by Paul Collins
229“will have a monopoly”: Ibid., John Clifford letter to Edward Sohier, 7 April 1850.
230angry newspaper notices by the lawyers: BH, 13 April 1850.
230“NO ADMITTENCE”: Barre Patriot, 12 April 1850.
230fifty thousand, by one estimate: BT, 15 April 1850.
230snipping off locks of his hair: Trenton State Gazette, 8 April 1850.
230collect the $3,000: BT, 11 April 1850.
230“Dr. Parkman stands in the attitude of a creditor!”: BT, 30 May 1850.
231“the mercy of the Executive may be extended”: BT, 4 April 1850.
231petitions were circulating in Philadelphia: Constitution (Middletown, CT), 15 April 1850.
231Dayton: Ohio State Journal, 30 April 1850.
231Richmond: Sun (Baltimore), 4 May 1850.
231Louisville: Sun (Baltimore), 22 April 1850.
231Augusta: BH, 20 April 1850.
231“that most disgusting of all bipeds”: Quoted in BH, 8 April 1850.
231“so fully had the evidence pointed to the prisoner”: BM, 3 April 1850.
231“the prayers of devout Puritans”: “The Webster Case,” 10.
231“I am no fanatic—no bigot”: BT, 20 April 1850.
232he wanted to talk to someone unassociated: BT, 9 April 1850.
232Webster began promising to say grace: LAN, Amelia Nye letter to Marianne Ivens, 14 June 1850.
232“We are quite astonished in Boston”: Benjamin Peirce letter to A. D. Bache, 7 April 1850; quoted in Hogan, Of the Human Heart, 142.
232Webster had ordered a dozen: JGB, 31 March 1850.
232“There is a very faint hope”: Hogan, Of the Human Heart, 142.
232“after a stormy and most tedious passage”: Dabney Family Papers, 1825–1915, John Dabney letter to Sarah Dabney, 7 May 1850.
233the guards had run a needle through the paper: New Hampshire Gazette, 18 April 1850.
233George Thompson, imprisoned in the next cell: Thompson, Venus in Boston, 370.
233“He is the victim of circumstances”: BH, 13 April 1850.
233On April 24, Dr. Webster had filed: TGB, 560.
234“certain errors in the proceeding and judgment of the court”: TGB, 503.
234“silence and timidity of cross-examination”: Hall, A Review of the Webster Case, 14.
234hadn’t bothered to read the defense’s more aggressive closing: Borowitz, “The Janitor’s Story,” 1544. Borowitz’s story is notable because he chanced across a particularly interesting memento: Hall’s own notes and annotated copy of the Stone transcript.
234“law manufactured for the occasion”: Upton, A Statement of Reasons, 32.
23. A Man in Error
235“DR. PARKMAN FOUND!”: BM, 1 April 1850.
235construction revealed more remains: Springfield Republican, 20 April 1850.
235“the intact coffin, unopened for 30 centuries”: BT, 25 May 1850.
235“She may have witnessed the ten plagues”: Ibid.
236Chief Justice Shaw subscribed: BT, 7 May 1850.
236“in beautiful condition”: BT, 3 June 1850.
236dust kicked up into the crowd: BT, 5 June 1850.
236“The daughter of the high priest of Thebes”: JHL, 7 June 1850.
236“Dr. Bigelow blushed”: Marvel, The Opera Goer, 2: 101.
236Gliddon stammered out an explanation: BT, 7 June 1850.
237rhymed “mummy” with “dummy”: BH, 7 June 1850.
237“SUPPOSE YOUR AUNT”: CC, 27 June 1850. The mummy itself, one of a pair possessed by Gliddon—the other, ironically, was indeed a woman—eventually wound up at Tulane University, where for a decades it was stored under the bleachers of Tulane Stadium. Gliddon’s aspersions on the Egyptian mortuary’s record keeping were, as it turns out, quite unfair: “Inscriptions on his coffin indicate he was Djed-Thoth-iu-ef-ankh, a priest and overseer of craftsmen at the Temple of Amun in Thebes” (Carol J. Schlueter, Tulane University press release, 15 November 2015).
237This time all five state supreme court justices: TGB, 502.
237“May it please Your Honors”: Ibid., 503.
237he’d unsuccessfully run for mayor in 1847: Salem Observer, 11 December 1847.
237he excelled in “chamber practice”: Bell, The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire, 398.
238“My experience in the courts”: TGB, 537.
238“The human remains found in the Medical College”: Ibid., 562.
