Death
Parkman was murdered on Friday, November 23, 1849. After an extensive search by Derastus Clapp and other police officers from Francis Tukey's newly formed Boston police force, Parkman's dismembered and partly burned body was discovered on November 30 by Ephraim Littlefield, a janitor at Harvard Medical School. Parkman's funeral was held on December 6, an event for which thousands of people lined the streets of Boston.
John White Webster (May 20, 1793 – August 30, 1850), a professor of chemistry and geology at Harvard Medical School, was convicted for Parkman's murder on March 30, 1850, after a 12 day trial presided over by Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Edward Dexter Sohier and Pliny T. Merrick served as Webster's counsel, while Massachusetts Attorney General (later Governor) John Clifford and George Bemis led the prosecution. Webster was executed by hanging in Boston on August 30, 1850.
Read more about this topic: George Parkman
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Let those who desire a secure homeland conquer it. Let those who do not conquer it live under the whip and in exile, watched over like wild animals, cast from one country to another, concealing the death of their souls with a beggar’s smile from the scorn of free men.”
—José Martí (1853–1895)
“half-way up the hill, I see the Past
Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
And hear above me on the autumnal blast
The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.”
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“To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?”
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