Bad Ends · STOP 05 · West End / MGH
A dentist identified Parkman from a set of false teeth he'd made in 1846.
Harvard Medical College stood on this short West End street, on land Dr. George Parkman gave it. In November 1849 Parkman walked in to collect a debt and didn't walk out. The janitor chiseled into the privy under a professor's lab; the furnace held a set of false teeth, and Parkman's dentist knew them as his own work. The hospital runs a medical history museum on the same street.
This is stop 5 of Bad Ends. Walk it - any two stops are free.
The plate
Collected on site
2 North Grove Street (outside, on the street)
Directions
The jury was out about three hours, roughly as long as the judge's charge to it.
More footnotes on the story card, in the app.
In these collections: After Dark, Crime Scenes
Near Charles/MGH · Near Science Park/West End · Near Bowdoin
Sources (8)
- Samuel and George Parkman: A Powerful West End Real Estate FamilyThe West End Museum · 2025-01-29
- Discovering the Pieces of Dr. George ParkmanStrange Remains (citing The Trial of Prof. John W. Webster, Redding and Co., 1850) · 2015-03-19
- Parkman-Webster murder caseWikipedia (lead only) · accessed 2026-10-10
- 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
- Murder in the medical schoolRoyal College of Surgeons of England, Library blog · n.d.
- Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and InnovationMassachusetts General Hospital · accessed 2026-10-10
- A 19th-century murder at Harvard Medical SchoolBoston.com · 2017-11-22
- The infamous tale of the murderous chemistry professorJSTOR Daily