238“My acquaintance with Dr. Webster”: Ibid.
239The minister had delivered the election sermon: Springfield Republican, 11 January 1845.
239narrowly missed being appointed to Harvard’s Board: Weekly Messenger (Boston), 28 February 1844.
239offered him its Hollis Chair: New-York Spectator, 21 January 1846.
239“On the 23rd of May”: TGB, 562. Modern musings that Webster’s confession document was a hoax are merely fanciful. It was presented by a respected clergyman to the governor—a career-ending and pointless stunt, if a hoax—and neither Webster nor his family disavowed the document. Indeed, Webster chose to have Putnam accompany him to the scaffold. Nor did his friends find the confession out of character: as Fanny Longfellow notes in her 11 July 1850 letter to Emmeline Austin Wadsworth: “Dr. Webster’s confession is very awful, is it not? But to me credible knowing the nature of the man” (Mrs. Longfellow: Selected Letters, 173).
239“He came in at the lecture-room door”: Ibid. The remainder of this section was drawn from Bemis’s transcript.
242“the very picture of distress and sorrow”: BH, 6 June 1850.
242they’d refused visitors: LAN, Amelia Nye letter to Marianne Ivens, 4 October 1850.
242“How could I believe my husband to be guilty”: quoted In Buescher, The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear, 56.
243“We feel assured of that”: BT, 6 July 1850.
243moved that date to July 16: BT, 8 July 1850.
244“adverse to the confession”: BT, 6 July 1850.
244“in the highest degree improbable”: quoted in Sullivan, The Disappearance of Dr. Parkman, 198.
245“Telegraphic to Boston Herald”: BH, 10 July 1850.
245Boston’s government offices came to a standstill: BT, 10 1850.
245incoming exams on July 15 and 16: CC, 27 June 1850.
246sixty-one hopefuls: BT, 17 July 1850.
246most of the Executive Council made the journey: BT, 18 July 1850.
246a graduating class well-stocked: BT, 17 July 1850.
246“Friend Clifford”: Papers Related to the Trial of John White Webster, 1814–1937, letter of Samuel Wood to John Clifford, 17 July 1850.
24. Closing Hours
247“Is His Excellency the Governor”: BT, 9 July 1850. I have taken the liberty of correcting the name. BT’s account, reprinted from the Mail, has the reporter overhearing it as “Anto Emanuel Hunt.” Another account, in the Boston Herald of 8 July, presents his name as Antonio Emanuel Dwight. Their respective renderings hint at the visitor almost certainly being Antonio Emanuel Knight, an eccentric figure memorialized in John J. Currier’s History of Newburyport, Mass.: 1764–1909 (2: 441–45). Knight was a member of John White Webster’s Class of 1815 but never graduated; and, like Webster, he went on to practice medicine—though, as Currier puts it, “he was never overburdened with patients” (441). Knight had a fondness for issuing imperative declarations to governors and presidents. After a spell in an insane asylum in 1834, he existed somewhere between being a ward of the state and the master of his only partially imaginary domains in Newburyport—a sort of a spiritual heir to the previous reigning town eccentric, Lord Timothy Dexter.
248founder of the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment: Buescher, The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear, 42.
248published the Prisoners’ Friend: Ibid., 46.
248“Ought he not to be beaten into a plowshare?”: 24 January 1843 letter by H. D. Thoreau to R. W. Emerson, quoted in Buescher, The Remarkable Life of J
ohn Murray Spear, 20.
248I have more petitions for clemency: BT, 18 July 1850.
248Spear brothers had often prevailed: Buescher, The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear, 55.
248A law had already been proposed: Trenton State Gazette, 25 April 1850.
249“The weapon was knotty and substantial”: BT, 18 July 1850.
249the professor had already heard the news: BT, 19 July 1850.
249“Yes. Tell him to prepare”: Worcester Palladium, 31 July 1850.
249“I forgive you, Dr. Webster”: Emancipator & Republican (Boston), 1 August 1850.
249Boston Daily Atlas revealed that he’d been offered $500: BA, 5 August 1850.
249repeated the figure as $5,000: Sun (Baltimore), 5 August 1850.
250“Mr. Littlefield, all that you said”: Emancipator & Republican (Boston), 1 August 1850.
250“sincere contrition and penitence”: BT, 31 August 1850.
250“This is asking for more magnanimity than they possess”: Frances Longfellow, Mrs. Longfellow: Selected Letters, 8 April 1850 letter to Nathan Appleton, 169.
250advocate of the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment: Buescher, The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear, 56.
