Bad Ends · STOP 04 · West End
On August 30, 1850, Boston hanged a Harvard chemistry professor about here.
On August 30, 1850, Boston hanged a Harvard chemistry professor in a jail yard in the West End, where the street and the neighbors could watch. John White Webster had killed Dr. George Parkman over a debt of about $483. The jail is long gone, and so is most of the old West End, but the neighborhood's own museum stands about where the jail did.
This is stop 4 of Bad Ends. Walk it - any two stops are free.
The plate
Collected on site
This jail is where Boston's gallows ended up. From the spring of 1826, according to a 1911 Bostonian Society paper, executions moved off the open ground and into the Leverett Street jail yard.
More footnotes on the story card, in the app.
In these collections: Crime Scenes
Near North Station · Near Bowdoin · Near Haymarket · Near Science Park/West End
Sources (11)
- Crime Scene: The West End's Three JailsThe West End Museum · n.d.
- Samuel and George Parkman: A Powerful West End Real Estate FamilyThe West End Museum · 2025-01-29
- Webster trial and executionWhen and Where in Boston · n.d.
- Leverett Street JailWikipedia (lead only; cites Savage, Chronological History of the Boston Watch and Police, 1865) · accessed 2026-10-10
- Grisly Murder Case Shocked Med SchoolThe Harvard Crimson · 1957-04-19
- Professor John White Webster: science educator and convicted murdererPalmer, in Chemistry: Bulgarian Journal of Science Education 22(3) · 2013
- Murder in the medical schoolRoyal College of Surgeons of England, Library blog · n.d.
- The trial of Prof. John W. Webster, indicted for the murder of Dr. George Parkman, at the Medical CollegeRedding and Company, Boston; digitized by Wellcome Collection (Public Domain Mark) · 1850
- Harvard's Chemistry Professor Who Was Also a MurdererMental Floss · 2015-06-17
- Copp's Hill Burying Ground is establishedWhen and Where in Boston · undated
- Where Were the Quakers Hanged?Michael J. Canavan, Proceedings of the Bostonian Society (annual meeting 1911) · 1911