After Boston businessman George Parkman disappeared in November 1849, his dismembered and partially burned body was found in the laboratory of John Webster, a lecturer at Harvard Medical College; Webster was convicted of Parkman's murder and hanged. Highly publicized because of its gruesome nature and the high social status of Parkman and Webster, the case was one of the earliest in which forensic evidence was used to identify a body.
Main participants
George Parkman
George Parkman (February 19, 1790 – November 23, 1849), a Boston Brahmin, belonged to one of the city's richest families. He was a well-known figure in the streets of Boston, which he walked daily, collecting his rents (a thrifty man, he did not own a horse). He was tall and lean, with a protruding chin, and wore a top hat. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. said that "he abstained while others indulged, he walked while others rode, he worked while others slept." Fanny Longfellow, wife of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, called him "the lean doctor ... the good-natured Don-Quixote." He was worth some half a million dollars in 1849 (equivalent to $371 million in wealth in 2023).
John White Webster
John White Webster (May 20, 1793 – August 30, 1850) was a lecturer at the new Harvard Medical College. He was described by Holmes as "pleasant in the lecture room, rather nervous and excitable." Many of Webster's classroom demonstrations involved some of the latest chemical discoveries. George F. Hoar mentioned that Webster's lectures were "tedious", at least for a non-chemistry major, but that he "was known to the students by the sobriquet of 'Sky-rocket Jack,' owing to his great interest in having some fireworks at the illumination when President Everett, his former classmate, was inaugurated. There was no person less likely to commit such a bloody and cruel crime as that for which he was accused." Many anecdotes suggest his classroom demonstrations were livened by pyrotechnic drama, and on one occasion the President of Harvard warned that some of them were dangerous if an accident occurred. Webster had financial problems. His family had been forced to give up a mansion he had built in Cambridge, although they were leasing a respectable but not grand house in 1849. He was in debt to a number of friends, as his salary and meager lecture earnings could not cover his expenses. Noted mineralogist and Harvard Professor Clifford Frondel appraised the books Webster authored on chemistry as "creditable" and had praise for them.
Ephraim Littlefield
A Swamp Yankee of rural origins, Ephraim Littlefield was the janitor at Harvard Medical College, built in 1846, and had also been the janitor at the previous one since 1842. He and his wife Caroline lived in the basement of the college, adjacent to Webster's laboratory. He knew Webster and the other Harvard doctors well, and observed their study of medicine, including the dissection of cadavers for the study of human anatomy. As janitor, he cleaned the doctors' rooms and laboratories, started their fires, generally set up the specimens for their lectures, and did whatever else they asked. After Webster's trial, he collected a $3,000 reward for providing information about Parkman's disappearance (equivalent to $116,100 in 2025) and was able to retire comfortably.
Crime and investigation
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