American Experience (1988) s15e13 Episode Script

1
I am a practicing physician
in this city.
I was called on the Saturday
succeeding the arrest
of Dr. Webster
NARRATOR:
History is drama and nothing
is more dramatic than a trial.
On trial this time was
not just a man,
but a city and its
most cherished values.
I found that the head had been
separated from the torso
(observers gasp)
just below the Adam's apple
by sawing through
the upper vertebra.
NARRATOR:
The case was so sensational
that more than 60,000 people
came to witness
the trial of Harvard professor
of chemistry John White Webster,
accused of the gruesome murder
of Dr. George Parkman.
But what really happened
is still debated today.
MAN:
I and many other people
I'm not alone in this view
looking at this case
Believe that he was innocent.
There's no question in my mind
that Dr. Parkman was killed
by Professor Webster.
The overwhelming weight
of the evidence indicates that.
All of the bowels and
the stomach were gone.
Some years ago while
I was teaching at Harvard,
I stumbled over
this riveting story.
I immediately wanted to know
a lot more.
As an historian,
I thought I could untangle
the web of myths, passions
and uncertainties
that had surrounded this case
for 150 years.
But what intrigued me most
wasn't the whodunit;
it was the real mystery:
how we know for certain
what happened in the past.
So when I set out
to write a book
about the Webster-Parkman case,
I knew it couldn't be
a straightforward narrative.
I'd cross a line
I wasn't supposed to cross.
I'd be tempted to go
beyond conventional history
and write in a way
I'd never dared before.
(glass shatters)
(men laughing)
(panting)
(wood creaking)
(glass breaking)
(men shouting)
(thudding)
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SCHAMA:
Three men are at the center
of this story.
The first is John Webster,
the 56-year-old Harvard Medical
College professor of chemistry.
He was the author
of a highly regarded textbook,
a friend and neighbor of the
distinguished poet Longfellow.
MAN:
He was a workaday professor
in chemistry of those days,
which was rather simple,
but very important;
it was the beginning of
much of present-day chemistry.
And he worked hard at that.
But, curiously enough,
he moved amongst the upper
social classes of Boston, too.
SCHAMA:
John Webster wasn't rich,
but he was famously affable,
a model husband and father,
the life and soul of any party.
A few blocks away from
the Harvard Medical College
lived one of its most generous
benefactors, Dr. George Parkman.
The son of a wealthy
Boston merchant,
Parkman had begun
his medical career
dedicated to helping humankind.
But now, middle-aged, he'd
given up practicing medicine
to be a landlord
and a money lender,
collecting his rents
on a schedule
that ran like clockwork.
Dr. George Parkman
was compulsive.
Every little detail
was important.
He got up at the same time,
he went to bed at the same time.
I can't imagine that he cut
a very appealing vision.
SCHAMA:
In the small village
of Boston's upper class,
Parkman and Webster had known
each other all their lives.
In fact, Parkman
was going to visit Webster
at his laboratory
in the Harvard Medical College
on the day this story begins
November 23, 1849,
the day George Parkman
disappeared.
Littlefield.
Good afternoon,
Dr. Parkman.
SCHAMA:
The third person in this mystery
is Ephraim Littlefield,
janitor at the medical college.
There's not much information
about Littlefield.
But we do know that he didn't
just clean the medical school
and run the professors' errands.
Littlefield made extra money
from one of the most ghoulish
black-market enterprises
of the day:
doing business
with grave robbers
So-called "resurrection men"
On behalf of
his Harvard employers.
The authorities
turned a blind eye
on this nighttime
traffic in corpses.
MOORE:
Every anatomy department
has to have some person
or persons
who obtains the human bodies
for dissection.
And Littlefield's job was
to procure corpses which,
as nearly as we know,
he did by buying them.
He helped to do the dissections,
and if the body had to be
taken apart later, he did that,
and he did it
hundreds of times a year;
he was an expert
at dismemberment.
My name is Ephraim
Littlefield
SCHAMA:
It was Littlefield's testimony
that put John Webster
into the prisoner's dock
Though there are
those who believe
he ought to have been there
himself.
My duties include
attending to
the professors
at the college,
including Professor
John Webster.
