking into it: Ibid.
135showed some medical knowledge: Ibid., 68.
136Boston Herald stood at the laboratory window: BH, 3 December 1849.
136one could find the printing offices: The Boston Directory (1849), 40.
136was not the most popular: BH, 15 December 1849. The Herald commissioned independent circulation audits and ran the results on December 12, 13, and 15, 1849. They showed the following circulations among the penny papers:
Herald 11,253
Boston Times 7,794
Bee 5,628
Mail 3,500
136“Our office was thronged”: BB, 3 December 1849.
136“Can it be true?”: BT, 1 December 1849.
136the story stoutly denied: BC, 3 December 1849.
137the Bee had the jump: BB, 3 December 1849.
137Perley’s Pic-nic: Ibid.
137“The sight of the water crazed him!”: Ibid.
137“I nursed the baby as I listened”: Dall, Daughter of Boston, 123.
137“The excitement, the melancholy, the aghastness”: Sibley, Diary 1 December 1849.
137He’d made it off-campus and partway: JHL, 1 December 1849. Aside from the suicide rumor, the remainder of this section is drawn from Longfellow’s journal entry. It’s worth noting that this is from the original handwritten journal in the Houghton Library at Harvard; the version of the journal published later by Longfellow’s son is bowdlerized throughout, and in this case lacks mention of Webster or Farrar’s comment about Parkman’s thigh.
138Webster, it was said, had killed himself: BH, 1 December 1849.
138You’re fine: BH, 3 December 1849.
138sitting up on his cot: TGB, 194.
138netted 660 fake quarters: Weekly Messenger (Boston), 12 March 1851. Andrews did indeed eventually get the chunk of metal cast into the prison dinner bell.
139“I never liked the looks of Littlefield”: TGB, 194.
139He wasn’t willing to talk with them: BH, 3 December 1849.
139“REPORTED SUICIDE”: BH, 1 December 1849.
139“It is supposed the building will be torn down”: Ibid.
139local Irish poor, scapegoated: BH, 1 December 1849.
139A local urchin: BH, 3 December 1849.
140I saw Dr. Parkman enter this college: Ibid.
140“scarcely less criminal”: BC, 3 December 1849.
140“were a good deal magnified”: Ibid.
140City Guards, New England Guards, and the Artillery: BB, 3 December 1849.
140more peaceable group emerged: BH, 3 December 1849.
140“Old Uncle Ned”: Foster, “Old Uncle Ned.”
140“Old Grimes is dead”: Greene, “Old Grimes Is Dead,” in Old Grimes. There are numerous earlier references to “Old Grimes Is Dead,” including in the 3 December 1849 coverage of the crowd in the Boston Herald. But Greene’s later 1867 edition is one of the first to preserve the wording.
141Wentworth, a provisioner with a store on Lynde Street: TGB, 268.
141humbugs like Dalley’s Magical Pain Extractor: BC, 7 December 1849.
141he’d seen him there at about three p.m.: TGB, 268.
16. A Lifetime of Uprightness
142“It is with deep regret”: BT, 5 December 1849.
142police permission to come inside: Small, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 66.
142prying up floorboards and planing off samples: BH, 14 December 1849.
142“to the present excited state”: BT, 5 December 1849.
143evidence was quickly parceled out: TGB, 62.
143“the fleshy portions of the body”: Ibid.
143He knew, for instance, that Dr. Parkman: Noble, “Incidents Connected with the Trial,” 43. Dr. Lester Noble had been Dr. Nathan Keep’s dental assistant.
143announcing the discovery of the African gorilla: Savage and Wyman, “Notice of the External Characters.”
144“professor of obstetrics and medical jurisprudence”: Harvard University, Catalogue, 61.
144or even by vinegar: Taylor, Medical Jurisprudence, 59.
144“Let us bow”: BT, 5 December 1849.
144cousins had been footing the bill: Gardiner, William Hickling Prescott, 294.
144enjoyed some oysters: BH, 3 December 1849.
145waited for another delivery: TGB, 195.
145“His numerous friends will be rejoiced”: BH, 3 December 1849.
145the lowest floor of the jail: BH, 5 December 1849.
145dim but whitewashed and clean: JHL, 12 January 1850.
