Collection · 8 stops · 2 packs

Crime Scenes

Robberies, hangings, frauds and the courtrooms that sorted them out.

1. Bad Ends
   On August 30, 1850, Boston hanged a Harvard chemistry professor about here.
   
2. Bad Ends
   A dentist identified Parkman from a set of false teeth he'd made in 1846.
   2 North Grove Street (outside, on the street)
3. Bad Ends
   The plinth says she was hanged on the Common. A judge's diary points a mile south.
   Beacon Street just west of Bowdoin Street, below the State House east wing
4. Bad Ends
   The stone people call Hester Prynne's may belong to a woman the court found 'greatly negligent' in her child's death.
   Tremont Street at School Street, next to King's Chapel (58 Tremont St)
5. Bad Ends
   The best old source on the 'hanging tree' is a surgeon's pamphlet, and he meant hanging in effigy.
   On the Common, uphill from Frog Pond, toward Tremont and West Streets
6. Bad Ends
   A 1911 paper put Boston's Quaker gallows out here on the Neck, using a judge's diary and a 1722 map.
   Washington Street at East Berkeley Street, South End
7. Banned in Boston
   In the 1890s a public speech on the Common needed the mayor's permit, and Oliver Wendell Holmes said that was fine.
   Brewer Fountain Plaza, inside the Common from the Park Street station headhouses
8. Banned in Boston
   The Censors' Last Address