SCHAMA:
What do we know for certain
about the day Dr. Parkman
disappeared?
Professor Webster never denied
that Parkman came to visit him
at the medical college
that afternoon.
He was coming to collect a debt.
This is how I imagine
their encounter.
Ah, Dr. Parkman.
Good afternoon.
Please come in.
Are you ready for me,
Dr. Webster?
PARKMAN:
Have you got
the money?
SCHAMA:
But hold on
perhaps this is a step too far.
(tape rewinding)
Are you ready for me,
Dr. Webster?
SCHAMA:
That furtive look
I'm attributing to Webster
Well, I don't really know
if that happened.
PARKMAN:
Have you got
the money?
I'm supposed to be sticking
to hard-and-fast facts,
but, actually,
we have no way of knowing
what Webster was feeling
at this particular moment.
And perhaps we shall never know
what really did happen
behind this door.
WOMAN:
He's not writing a whodunit.
He is trying to deal with
a more philosophical issue,
and that is:
How do we know about the past?
What he is struggling with
is the chasm between
the present and the past,
and the challenge
for contemporary people to
overcome their anachronisms
to try to get
a sense of what happened
in times in which
they have not lived,
and the inevitable
degree of failure
that that enterprise involves.
This book, with its faded
blue paper and brown ink,
is the trial transcript
The actual testimony
of those who said
they had witnessed the events.
And as soon as
I started to read it,
the complexities
and contradictions
seemed to overwhelm
any easy road to the truth.
And one contradiction stood out
glaringly right from the start.
Professor Webster told one story
about that Friday afternoon,
while Ephraim Littlefield's
trial testimony
gives a very different
version of events.
On Friday,
after I'd eaten my dinner,
I was standing
near the front entry
and I saw Dr. Parkman
coming towards the college
SCHAMA:
Littlefield first noticed
irregularities
that Friday afternoon
when he arrived
for his daily cleaning
of Webster's laboratory.
(turning knob)
LITTLEFIELD:
I found the doors bolted
on the inside.
I thought that I heard Webster
in there walking.
I could hear the water running.
On Friday evening
at about half past five,
I was coming out of my kitchen
and I heard someone walking
on the stairs
(gasps)
Oh, it's you, Littlefield.
SCHAMA:
Though we have Littlefield's
account of that afternoon
from the trial transcript,
we don't have John Webster's,
because under
the law of the day,
defendants were not allowed
to testify on their own behalf.
So I had to rely
on Webster's letters
and other evidence
he left behind,
which paint a different picture.
Professor Webster's notes
suggest
he had been analyzing
the wood of a grapevine
for chemical properties.
(knock on door)
(knock on door)
Ah, good day,
Dr. Parkman.
Please come in.
Are you ready for me
Dr. Webster?
Have you got the money?
Yes, yes, indeed I do.
I have
a partial payment,
as I promised.
SCHAMA:
According to Webster's account,
it was a brisk
and businesslike meeting.
In his notes, Webster maintained
he paid Dr. Parkman
the money he owed him.
There.
I've crossed out the debt.
I'll go to the courthouse
later today
and have it canceled.
I wish there were
more that I could do.
Oh, George, no, please.
You've done so much already.
Harriet and I are most grateful.
Have a good day.
SCHAMA:
Webster claims
he then left the laboratory
and was home in Cambridge
by 3:00
Well before Littlefield says
he saw him on the stairs.
Whose version
was I going to believe?
Webster, the Harvard professor,
or Ephraim Littlefield,
the janitor,
a man who trafficked
in dead bodies?
One thing was for sure.
Something happened here
in John Webster's laboratory
on that day in November 1849
and it was part
of a much larger story.
The "Boston Brahmins,"
the rich and powerful elite
to which George Parkman
and, in a more precarious way,
John Webster belonged
These were the men
who made this city what it was.
MAN:
One of the interesting things
about the Boston upper class
that distinguishes it
from other places is that there
was this appreciation of culture
and intellect and learning
that really made Boston
kind of special.
WOMAN:
Bostonians liked to call their
city the "Hub of the Universe"
and the "Athens of America."