145He needed a little rug: BT, 14 December 1849.
145Professors . . . Peirce and Eben Horsford: TGB, 195.
145the dread pirate Don Pedro Gilbert: BH, 25 December 1849.
145Holmes had consulted with: Small, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 65–66.
146“The professor has been embarrassed for money”: BB, 3 December 1849.
146inheritance he’d received from his late father: Daily Globe (Washington, DC), 8 December 1849.
146“expensive habits and a love of luxury”: Sun (Baltimore), 5 December 1849.
146a nine-dollar check returned: BT, 6 December 1849.
146“A lifetime of uprightness forbids it”: CC, 6 December 1849.
146“We are at perfect liberty to suppose”: BC, 4 December 1849.
146“Of course we cannot believe Dr. Webster guilty”: Frances Longfellow, Mrs. Longfellow: Selected Letters, 4 December 1849 letter to Mary Longfellow Greenleaf, 161.
146“the anti-Webster and the anti-Littlefield parties”: BJ, 7 December 1849.
147Littlefield had offered one of them seventy dollars: BB, 3 December 1849.
147“to throw a deed of blood”: Trenton State Gazette, 6 December 1849.
147He’d requested a private arraignment: TGB, 195.
147“His whole mind seems to be running upon his food”: Quoted in Hogan, Of the Human Heart, 143
147normally have been abandoned: BB, 4 December 1849.
147Two lucky reporters made it in: BC, 4 December 1849.
148“The color of a man’s skin makes a mighty difference”: Ibid.
148Madame O’Connor . . . a miscreant: BJ, 3 December 1849.
148Webster occupied his wait with a newspaper: BB, 4 December 1849.
148“ASTOUNDING DISCLOSURES!”: BB, 3 December 1849.
148bounties of up to fifty dollars: BT, 7 December 1849.
148illustration of George Parkman’s remains: BH, 3 December 1849.
148urchins were stealing them: BT, 12 December 1849.
148weekend storm knocking out Boston’s lines: BT, 4 December 1849.
149“looks no more like that gentleman”: Quoted in Chaney, The Parkman Tragedy, 52.
149“upon search of said Medical College”: BB, 4 December 1849.
149turkey and rice arrived from Parker’s: TGB, 195.
150“They send much more than I can eat”: Ibid.
150At nine-thirty on Thursday morning: BJ, 6 December 1849.
150A brass plate: BT, 7 December 1849.
151donated both an organ and a piano: Holmes, The Benefactors of the Medical School, 30.
151“the value of electricity in producing”: BJ, 6 December 1849.
151politician had asked him to donate ten dollars: BJ, 6 December 1849. This story, or very close variants of it, was repeated throughout the local press in the early weeks of coverage.
151an astronomical twelve-fold markup: Final Report of the Committee on the Erec
tion of the New Jail, 14. I am indebted to Robert Sullivan’s 1970 account The Disappearance of Dr. Parkman for noting both the unsuitability of the land and the unusually high price the city paid for it. He does not quite connect the dots between this jail deal and the involvement of the Quincys in both it and the Harvard donation, though. Further, the Final Report makes it clear that city committees recommended different sites altogether, not once but twice: a South Boston site in an 1845 committee (14), and a rebuilding of the Leverett Street Jail by the 1848 committee (17). Instead, the city purchased Parkman’s lot at a price that works out to about $1.20 per square foot. The Boston City Council Reports of Proceedings (27 December 1909, 785) notes that Parkman’s original purchase of the West End tracts cost 10 cents per square foot.
151nearly $50,000 more in municipal funds: Final Report of the Committee on the Erection of the New Jail, 38.
152for months he halted construction: Ibid., 36
152George had helped his brother Samuel: BT, 5 December 1849.
152“Naughty Sam”: Doughty, Francis Parkman, 8.
152a murky scandal involving forgeries: Our First Men, 35.
152living in debauchery in Paris: Doughty, Francis Parkman, 8.
152procession of five carriages: BT, 7 December 1849.
152“Day by day”: JHL, 6 December 1849. Longfellow also used “Cambridge Tragedy” in his 4 December 1849 letter to Richard Henry Dana (Longfellow, Letters, 3:231); his wife, Fanny, used it in an undated autumn 1850 letter as well (Frances Longfellow, Mrs. Longfellow: Selected Letters, 173).
