When Dr. George Parkman was first reported missing, Boston Marshal Francis Tukey and his police force began an investigation in the neighborhoods of the city's poor immigrants.
The Parkman murder has been called the O. J. Simpson trial of the nineteenth century. It had everything a good murder story needs: a rich, well-known victim; a well-respected suspect; gruesome evidence; and a possible underdog hero.
The trial of John Webster was best known in 1850 for its Boston Brahmin ties and its gruesome nature. By means of his charge to the jury, however, Judge Lemuel Shaw ensured that the trial would hold a place in legal history.
The nineteenth century, in which George Parkman and John Webster learned medicine, was a pivotal time for the transformation of medicine into a modern science.
One of the greatest remaining sources of contemporary information about the Parkman murder and the Webster trial are the newspapers of Boston and its surroundings in 1849 and 1850.
The roots of modern detective fiction go back over 150 years to a Boston-born master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. And the most shocking true-crime story in Poe's day was the Parkman murder.
In 1944 Miriam Menkin performed the first laboratory fertilization of a human egg. But Menkin would soon be forced to leave the lab she loved, and test tube babies would remain decades away.
Drs. Howard and Georgeanna Jones postponed their retirement to open an in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinic in Virginia and ended up presiding over the birth of America’s first test tube baby.
The wealthy businessmen and fellow New Yorkers who financed Cyrus Field's vision of a submarine cable across the Atlantic and served as the board of the company.
