The Parkman murder : trial of Prof. John W. Webster, for the murder of Dr. George Parkman, November 23, 1849 : before the Supreme Judicial Court, in the City of Boston with numerious accurate illustrations.
- John White Webster
- Date:
- 1850
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The Parkman murder : trial of Prof. John W. Webster, for the murder of Dr. George Parkman, November 23, 1849 : before the Supreme Judicial Court, in the City of Boston with numerious accurate illustrations. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![Ing a tnoraeiii he sajv;, That villain, he has ruin- ed iiie ! li, tnj-! consistent v^iih hin innocirnce, when up to this time he had » .t been informed that ihe rcniHUis of Dr. Parkinaa liad bee i found ? AtVr he Inid been to the Cotleire, and was returning in rlie carriage, he said. Why did they not ask Litilefield to explain. Thej wanted me to, but ihey asked me no questions. It w-ts then noticed tii;it his cliithes «ere wet with the sweat wh-cii proCusi-'ly came from him. 'Jhis sweat was can ed by the agony of liar produced by his yuilf. On Saturday, after reocvering his composuie he said, Tho;^e reu.aiiis are nn more Dr Paik- man's than fhfy are mine, but how they came there, I cannot tell Here, gentlenipn, ne have gone over the defence, and this is all if it. Then t^ke his conduct itfer (his time. H.9 appears before il>e Police Cuurt, a^ks no exam- ination into the charges preferied against itim, preferring that his hiiheito fair fairie .slioald be blasted, ajid that his lamily should suffer in sus- pense. Immediately afterwards he wrote to tiis daught r, and in that letter is the extraordinary sentence, IVll maruma not to open the little bundle I gave her. What an extraordinary letter is this ! JNol a word is there in it o' hiis reliance on Divine Pjovidence to release him from the position in which he had been placed. He says nothing about his innocence; he speaks only of his phy--ical wants. 1 he jury had been asMed to consider the act, if committed, as committed in the heat of blood. H's conduct repelled this supposition. It was, however, immaterial how long he had premedi- tated this act, whether one day sr one minute; the malic* was evident in the hacking of the Itody and limbs, if not ifs p»en;edita«ion. Gentlemen, have you any doii'H in all this evidence, that Dr. Parkrnan came to his death by the hands of Dr. Webster. It is not merely a possible doubt that will justify jcu in acquiting the prisoner, but it must be a reasonable doubt. You have been asked,gentleiuen,to remember the family of Dr Webster. We do rememljer them, even though he did not. NA e remember them better than he did the family of Mr. Litilefield, upon whom he sough: to caet unjust ausplcions.'- There is another family whom we must remem- ler—the invalid daughter, the son in a foreign land, prematuiely called to assume the manage- ment of a large estate. Mr. Clifford here adverted to the fact that throughout a I communities the innocent must suffer froBi the crinits of the guilty, and ad- dressed the jii y upon the nature of the resj/on- sibilities resting upon them. He felt, he said, that in no case ever tried in this Commonwealth, was so great a responsibility devi^lved upon twelve men, and he trusted that they vA'(,uld so exercise iheir responsibility that 'hey would never have oocasiun to legret, that ti.ey had done their duty. ADORESS OF THE PRISONER. Ujion tlie conclusion of the argument of the At- torney General, Judge Shaw said to the prisoner that he could then have an opportunity of address- ing the Jury if he was desirous of saying anything that had not been said by his counsel. Dr Webster then arose and said that various cir- cumstances had combined to weave a net work which had by perversion been used against him, In nine-tenths of these cases, if he was allowed time, he could give the most satisfactory explanations of the circumstances. In some of ihcni he had put the evidence of solving them at the disposal of his counsel, but they had not seen fit to use it, and by their advice his lips had been sealed. It had been stated for instance, that the letter to his daughter produced in Court was the first writ- ten to his family; this was not so, for several had been written previous to this. While in jail he rec- ollected seeing it stated in one of the public prints that about the time of his arrest he purchased a quantity of oxalic acid. This reminded him of a circumstance which occurred before his arrest, and which was the occasion of a sentence which had been read from that letter. Mrs Webster had ask- him to procure nitric acid. He had forgotten it on several occasions, but happening to think of it on the day of his arrest, he stepped into Mr Thayer's, un- der the Revere House, purchased the article, stop- ped and talked about the disappearance of Dr Park- man, and took the omnibus from that store. The parcel he gave to Mrs Webster upon his entering his house. It was this parcel that he wrote not to have opened, as it might be important that it should be used as evidence on his trial. Another circumstance had been made use of against him, which was very easy of explanation. Mr Cunningham was present at his house when the first search was made. The oflicer states that he looked over the trunk spoken of and could not find the papers he searched for; yet on the next time he went there he found the papers in the U]iper part of the trunk. This is exjjlained by the fact that after the officer went away the first time, Mr Cunning- ham found the papers and put them where they were found, and took a memorandum of them. In relation to the interview wkh Rev Dr Park- man, he must say that he thought he had in his tes- timony done him great injustice. He did in conver- sation with him, speak of his brother as having la- bored under an aberration of mind. He also asked him about the lettuce his brother bought, and whether he brought it into the College with him, and asked whether it was a common man with whom he was seen going over the bridge. In relation to the nitrate of copper, he would say that he had occasion to use it in his laboratory for the purpose of making nitrous oxy de gas to be used in his lectures. The fact that he had been calm, had also been used against him. His counsi 1 had advised him ^o that course, and he had trusted hi his God and his conscience for reliance in this case. I^The money to pay Dr Parkniaii he had hoarded in the same little trunk that had been spoken of, but he could not produce evidence to prove that he took the money from the trunk. In regard to his laboratory, he would say that he had formerly been in the practice of allowing stu- dents to visit it at times, but in consequence of their having broken many things he had locked hia doors. i- He could prove that he had never been absent from his house a whole evening during the week of the disappearance, except on Wednesday. On that evening he came to town with his daughters. On Friday afternoon of the interview with Dr Parkman he went to the omnibus oliice, and on his way he stepped into Brigham's, at Concert Hall, about 3 o'clock, and took a nintton chop for his din- ner. On Wednesday evening, when he was in the city, he happened to think of a book he was to purchase for a relative, when he stepped into Mr Munroe's bookstore and obtained it. He then went into Brig- ham's and got a cup of tea, and afterwards went to Mr Cunningham's, where his daughters were. This book was subsequently found at lirigham's, where he left it. The prisoner here sat down, but almost immedi- ately rose again, and said he had been more dis- tressed by tire anonymous letters produced in Court than by any thing else. He called his God to wit- ness he knew nothing whatever of those letters. Since his trial commenced his counsel had received](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21083617_0069.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