17. In the Dead House
155the “dead house”: BJ, 7 December 1849.
155“SECRET INQUISITION”: Sun (Baltimore), 12 December 1849.
155“pre-occupying and misdirecting public opinion”: BB, 6 December 1849.
156“From the beginning”: Ibid.
156“17,000,000 columns of reading matter”: CC, 29 November 1849. The item was reprinted from the Boston Weekly of 5 June 1841.
156Washington Monument reaching the fifty-foot mark: CC, 13 December 1849.
156“lovers of horrors”: Savannah Daily Republican, 13 December 1849.
156“The Northern papers teem”: Daily Picayune (New Orleans), 13 December 1849.
156run in the Honolulu Polynesian: Polynesian, 2 March 1850.
156the New Zealand Spectator: New Zealand Spectator, 3 August 1850.
156east to the Illustrated London News: Illustrated London News, 5 January 1850.
156“the Bermondsey Horror”: BT, 3 December 1849.
157“He was exceedingly sorry”: Boston Post, 7 December 1849.
157“WHO was caught in the dead house?”: BH, 7 December 1849.
157“The owl is killed”: BB, 17 December 1849.
157“Murder-Worship”: BT, 2 January 1850.
157had run in Punch: “Murder-Worship,” Punch, 201.
158sleigh rides in the moonlight: BT, 1 January 1850.
158inaugural journey of the rail line: CC, 10 January 1850.
158“What stupendous discoveries”: BT, 1 January 1850.
158“very pleasant, though it leaves down by North End”: JHL, 16 January 1850.
158“sat the doctor reading”: Ibid., 12 January 1850.
158copies of the Advertiser and the Courier: BH, 25 December 1849.
158Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley: BT, 20 December 1849.
158Irving’s biography of Mohammed: BH, 25 December 1849.
159“imagination is so wrought upon”: Springfield Republican, 12 January 1850.
159“public mind inflamed—blind to truth”: DJW, no. 361.
159“Hesperian Gardens of college life”: JHL, 30 September 1849.
159hours building snow forts: Ibid., 8 January 1850.
159“was really in want”: Ibid., 5 January 1850.
159might have gained entry to his lab: DJW, no. 420.
159“Dr. Lawrence hired Littlefield”: Ibid., no. 362.
160“The body was probably brought to the college”: Ibid., no. 367.
160“Would it not be well”: Ibid., no. 418.
160“He talked freely about his case”: JHL, 12 January 1850.
160turned the streets into treacherous sheets of ice: BT, 15 December 1849.
160I’ve got something: BH, 24 January 1850.
161“Found the hands of Dr. Parkman”: Ibid.
161“a rather good-looking young girl”: BH, 10 January 1850.
161turned up alive in a South Boston workhouse: BH, 14 January 1850.
161“THE PARKMAN TRAGEDY in the glow”: BH, 30 January 1850.
161unload its stock: BT, 15 December 1849.
162ads for the latest: BB, 5 February 1850.
162“evidence of the blackest character”: W. E. Bigelow, The Boston Tragedy, 14.
162publisher . . . claimed that twenty thousand copies: BB, 12 February 1850.
162“for gratuitous circulation, or nearly so”: Edward Everett journal entry for 20 December 1849, quoted in Chaney, The Parkman Tragedy, 72
162“The University at Cambridge”: Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 276.
162“HIGHLY IMPORTANT!”: BH, 28 February 1850.
163News of the discovery was halfway: E.g., Daily Missouri Republican (St. Louis), 11 March 1850.
163a missing thirty-eight-year-old carriage-smith: Trenton State Gazette, 4 March 1850.
163“the Parkman Hoax”: Sun (Baltimore), 5 March 1850.
163“We never wantonly trifle with the feelings”: BH, 4 March 1850.
163scarcely lasted over an hour: Papers of John White Webster, 1840–1969, John W. Webster letter to John A. Lowell, 21 December 1849.
163besieged by letters from attorneys: BH, 26 January 1850.
163barely fifty dollars a month: Papers of John White Webster, 1840–1968, John W. Webster letter to John A. Lowell, 21 December 1849.