They were proud of their
cultural institutions,
they were proud of their social
reforms such as temperance,
and anti-slavery
and women's rights.
And they believed
themselves to be
the most morally pure city
in America.
SCHAMA:
But by 1849,
deep cracks were appearing
in Boston's smooth facade.
Irish immigrants were flooding
in by the tens of thousands.
The Brahmins peered at them
nervously
as though they were
a lower order of human.
In the words
of one rich Bostonian,
the Athens of America was
becoming the Dublin of America.
SHAW:
These Brahmins discussed
the immigrants,
they discussed the poverty,
they discussed frightening
occurrences
which were taking place
in the city,
the necessity of a bigger
police force, the filth
All the problems
that a little city has
when it becomes a big city.
And so there was a tension
in town.
SCHAMA:
So when the prominent
George Parkman
vanished from the streets,
it shook a city already on edge.
As days passed, Parkman's family
grew desperate for information.
They plastered the city with
posters offering a huge reward,
the equivalent
of $200,000 today.
And they alerted
the brand-new Boston police.
My name is Francis Tukey.
I am the city marshal.
I was first made acquainted
with the disappearance
of Dr. George Parkman
on Saturday, November 24.
I sent word to police officers
at the west end of the city
and told them to make such
inquiries for him as they could
without making
unnecessary publicity.
SCHAMA:
Marshal Francis Tukey had been
appointed by the Boston Brahmins
to keep an eye on the unruly
new immigrant population.
The first place that Tukey
went to was the Irish
The usual scapegoats
whenever anything went wrong.
When no clues came to light,
the police dredged the
Charles River and Boston Harbor.
They found nothing.
The police came back to
the Harvard Medical College
The last place
Parkman had been seen
A building of mixed reputation.
HALTTUNEN:
The Brahmins
and the people of Harvard
were, of course, extremely proud
of the Harvard Medical College,
proud of the contributions that
medicine was making to Boston.
SCHAMA:
But the general public
saw it differently.
To them, the medical college
was a sinister place
where dissection was performed
A terrifying, ungodly practice.
A lot of the citizens of Boston
thought of the medical school
as a dirty, foul, stinking,
smelly place
where they had dead bodies
and threw them into the river,
and the less they had
to do with it, the better.
SCHAMA:
Rumors began to fly
that the medical college held
the secret to Parkman's fate,
and Marshal Tukey ordered
a search.
Though according
to Littlefield's account,
the police made
only a cursory effort.
(knocking)
STORY:
Tukey's people did not do
a thorough job
of investigating
Webster's quarters.
The police are here
to search the College,
Dr. Webster.
We're searching
the whole neighborhood,
Dr. Webster.
STORY:
First of all,
they were not, in fact, sleuths.
Go on, men, but be
careful about it.
STORY:
Secondly,
I think it was difficult
for people to credit the idea
that a Harvard professor
actually did this sort of thing.
What would be in here, then?
That's where I keep
my valuable
and dangerous articles.
SCHAMA:
The way Littlefield
told the story,
the Harvard professor
was unperturbed
as the search began
until the police discovered
Webster's locked privy door.
What place is this?
SCHAMA:
And it appeared to Littlefield
that the professor
suddenly seemed anxious
to divert their attention.
That's Dr. Webster's
private privy.
Gentlemen
here's another room.
TUKEY:
Please pardon
the inconvenience, Doctor.
SCHAMA:
But once again,
whom am I to believe?
Because according
to other accounts,
Professor Webster didn't act
as if he had anything to hide.
HALTTUNEN:
The afternoon
of the disappearance,
Webster dropped into his
favorite restaurant, Brigham's,
to dine on a mutton chop, took
the omnibus back to Cambridge
and went to a party that evening
with his friends and family,
as he always did.
MOORE:
He looked very neat and clean
and calm and collected.
Most people saw him as the
same old Professor Webster.
They didn't see any change
in his appearance at all.
Someone even asked Webster
in the course
of one of these evenings,
"Well, John, you were apparently
"one of the last people
to see him.
Are you a suspect?"
And he came out and said,
"Do I look like someone
who would be a murderer?"
And they all laughed.
