| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3

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| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3 | The History Cooperative

Movie Reviews

Murder at Harvard. Prod. by Eric Stange and Melissa Banta. Spypond Productions, 2003. 56 mins. (PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314-1698; 800-344-3337; <shop@pbs.org>; <http://shop.pbs.org/education/> [Sept. 13, 2004])

Like the murder of Helen Jewett and the Lindbergh kidnapping, the 1850 conviction of John White Webster for the murder of Dr. George Parkman has dramatic qualities that continue to capture our imagination. Both Webster and Parkman were Boston Brahmins. Webster was a professor at Harvard Medical College (which had ghoulish associations with grave robbing and dissection), and the killing was thought to have occurred in Webster's laboratory. Parkman's disappearance was later accounted for when body parts were discovered beneath the privy in Webster's lab. A mysterious crime in a setting that was simultaneously elite and macabre, involving a victim and a killer from Boston's upper class, makes a good story. Several historians have told the tale, including Simon Schama in Dead Certainties (1991).

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