163fashionable straw hats and stockings: Ibid. Avoidance of duties, some of which were quite steep, was no small advantage in this era. One importer, for instance, was discovered circumventing the high tariffs on lead ingots by having the stuff fashioned into solid (and presumably very weighty) busts of Shakespeare, which were then promptly melted back into raw material after making it through customs (BT, 26 December 1849).
164one of Sarah and her baby: Dabney Family Papers, 1825–1915, letter of Harriet Webster to Sarah Dabney, 1 March 1847.
164“There are also some good pictures”: Papers of John White Webster 1840–1968, letter of John White Webster to John A. Lowell, 12 December 1849.
164A carriage came by each morning: Trenton State Gazette, 20 January 1850.
164“Skyrocket Jack”: Sun (Baltimore), 17 December 1849.
165“Dear Sir: It is with difficulty”: Daily Missouri Republican (St. Louis), 24 January 1850. The letter is referred to, though not quoted, as early as January 19 in the Boston Daily Evening Transcript.
165One from Philadelphia claimed that Parkman: BH, 25 January 1850.
165a mysterious man from Boston’s suburbs: Springfield Republican, 15 March 1850.
165Some maintained that the news couldn’t: Constitution (Middletown, CT), 6 March 1850.
166appeared in Boston twenty-one days after: BT, 19 January 1850.
18. Good Men and True
168reporters gathered in the empty courtroom: BH, 19 March 1850.
168all weekend Sheriff Eveleth had had carpenters: BH, 18 March 1850.
168back downstairs, out through the cellar: Willard, Half a Century with Judges and Lawyers, 153.
168New York papers had reporters there: BH, 19 March 1850.
168“This, without question, will be the most exciting trial”: BB, 7 March 1850.
168“one of the fastest presses”: BH, 18 March 1850.
169“Daguerreotypes by Steam”: E.g., BB, 25 February 1850.
169magic lantern show of “dissolving views”: BB, 16 February 1850.
169“from a daguerreotype by Mr. Whipple”: BT, 20 March 1850. It is possibl
e that the ad refers to Daniel Webster; however, its timing and its placement next to the trial coverage make the more obvious (and more commercial) interpretation likely. Engravings of Dr. Webster from this period, as well as the photograph reproduced in this volume, also make it clear that there was indeed an extant daguerreotype of Dr. Webster to draw upon.
169talk of moving the trial: Emancipator & Republican (Boston), 21 February 1850.
169could have filled the room twelve times over: BT, 18 March 1850.
169special priority in applying for trial passes: Ibid.
169carpenters had even built some press tables: BH, 18 March 1850.
170“I don’t know what else can be done”: BB, 19 March 1850.
170“That’s him!”: BM, 20 March 1850.
170bronze-sheathed doors: Sullivan, The Disappearance of Dr. Parkman, 64.
170“to keep at bay the unfavored multitude”: BT, 19 March 1850.
170“All stretched forward to scan his looks”: TDM, 3.
170cushioned armchair: BT, 19 March 1850.
170smiled at several friends: BB, 20 March 1850.
170“The countenance of the prisoner”: TNY, 3.
170Capital cases required a majority: TGB, 4.
171disputed will by one Edward Phillips: CC, 19 July 1849.
171clerk called out, taking roll: TGB, 5.
171Of the sixty men in the jury pool: Ibid.
172“Prisoner, look upon the juror”: Ibid., 6.
172“it is necessary that we know”: BJ, 19 July 1850.
172a buzz passed through the assembled crowd: TNY, 3.
172a printer named Thomas Barrett: TGB, 8.
173His hand trembled slightly: TNY, 3.
173“To this indictment”: TGB, 8.
173his duties as the state’s attorney general: Ibid., 9. Though Sullivan (Disappearance, 57) presents this arrangement as being rather dodgy—and, indeed, the financing of it would prove to be so—the addition of Bemis to the prosecution team had in itself been publicly known for at least one month (BH, 18 February 1850).
173mingled in the same circles as Longfellow: E.g. JGB, 17 February 1850.
174distracted by his father: Ibid., 10 March 1850.
174extracting a promise: Ibid., 31 March 1850.
174“in the clear, calm light of justice”: TJS, 6.
174“That presentment involves two general propositions”: Ibid., 8.