(Webster laughing)
SCHAMA:
But Ephraim Littlefield couldn't
help suspecting Webster.
Was he motivated
by the reward money?
Or did he want to end
speculation
about his own role
in Parkman's disappearance?
HALTTUNEN:
Littlefield was becoming
the ideal suspect,
because the spectacle of
dissection was so terrifying
to people at this time,
and because there were
always rumors
that anyone able to supply
the needed bodies for such study
had to be a grave robber.
LITTLEFIELD:
Whenever I went out of the
college, someone would say,
"Dr. Parkman
is in the medical college
and will be found there
if he is ever found anywhere."
I could never go
out of the building
without hearing such remarks.
SCHAMA:
Littlefield testified
that he thought it was Webster
who was acting suspiciously,
keeping unusually long hours.
LITTLEFIELD:
I went to his laboratory
and tried to look
through the keyhole,
but the catch was over it
on the inside
and I could not see through.
(footsteps inside room)
So I lay on the floor.
But I could only see him
as high up as his knees.
(footfalls)
I found it curious
that Professor Webster kept
his laboratory door locked
nearly all the time
in the days following
Dr. Parkman's disappearance.
SCHAMA:
When five days had passed
with no new information,
Ephraim Littlefield
took the next step.
To solve the mystery,
he would search the bowels
of the medical college,
beneath John Webster's
locked privy.
LITTLEFIELD:
All other parts
had been searched,
and if nothing should be found
in the privy,
I could convince the public
that Dr. Parkman had not met
with foul play in the college.
HALTTUNEN:
The question for us
is why he would undertake
such a horrific job.
The only way he could get into
that privy vault was to descend
through a trapdoor into a very
dark and sewage-filled area
maybe four feet high,
and then crawl on his hands
and knees 60 feet
to reach the privy vault.
The air was so bad down there
that he had trouble
keeping his lantern lit.
He had to tunnel his way through
five courses of brickwork
using a hammer and a crowbar,
and the entire task took him
about a day and a half.
LITTLEFIELD:
I put my wife
to watch the doors,
telling her to let no one in
unless she saw who it was.
(muffled metallic clank,
thumping)
I told her if Dr. Webster came
to the door, not to let him in
unless she first came
into the kitchen
and gave four raps
on the floor to warn me.
(muffled hammering)
MAN:
For a historian
interested in a person
who left no record,
like Littlefield,
the trial transcript becomes
our way into it.
It's a complicated way into it.
It's not Littlefield
speaking to us.
It's Littlefield
answering questions
that are being posed to him by
lawyers with particular agendas,
mediated through
a court reporter.
But we have Littlefield's voice.
LITTLEFIELD:
I knocked the bigness
of the hole right through.
I managed to get in
and to get the light
and my head into the hole,
and then I held my light
forward.
And the first thing which I saw
was the pelvis of a man
and two parts of a leg.
SCHAMA:
The testimony tells us
what Littlefield saw
Or rather what he said he saw.
But was he telling
everything he knew?
MOORE:
He knew just exactly where to
break through that brick wall,
and as soon as he broke through,
there was the body.
It rather suggests
that he had put it there,
and I believe he had.
(chuckling)
SCHAMA:
The police, however,
thought otherwise.
They testified that they took
Webster that evening
from his Cambridge home
across the river to Boston.
The officers told him only
that he was wanted
at the medical college.
But when the police carriage
stopped,
Webster saw they'd brought him
to the city jail.
WEBSTER:
What does all this mean?!
MAN:
Dr. Webster,
we have finished
looking for the body
of Dr. Parkman.
We shall not look any more.
You are now in custody
on a charge of the murder
of Dr. Parkman.
(gasps)
Have they found Dr. Parkman?
It's not proper
for me to answer
that question, sir.
You might tell me something.
Where did they find him?
How came they to suspect me?
Does anyone but you have access
to your private apartments,
Professor Webster?
No, no one had access
to my private apartments
except the janitor,
who makes the fire
(wonderingly):
That villain.
SCHAMA:
Though Webster did his best
to implicate Littlefield,
the police took no notice.
But I couldn't let it go.
