Parkman Murder Case begins.

Shortly after breakfast, Dr. George Parkman leaves his home at 8 Walnut Street and is never seen again. After a manhunt during which police are told to bring in every Irishman with a dollar in his pocket, Dr. John White Webster is arrested for murder when traces of Parkman’s body are found in the drains below White’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School by janitor Ephraim Littlefield on Thanksgiving Day, November 29, 1849. The accusation against Webster prompts Harvard president Jared Sparks to declare, “Our Professors do not often commit murder.” Webster goes on trial in 1850.*