On this day, Aug. 30, in 1850, Harvard instructor Dr. John W. Webster was executed for the murder of George Parkman, scion of one of Boston’s richest families.
The case has been called the O.J. Simpson trial of the 19th century.
Parts of Parkman’s body were discovered in Webster’s laboratory at Harvard Medical College.
Police discovered that Webster owed Parkman money he had borrowed to cover a lifestyle he could not afford.
The case was the first murder trial in the United States where dental evidence and scientific testimony were accepted. Poet and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. testified that the body had been dismembered by someone with knowledge of dissection and anatomy.
Webster was convicted and publicly hanged in Boston’s Leverett Square.
– Scott McCabe