250“The response was not what, under the circumstances”: Boston Times, quoted in Trenton State Gazette, 13 September 1850.
251“The feet of those who have just carried out”: Briggs, Letters Received by George N. Briggs, unsigned letter to Governor George Briggs, n.d.
251“I Rite to inform you”: Ibid., letter of James Rollins to Governor George Briggs, 10 August 1850.
251“aye a most oppressive scoundrel”: Ibid., letter of Launcelot English to Governor George Briggs, 15 August 1850.
251“burn your dwelling to the ground”: Ibid., letter of William Web [indecipherable] a.k.a. Bambazilla Frothingham to Governor George Briggs, 12 August 1850.
251“You must return to your capital”: Ibid., letter of Antonio Emanuel Knight to Governor George Briggs, 28 August 1850.
252“The undersigned begs the pleasure”: Ibid., letter of Jackus Netebebus to Governor George Briggs, 27 August 1850.
252deluged with more than five hundred requests: BT, 20 August 1850.
252hide the date and time from Mrs. Webster: BB, 29 August 1850. The arrangement is also noted in other newspapers and in Amelia Nye’s letter of 4 October 1850 (LAN). The Webster hometown paper (Cambridge Chronicle) notably avoids any mention of the next day’s execution in its issue of 29 August 1850.
252“Will this be your hour for closing”: BB, 31 August 1850.
253cleaning and polishing a shell: Willard, Half a Century with Judges and Lawyers, 155.
253perused Mountford’s Euthanasy: BT, 8 August 1850.
253“death was not meant to be altogether pleasant”: Mountford, Euthanasy, 37.
253Longfellow’s Hymns: BT, 31 August 1850.
253stopped to pray, or to simply put his head: BT, 30 August 1850.
253Mr. Dunbar, the prison’s occasional carpenter: BB, 31 August 1850.
254new spruce one, handily constructed by Dunbar: Boston Traveler, 13 April 1866.
254“Stop your infernal clack!”: BM, 31 August 1850.
254two cups of tea, breakfast, and a last smoke: BT, 30 August 1850.
254more than a hundred police officers: BB, 30 August 1850.
254I used to experiment on the bodies: Willard, Half a Century with Judges and Lawyers, 155.
254“Hang at eight; breakfast at nine!”: BT, 4 September 1850.
255“Do not regard any thing about you”: BT, 31 August 1850.
255boys trying to scale the prison fence: BJ, 20 August 1850.
255charged fifty cents: BM, 31 August 1850.
255fashioned some crude benches: BB, 30 August 1850.
255“At every possible point”: BJ, August 1850.
255“NOT AT HOME, OPPOSED TO CAPITAL PUNISHMENT”: BH, 31 August 1850.
255“District Attorney, Clerk or Clerks”: Webster, John White Webster Papers, 1837–1850, form letter [invitation] of Sheriff Eveleth, 23 August 1850.
255a contingent of New York reporters: Springfield Republican, 31 August 1850.
255upon his black outfit: BM, 31 August 1850.
256“It is a very ingenious contrivance”: Springfield Republican, 31 August 1850.
256“Whereas, at the term of the Supreme Judicial Court”: TGB, 590.
256gone out of his way to ask for the smooth straps: Willard, Half a Century with Judges and Lawyers, 155.
256“into thy hands”: BT, 31 August 1850.
257Webster turned to look at the Reverend Putnam: BM, 30 August 1850.
257“In the name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts”: BB, 30 August 1850.
257made his shoulders shrug: BJ, 30 August 1850.
Epilogue
259The woman stood in the Websters’ doorway: LAN, Amelia Nye letter to Marianne Ivens, 4 October 1850.
259“There has been a morbid curiosity”: Sibley, Diary, 30 August 1850; see also following entries.
259Mr. Peak’s mortuary: LAN, Amelia Nye letter to Marianne Ivens, 4 October 1850.
259black-painted pine box: BT, 30 August 1850.
259The professor had wanted mahogany: Pittsfield Sun, 5 September 1850.
259They’d quietly sold peaches: LAN, Amelia Nye letter to Marianne Ivens, 4 October 1850.
260merchant John Perkins Cushing had pledged $500: Ibid., Amelia Nye letter to Marianne Ivens, 9 February 1851.
260Appleton found quick success: Appleton, Selections from the Diaries of William Appleton, entry for 4 September 1850, 140.
260“Mr. Appleton tried to raise $20,000”: LAN, Amelia Nye letter to Marianne Ivens, 4 October 1850.