There were so many
strange things
about Ephraim Littlefield's
behavior,
I felt I'd never get
to the bottom of the story
until I understood what part
the janitor had played
in Dr. Parkman's disappearance.
Unlike his rich employers,
Littlefield left behind
scant evidence
of how he thought or spoke.
But the voice of men
like Littlefield
does survive in letters
and diaries of the time,
and I read enough of them
to make me think
I could hear him speak.
Ah, is that a fresh
one, then, Littlefield?
Yes, doctor.
SCHAMA:
I heard a voice
full of resentment towards
the Harvard professors,
those lofty men of science,
as he cleared their rubbish
and got them their cadavers.
And as I searched deeper into
how the working class lived,
I felt myself being pulled
toward a different kind
of storytelling,
joining for the first time
the many writers who choose
fiction, not history,
as their instrument
to make the past live again.
Maybe, I thought,
what I was after
was not a literal
documentary truth
but a poetic truth,
an imaginative truth,
and for that I was going
to have to become
my own resurrection man
I was going to have to make
these characters live again
And invent what might have run
through Littlefield's mind
as he crawled towards
Webster's privy.
LITTLEFIELD:
I never liked it
Having to sell cadavers
to the students for dissection
But how was I and Caroline
and the children to live
on the pittance
the college paid me otherwise?
You learn a lot tending
the professors' stoves,
washing their sinks,
clearing their trash.
The temptation
in dealing with a person
like Ephraim Littlefield,
who is inarticulate
That is, who doesn't leave
copious written records
Is, I think,
to put words into his mouth.
Uh, and whether they are
the kinds of words
that he would have spoken
is always an issue.
(clanking)
LITTLEFIELD:
Webster, he was always at me
like some yapping dog.
There had always been
bad feelings between us.
I knew he wanted
to be rid of me years ago
and had told stories
to the dean,
but nothing would come of it.
But now who was the villain?
GOODMAN:
Most human experience
happens inside our heads
in what we're thinking.
It happens in conversations
among people.
The huge mass of human
experience happens there.
Whole realms are inaccessible
unless a historian
is willing to think
about how he or she
can use the evidence
to get inside people's heads.
But once the historian invents,
he moves from
the genre of history
into the genre of fiction.
The fiction may still yield
historical understanding,
but they
are two different genres.
SCHAMA:
I knew I was crossing a line
historians don't usually cross
The line that separates
history from fiction
But instinctively I felt
I was coming to understand
Ephraim Littlefield's
motivation.
He was not a murderer.
It was bitterness
towards Webster
and towards his own lot in life
that drove him
to do that dirty job.
MAIER:
It's extremely important
that historians do not present
an account of the past
as a work of scholarship
if, in fact, it is fiction.
But fiction can convey the past
more effectively in some ways
than certain kinds
of traditional history
because it does create
the ambiance of the past.
God!
LITTLEFIELD:
I knew enough about bodies and
bones to recognize what I saw:
a pelvis, some pieces of leg.
They were so white,
you see, so clean and white.
SCHAMA:
With Webster's arrest,
crowds converged
on the medical college,
threatening to burn it
to the ground.
SHAW:
Working-class Boston became
excited by the notion
that ghoulish occurrences
that they assumed were taking
place in the medical college
were actually
taking place there.
SCHAMA:
Rioting swept the city.
The mayor called out troops
to restore order.
As for Webster's
fellow Boston Brahmins,
they found it inconceivable
that one of their own
could have committed
such a heinous crime.
A Harvard colleague
of Webster's wrote,
"The melancholy
is indescribable.
"People cannot eat;
they feel sick.
"If Dr. Webster
has committed the murder,
"it seems as if
we are to lose all confidence
in the human race."
John Webster's trial began
on March 19, 1850
and lasted 12 days.
Reporters came from London,
Paris and Berlin.
The shocking details of
the Brahmin's fall from grace
kept the public riveted.
STORY:
There were 120 periodicals
in Boston around 1850.
There would be people hawking
newspapers all over the place;
you couldn't avoid it.
It would be almost like the O.J.
Simpson trial on television.
And this is a perfect example
of sort of, uh
a serious social drama
becoming mass entertainment.
