Report of the case of John W. Webster, indicted for the murder of George Parkman, before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts : including the hearing on the petition for a writ of error, the prisoner's confessional statements and application for a commutation of sentence, and an appendix containing several interesting matters never before published / by George Bemis.

  • Webster, John White, 1793-1850.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the case of John W. Webster, indicted for the murder of George Parkman, before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts : including the hearing on the petition for a writ of error, the prisoner's confessional statements and application for a commutation of sentence, and an appendix containing several interesting matters never before published / by George Bemis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    aiding in the examination of the bones found in the chemi- cal laboratory, as also of certain chips of wood, on which we had been shown certain brown stains. Dr. F. S. Ainsworth, also assisted us in the selection of fragments of bone from the cinders of the furnace. The bones found by us, were in a mass of cinders and ashes, which had been removed from the furnace by the police officers, and were placed in a box, and had the appearance of .having been exposed to fire. They were much broken, and were, in some instances, partially fused into the cinders. We identified, at that time, the following bones: right os-calcis, right astragalus, tibia, and fibula, phalanges, (resembling those of the ring, or middle finger,) coronoid process of the lower jaw, and numerous fragments of a human skull; a human tooth, with a hole in it, appearing as if it had been filled by a dentist's operation, and three blocks of mineral- teeth, with platinum rivets, — one of them entire, but wanting the gold plate, on which mineral-teeth are usually set. A pearl shirt-button was also found in the furnace, partially calcined. Numerous little copper cups, were also found in the furnace, and exactly resemble the new copper cups found in one of the laboratory-drawers. Many pieces of glass, were found among the cinders of the furnace. Masses of metal, were also found, which proved by analysis, in 25 grains, to consist of; — Tin, 12.19 Lead, 11.95 24.14 Hence it is, evidently, tea-chest lead. The cinders of the furnace, pounded and washed, yielded globules of gold, some silver, and a little copper. In the por- tion of ashes and cinders, worked by me, 30 grains of gold were found. My attention having been called to the state of parts of the human body, which Dr. Lewis was examining, I took portions of the skin and muscles from the thorax, and tested them by reddened litmus-paper, and found those parts strongly charged with alkali. I found that the discolored thigh, also, had been imbued with alkali, and stained by the tan. I took portions of the skin from the thorax and thigh, and carried them to my laboratory, and ascertained by chemical analysis, that the alkali contained in them, was potash, mixed with a very little sea salt. The skin, in several places, appeared to have been corroded