Blood & Ivy: The 1849 Murder That Scandalized Harvard

by Paul Collins

Overview

“Well-researched and beautifully written.…Collins knows how to build suspense.” —San Francisco Chronicle

On November 23rd of 1849, in the heart of Boston, one of the city’s richest men simply vanished. Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston’s West End, was last seen that afternoon visiting his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Police scoured city tenements and the harbor, and leads put the elusive Dr. Parkman at sea or hiding in Manhattan. But one Harvard janitor held a much darker suspicion: that their ruthless benefactor had never left the Medical School building alive.

His shocking discoveries in a chemistry professor’s laboratory engulfed America in one of its most infamous trials: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. John White Webster. A baffling case of red herrings, grave robbery, and dismemberment, it became a landmark case in the use of medical forensics and the meaning of reasonable doubt. Paul Collins brings nineteenth-century Boston back to life in vivid detail, weaving together newspaper accounts, letters, journals, court transcripts, and memoirs from this groundbreaking case.

Rich in characters and evocative in atmosphere, Blood & Ivy explores the fatal entanglement of new science and old money in one of America’s greatest murder mysteries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357325
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/16/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	496,103
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Paul Collins is the author of nine books of nonfiction. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and chair of the English Department at Portland State University.

Table of Contents

A Note on the Text xv

Prologue xvii

I Scenes of the Crime

1 The Way into Harvard 3

2 On Pins and Crowbars 11

3 The Skeleton Box 20

4 The Great World Goes Clanging On 30

II The Victim

5 A Bad Business 41

6 A Gentleman Unknown 50

7 The Yellow Envelope 59

8 Some Aberration of Mind 67

III The Suspect

9 Thanksgiving by the Fire 81

10 The Final Reward 88

11 Wickedness Takes Eleven 96

12 "I Shal Be Kiled" 104

IV The Accused

13 Pistols Drawn 115

14 A Ruined Man 122

15 Old Grimes is Dead 131

16 A Lifetime of Uprightness 142

V The Trial

17 In the Dead House 155

18 Good Men and True 168

19 The Catalog of Bones 180

20 Mesmeric Revelation 192

VI The Verdict

21 Twelve Men in Massachusetts 209

22 Law Manufactured for the Occasion 224

23 A Man in Error 235

24 Closing Hours 247

Epilogue 259

Acknowledgments 271

Notes 273

Sources 325

Illustration Credits 337

Index 339

Editorial Reviews

"Historical true crime, a courtroom drama, a period piece, and a delve into American literary history, all rolled into one."

The Portland Mercury - Joshua James Amberson

"Ushers readers into…the incestuously tight world of Brahmin Boston."

The Economist

"Engaging and propulsive.… [A] highly intelligent and historically accurate look at a scandalous murder at one of this country’s most elite institutions of higher education.… Collins does a superb job of bringing the players in this drama to life."

Addison County Independent - Jenny Lyons

"A page-turning account of one of the most famed murders of mid-19^th-century America.…Collins offers a keen portrait of the social and cultural milieu in which this shocking murder and subsequent trial were played out."

Minneapolis Star Tribune - Tim Brady

"Collins has a fine eye for the telling historical detail."

Seattle Times - Mary Ann Gwinn

In the spirited words of Donald J. Trump, defending Putin from Bill O'Reilly's charge of being a murderer: "You think our country is so innocent?" No, not innocent. Just less Machiavellian—and funnier. For a sample of American style, see Paul Collins's lively exposé, Blood & Ivy: The 1849 Murder That Scandalized Harvard.

The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio

05/28/2018
With the rigor of a historian and a novelist’s eye for detail, Collins (Duel with the Devil) constructs a mesmerizing account of the 1849 murder of a socially prominent, Harvard-educated physician. The victim, Dr. George Parkman, who was last seen entering Harvard Medical College on the afternoon of November 23, was a stern and humorless man who despite maintaining an active practice spent most of his days patrolling the streets of Boston’s West End collecting rent from the tenants of his numerous properties. His disappearance galvanized law enforcement and Boston locals, due in part to a hefty reward for his body, which was eventually found dismembered in the lab of John White Webster, a distinguished professor of chemistry who had fallen into a prodigious amount of debt and was subsequently convicted of murder and hanged. Combining elements of a police procedural, a legal drama, and a comedy of manners, Collins adroitly explores the characters immersed in the tragedy and their tangled relationships, with appearances by the era’s celebrities of literature, medicine, and law, including Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Herman Melville, and Henry Longfellow. This is a fine mixture of true crime, historical exposition, and class conflict in mid-19th-century American history. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"Tells the story of one of the most sensational crimes of 19th century America. Well-researched and beautifully written, his book is filled with Dickensian characters....Collins knows how to build suspense."

San Francisco Chronicle

"[A] lively exposé."

Marilyn Stasio

★ 2018-05-06
A true-crime chronicle of dark doings among the upper crust of Harvard Medical School in the middle of the 19th century.On Nov. 23, 1849, the esteemed Dr. George Parkman went missing. The dour doctor, a well-known lecturer in the nascent science of medicine at Harvard, was last seen making his rounds. At the time, he was also collecting considerable cash receipts from his many real estate ventures. Naturally, foul play was suspected, and substantial rewards for information were posted. Collins (Chair, English/Portland State Univ.; Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living, 2014, etc.) introduces a cast of diverse players. There was Littlefield, the school's janitor, who found the grisly remains of Parkman dismembered and burned in the laboratory and adjacent privy used only by chemistry professor John White Webster. Then there was Cambridge marshal Francis Tukey, whose past was not unblemished. Also included in this drama were Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. A nimble writer, the author skillfully sets the stage for this 19th-century murder mystery. Skeletons, death masks, pickled organs, and cadavers abounded in the medical school. There were demijohns, casks, and bubbling retorts in the labs, and outside the building were pools of fetid water, clattering hansom cabs, and an occasional riot. Mesmerism was popular, and reporters did their agitated best to add colorful detail, true or imaginary, to their stories. It was a wonderful world of daguerreotypes, roaring printing presses, and even a mechanical man, all advertised to be powered by steam. The murderer was discovered, and the subsequent trial featured some forensic and jurisprudential innovations. Dental evidence was seriously employed for the first time, and the judge's charge to the jury became accepted law. Collins also reveals lively bits of information about police procedurals as practiced during that time.A vivid true-crime tale from a fascinating bygone era.

Kirkus Reviews