260His labware sold poorly: Trenton State Gazette, 31 March 1851.
260“It was quite valuable”: Springfield Republican, 17 March 1851.
260the Websters were left with $450: LAN, Amelia Nye letter to Marianne Ivens, 9 February 1851. I do not find any primary source for the widely repeated assertion that George Parkman’s widow was atop the list of contributors to Mrs. Webster. Its appeal is understandable, as a reassuring proof of forgiveness and mercy. Yet the earliest version of this story I have found appears eighty years later in Sir William Hale White’s article “John White Webster: The Guy’s Ghoul” in Guy’s Hospital Reports (1930). Hale’s claim is unsourced. Perhaps I have overlooked a line in a primary source; if a reader notices one, I’ll gladly give Mrs. Parkman her due in a future edition.
261Young Hattie, despite her fortunes: Trenton State Gazette, 11 April 1851.
261Mrs. Webster’s death in October 1853: Boston Recorder, 13 October 1853.
261Catherine and Marianne, left town: BH, 14 October 1853.
261“I did not recognize them”: Twain, Notebook and Journals, 341n.
261“I suppose you know who we are!”: Ibid., entry of 21 June 1867, 341.
261“The longest gap perhaps”: JGB, 3 November 1850.
262“probably the most satisfactory definition ever given”: Quoted in Victor v. Nebraska, 9.
262effective and remarkably durable fusing: Rogers, Murder and the Death Penalty, 100 101.
262“It was commendable for Chief Justice Shaw”: Victor v. Nebraska, 23.
262“a modernized version of the Webster charge”: Ellement, “SJC Rewrites a Judicial Tradition.”
262he now interviewed Shaw: JGB, 3 November 1850.
262paid $1,000 for the trial: Ibid., 31 March 1850. Bemis was later paid an additional $150 for his appeals work.
263“I talked with Daniel Webster”: Parker, Reminiscences of Rufus Choate, 272.
263“visitation of God”: Neilson, Memories of Rufus Choate, 18.
263“Mr. [Daniel] Webster said to me”: Parker, Reminiscences of Rufus Choate, 273.
263Merrick was appointed associate justice: Dictionary of American Biography (1879 ed.), 617.
264the murder trial in London of François Benjamin Courvoisi
er: Borowitz, “The Janitor’s Story,” 1544.
264“He confided to him that he had done the deed”: LAN, Amelia Nye letter to Marianne Ivens, 4 October 1850.
264that the ventilation panel in a lab door was loose: DJW, no. 421 and no. 423. On the same page, Webster also proposes impugning specific police officers: “Cannot Clapp and Starkweather[’s] character be impeached?”
264“He then wrote a very long letter to Edward”: LAN, Amelia Nye letter to Marianne Ivens, 4 October 1850.
265“at such times the glaze of civilization”: Chase, Lemuel Shaw, 189.
265George Burroughs: Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, 2:331. The dubious distinction of becoming the third executed Harvard alumnus was narrowly avoided in 1998 by “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, who instead drew eight life terms without parole.
265The one-year-delay law: Rogers, Murder and the Death Penalty, 102.
265second-degree murder: Ibid., 112.
265“Probably, in the annals of criminal jurisprudence”: Thompson, Venus in Boston, 370.
266on display at P. T. Barnum’s: Trenton State Gazette, 23 May 1851. This was later spoofed by Charles Farrar Browne in his showman persona of Artemus Ward, who claimed to have “wax figgers of G. Washington, Genl. Taylor, John Bunyan, Captain Kidd, and Dr. Webster, besides several miscellanyous wax statoots of celebrated piruts and murderers” (Hingston, The Genial Showman, 137).
266“is a pure specimen”: New Hampshire Gazette, 8 October 1850.
266“terribly reduced our general estimate of humanity”: Trenton State Gazette, 2 October 1850.
266Littlefield instantly forswore: Trenton State Gazette, 7 October 1850.
266retired to a farm in Vermont: Savannah Daily Republican, 17 April 1851.
266“cleared $25,000”: Weekly Herald (New York), 12 February 1853.
266went insane: BA, 23 April 1854.
266“it was feared someone would desecrate his tomb”: LAN, Amelia Nye letter to Marianne Ivens, 15 February 1854.
266spotted in Connecticut: Constitution (Middletown, CT), 13 November 1850.
266in Maine: Portland Daily Advertiser, 25 May 1850.
266“Dr. Parkman was looking hard at Gen. Taylor”: Springfield Republican, 3 October 1850.