SCHAMA:
One entrepreneur advertised wax
statues of Webster and Parkman,
and newspaper accounts exploited
the public's growing appetite
for murder mysteries.
HALTTUNEN:
Detective fiction
was almost brand new
at the time
of the Parkman murder.
And journalists found
every possible detective fiction
convention that they needed
to tell this story.
This story begins, of course,
with a mysterious disappearance.
It then moves
to a dramatic revelation.
It has a red herring in the form
of Ephraim Littlefield.
And these are conventions
that readers are becoming
more and more familiar with,
based on their reading
of fiction.
SCHAMA:
The city marshal ordered a chain
wrapped around the courthouse
to control the thousands
of spectators
who were rotated through
in ten-minute shifts.
Professor Webster
maintained his innocence
throughout the proceedings,
despite some damning evidence.
WITNESS:
After we took the body out,
we went into the laboratory.
I reached into the stove
and pulled out
a chunk of burnt coal.
A piece of bone
was sticking to it.
SCHAMA:
But before the prosecutors could
prove Webster was a murderer,
they had to convince the jury
that these body parts were
indeed those of George Parkman.
The first days of the trial
found Boston's top doctors
offering their expertise,
including one of the earliest
examples of dental forensics
in American legal history.
I am Nathan C. Keep.
I am a surgeon-dentist.
Dr. Lewis presented me
three portions of mineral teeth,
which had been taken
from the furnace.
I recognized them as being
the same teeth
that I had made for Dr. Parkman
three years before.
(crowd murmuring)
I immediately said
"Dr. Parkman is gone;
we shall see him no more."
SCHAMA:
George Parkman's dentist
testified that
remnants of false teeth
that were found in Webster's
laboratory stove
did, indeed, belong to Parkman.
John Webster's lawyers
called another dentist,
who testified that they could
have belonged to anyone.
There was nothing dissimilar
SCHAMA:
With so many
contradictory witnesses,
I would have found it
very difficult
to judge John Webster
guilty or innocent.
But one piece of the testimony
jumped out at me
as very significant.
George Parkman's brother-in-law,
Robert Gould Shaw,
described a fateful encounter
on the street
some months before
Parkman's disappearance.
ROBERT SHAW (dramatized):
I was walking with Dr. Parkman
one day in Mt. Vernon Street
when we met Dr. Webster.
After we passed,
I spoke of Dr. Webster's
application to me for money
and of his sale to me
of his minerals.
Dr. Parkman thereupon said,
"They are not his to sell;
I have a mortgage on them."
He then said that
he would see Dr. Webster
and give him
a piece of his mind.
SCHAMA:
It suddenly dawned on me
that Shaw's description
of that brief meeting
could begin to explain
what had set these men
on their fatal collision course.
I discovered
Webster had squandered
his inheritance early on,
and his determination to hang on
to his position in society
repeatedly got him
into financial trouble.
STORY:
Professor Webster
got in over his head
because he couldn't
quite afford to live
the way some of his fellow
professors lived,
like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
who was married
to a very wealthy woman.
And he had four daughters,
so he really needed
to throw soirees and parties
and make sure that the daughters
had fancy dresses and so forth.
SCHAMA:
His scientific curiosity led him
into more
extravagant expenditures.
He helped Harvard buy
a $3,000 mastodon,
though he couldn't meet
his own debts.
Soon he was borrowing
from wealthy acquaintances
to keep up the lavish lifestyle.
I also discovered a dark side.
Rumors of a rape lingered
from his student days in London,
and he appeared to have
a streak of cruelty.
PATTON:
He took a puppy into his class,
and the story goes that Webster
beat this puppy's head in
in order to show what happened
to a living organism
when they were when they
were injured in such a way,
and then let the puppy die
without any help.
SCHAMA:
But what secrets
in George Parkman's past
would explain his intense rage
towards Webster?
PARKMAN SHAW:
To understand George Parkman,
you need to understand
a little bit about his father,
Samuel Parkman.
After all, his father had been
the richest man in town.
But, he was a bully;
his children were shy, retiring.
George Parkman, his son,
must have felt under
tremendous pressure to perform.
SCHAMA:
After getting his degree
from Harvard,
the young Parkman
studied medicine abroad.
