Short Journal of Harvard Crime

Crime like a little old lady pickpocket, seldom seems a menace at Harvard. The University police are perennially plagued with student riots and hoaxes, but in 326 years, not been a single reported murder undergraduate by another.

A decade ago, however, the undergraduates' perfect mark was threatened by a theological who had been consulting the student Services psychiatrists. Labelled paranoid by the Harvard doctors, the student responded admirably to treatment, but he soon broke off his studies and visits to psychiatrists and journeyed down to Yale. His relationship New Haven doctors seemed to lack something for a little more than six months after leaving Cambridge he shot and killed a phyciatrist and his wife.

While the students' record remains unstained, the Faculty has one much-publicized ledger, the infamous Webster-Park-man murder case of a century ago.

On a Friday afternoon in November of 1849 Dr. George Parkman, a widely known philanthropist and instructor at the Medical School, disappeared. A man known for his punctuality and methodically businesslike habits, he had been missed he did not come home for lunch. His son-in-law, Robert Gould Shaw, a leading merchant, offered a $3000 reward for his safe return and on Saturday afternoon had placed advertisements in all the papers and had circulated 8,000 handbills.

The publicity brought in floods of replies. One said that Parkman had been "beguiled Cambridge and done in," while another had him, head covered with blood, driven at breakneck speed" across Craigie's Bridge in Cambridge. One of the more plausible reports was that of a servant in Parkman's household. He recalled that the Doctor had had a call earlier on Friday, who reminded him of a 1:30 appointment on that day. The speaker not be identified.

Sunday morning John White Webster, Professor of Chemistry and Mineralology at Harvard, appeared at the Parkman identified himself as the visitor who had stopped by Friday morning to remind Parkman of his appointment. The engagement had been kept; Webster said he had paid the good doctor $483.64 for a mortgage Parkman had on his mineral collection. "I told Dr. Parkman," he said, "that he hadn't discharged the mortgage; to which he replied, 'I will see to that. I will see to that.' He then went very rapidly from the room."

The mortgage had been a cause of long bitterness between the two men. Webster had luxurious tastes and lived beyond his means, and he had borrowed heavily from the independently wealthy Parkman. Parkman became furious with his debtor when he found that both he and another creditor had been given the same bill of sale as a security. He pursued Webster relentlessly and finally made an appointment to see the latter at his laboratory to collect the debt.

Parkman never returned. For two days Webster remained behind bolted doors in his laboratory, with his furnace and two stoves going full blast, and the water running continuously. He left word that he was "performing experiments."

THE police investigation revealed nothing, and Webster no doubt breathed a sign of relief. But he failed to consider Ephraim Littlefield, his janitor. On Wednesday Littlefield attacked the bricked-up vault in the basement with a chisel. Two days later he finally broke through the wall. "I managed to get my light and my head into the hole, and then I was not disturbed with the draft. I held my light forward, and the first thing which I saw was the pelvis of a man, and two parts of a leg. I knew that it was no place for these things." During those two furious nights in his laboratory Webster had dissected Parkman's body and cooked away most of the flesh. The few parts of the corpse Webster had not destroyed were found strewn in a blood bath about the floor of the vault.

Littlefield hurriedly locked the cellar door and sent for the police, who promptly arrested Webster. When told of the discovery he gulped out "Did they find the whole body?" Then he swallowed a small strychnine pill, which unfortunately had no effect even in his excited condition. At his trial three months later Webster admitted to striking Parkman with a stick of wood in the heat of an argument, but he stoutly maintained he had not meant to kill his creditor. Although the court-room gallery had room for only 100, it is reported that over 60,000 people saw some part of the trial.

The jury was out only three hours, and in August of 1850 John Webster was condemned to hang. All Boston thrilled to see a Harvard professor kicking on the gallows of the Leverett Street Jail.

Things are a bit more peaceful these days. Last year, as every year, "about four or five students" were attacked by "unknowns."

The most prevalent major crime at Harvard is suicide. In fact, Dr. William D. Temby, a University Health Services psychiatrist, who made a recent study of the problem of suicide, said that Harvard students are killing themselves off at the rate of three every two years. Since 1936, when health records began to be kept diligently, there have been 34 student suicides at the University.

At some time or another most students will listen to the tales of the night patrolmen about the ingenious ways Harvard men devise to do away with themselves. It is a moot point whether there is any basis in fact behind these grisly episodes, but for entertainment on a late evening in exam period they are unmatched.

One story has it that a student heading home for Christmas vacation could not bear facing his parents with his low marks. As he waited at Logan Airport for his plane to taxi to a halt, he suddenly burst onto the runway and ran full tilt into the whirring propellors.

But for sheer macabre finesse the honors would undoubtedly fall to one Lowell House student. One crisp winter day not many years ago he tied one end of a wire around his neck and the other to a radiator beneath his fourth story window. When he jumped, the wire snapped tight ten feet from the ground. The next morning when one of the kitchen help came in for work she found his head staring back at her from the top of the entry steps.

Such episodes are rare in the staid life of the Harvard community, however. And although Leverett House was once branded as a dope den by a Boston tabloid, and Confidential detailed the perversions of Claverly, the University is far from a hideout for perverts and criminals. Crime has had its big moments, though...