On this day, Aug. 30, in 1850, Harvard instructor, Dr. John W. Webster, was executed for the murder of George Parkman, a scion of one of Boston’s richest families.
The case shocked the city and has been called the O.J. Simpson trial of the 19th century.
A week after Parkman vanished, a janitor of the Harvard Medical College discovered body parts hidden in Webster’s laboratory.
Police discovered that Webster owed Parkman money he had borrowed over the years to cover a lifestyle he could not afford, and Parkman had been hounding him for repayment.
Webster was convicted and sentenced to death. Despite an outpouring of mail from across the nation, the Massachusetts governor refused to commute the sentence and Webster was publicly hanged in Boston’s Leverett Square.
-Scott McCabe