In Paris, Parkman was introduced
to progressive methods
for treating mental illness,
and he discovered his calling.
He came home
determined to create
the first modern institution
for the insane in Massachusetts.
He provided family money
to help establish an asylum,
and he assumed the trustees
would name him head.
But Parkman was passed over.
His hopes dashed, he descended
into a bitter middle age.
PARKMAN SHAW:
He must have felt small,
incapable and artless
compared to his extremely
aggressive, successful father.
And, um, this led
to a personality
that was, at best, rebarbative.
He was quite
an unattractive man.
SCHAMA:
Parkman left medicine to oversee
his tenement buildings
throughout Boston's slums
and to become a money lender.
By 1849 he had lent John Webster
some $2,400
and held the mortgage on nearly
everything Webster owned.
PARKMAN SHAW:
George Parkman would find
a penniless professor
really beneath his dignity.
But there was also
the element of jealousy.
Here was a man who Parkman
thought his social inferior
succeeding in medicine
where Parkman had failed.
SCHAMA:
Finally, I felt I had
enough information
to put words in these
characters' mouths.
That moment on the street no
longer played out in silence.
Now their conversation
came to me, loud and clear.
You know, he made
an application of money
to me some time ago.
I tried to make
the money a gift,
but he wouldn't hear of it.
He insisted on pledging me
his mineral collection,
though what I would do with it
I have no idea.
Why, the impertinence!
I hold a mortgage on everything
John Webster owns,
including that
mineral collection.
It's an affront
to right dealing!
It's a naive fraud.
It's an abuse
of friendly generosity
and a monstrous outrage!
It's a trivial matter
Didn't I use my good services
to secure him his
appointment at Harvard?
Through all his
years of slovenly
and erratic conduct,
haven't I sustained
this ridiculous
and unworthy man
if only for the sake
of his wife and children
and the college?
Is this how such charity
is to be repaid?
I'm going to give him
a piece of my mind.
Oh, George, calm yourself.
It's a trivial thing.
WOMAN:
The historian's fictionalizing
can help him or her ask new
questions about his evidence,
questions that might never
have come up before.
When you're trying
to put yourself
fully in the mind of your actors
and see them moving through the
streets of Boston, for instance,
or moving through a trial,
you suddenly think
about things you never
had occurred to you before.
You might even then be able
to go back to the evidence
and find the answers.
(men laughing)
Wonderful, wonderful.
SCHAMA:
Now I knew why Parkman
was so furious.
It wasn't the money.
It was the burning shame
of being fooled
by the likes of Webster.
I will see you in court,
John Webster!
I'll have an officer
put at your house!
SCHAMA:
So when I learned of Parkman's
merciless hounding of Webster,
I could easily put myself
in the professor's place
and feel the unbearable
humiliation
of Dr. Parkman's threats.
That George really is
an extremely sharp
and disagreeable man!
Going so far as
to accost me in our home
and in front of our friends!
Of course, you know
that would be nothing
compared to any kind
of ordeal in the courts.
You do know that
George has now threatened
to take this to the law?
How would we ever bear
the mortification?
Oh, Harriet, what
in God's name are we to do?
DAVIS:
It is like the experience of
that novel writers have,
when they say,
"I create my characters,
and then I stop writing them,
they write me."
And it's as though the
historical figure beckons you.
But it is not,
if you're a good historian,
just because you've made it up.
It's because you have richly
worked on the evidence.
SCHAMA:
Now that I felt free
to let my imagination work
to get me closer to the truth,
when I went back
to the trial transcript
to read about
John Webster's fate,
the words on paper
had much more emotional power.
It took the jury only two hours
to reach its verdict.
The clerk asked the foreman,
"What say you, is John White
Webster guilty or not guilty?"
"Guilty," the foreman answered.
(crying)
(breathlessly):
No!
(sobbing):
No.
Take me away!
Why have me here
to be gazed upon?
SCHAMA:
Webster was sentenced to hang
for the murder,
a fate which immediately struck
many people as far too harsh.
Like the jury, I now feel sure
John Webster did kill
George Parkman.
Whether or not he committed
a premeditated murder,
now, that's an entirely
different question.
We're probably never going
to know the whole truth,
but in the end, I do think
this is the most probable way
it all played out
on November 23, 1849.
(knock at door)
(knock at door)
Ah, good day,
Dr. Parkman.
Please come in.
Are you ready for me, sir?
I'm grateful you've come.
I'm hopeful that we
can discuss our affairs
and I might have
a chance to explain
my intentions
Have you got the money?
No, George, I cannot
pay you this week.
However, as soon as
the tickets are sold
to next term's lectures,
I assure you
You sent for me,
Dr. Webster.
I presumed because you had
the money you owed me.
Now you say you merely want
to discuss your intentions.
That is correct.
Here are your
promissory notes, sir
Worthless bits of paper
from a liar like you.
George, please,
you must understand
the tangle of circumstances
I find myself in.
Now, while I apologize
for any slight you may have
perceived on my part, I
I will take these notes
to a court officer.
You will be under arrest
by the day's end.
No, George, George!
For God's sakes, be reasonable!
Now, this is not
gentlemanly behavior!
You dare to speak to me
of the proper conduct
of a gentleman.
Were you acting like a gentleman
when you deceived me
When you lied to your friends?
Is that how a gentleman like you
conducts his affairs?
I'm telling you,
there's a simple
explanation for all this.
Here is a letter
from Dr. Hosack,
congratulating me
on your appointment
at the college.
Do you remember that, sir?
I appreciate everything
you've done for
I put you here and
I can have you removed
just as easily!
And I will,
you villainous cheat!
Surely you understand
my situation.
As soon as the new
term begins, I assure you,
I will make good
on the entire debt.
Lies and more lies!
I am not the fool
you take me for, Professor.
This time you've gone too far,
and I will have
your position removed!
No, George, my family,
my daughters!
Your family?!
Why weren't you thinking of them
as you pulled them
deeper into debt?
I have never done
anything to harm
or embarrass them!
And to the college,
and you are a rogue who
doesn't pay his debt,
(roars in anger) and a cheat!
WEBSTER:
George.
Come on, George.
Come on.
(exclaims)
(angrily):
George, why are you
doing this to me?!
Why are you doing this?
Oh, God!
(crying)
Oh, God!
George
I didn't
(crying)
(sighs deeply)
SCHAMA:
It was 19th-century Boston
that was writing the script now,
making these imaginings
credible.
And the story it was telling
was much bigger and much sadder
even than this extraordinary,
notorious crime,
because it was the story
of a whole community
in the process
of losing its innocence.
And the cast of characters
was caught up
in this grim rite of passage:
Webster, who was
trying desperately
to cling to the gentility
into which he was born
and which he thought
was his due;
Parkman, thwarted and frustrated
at not being able to follow
his chosen vocation;
Littlefield, condemned
to be polite
to those who were keeping him
in his place;
and the great city itself
The birthplace of America,
the hub of the new republic,
so it liked to think
Shaken to the core by an event
which turned upside-down
what it had always thought
was the right order of things.
John Webster was hanged
on August 30, 1850.
In proper Boston style,
the sheriff sent engraved
invitations to the city's VIPs.
Later that night,
Webster was hastily buried
in the unfashionable
Copps Hill cemetery.
Nothing could have been further
from his hopes of a stylish
funeral attended by his peers.
But secrecy was paramount
The grave robbers were about,
and a notorious corpse
like Webster's
would sell at a premium.
Apparently, there once
was a flat stone
marking John Webster's
last resting place,
but at some point that vanished,
so we actually don't really know
where his remains lie.
That seems altogether
appropriate in a story
all about disappearances,
all about the slipperiness
of the truth.
In any case, history is never
really about resting places,
about arrivals, conclusions.
It's a long journey
through memory,
stopping off here and there
to break bread with the dead.
In the end, history isn't
written to arrive at a verdict.
It's written like poetry
or philosophy or great fiction,
to help us explore the nature
of the human condition,
to understand what we are
through what we think
we've done.
There's more about
the Parkman murder
at American Experience Online.
Go behind the scenes on the set,
access trial documents
and news reports
and explore
19th-century medicine.
All this and more at PBS Online.
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