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260, TRIAL OF JOHN W. WEBSTER.
[Mr. Merrick here interposes, and holds a brief conference with the
Attorney General.]
Mr. Clifford. I understand, may it please Your Honors anal Gentle-
men, from my learned friend,-to whose argument, to whose efforts, I
am certainly disposed to do entire justice,-that he used the matter of the
reward in connection only with this consideration:-that it was remark-
able that the offering of the reward was coincident with Mr. Littlefield's
commencing the search for these remains. The fact is not so in regard
to Mr. Littlefield; but, if it were so, what an absurdity it would be to
connect the two things together in respect to anybody! That a person
should deposit in the College, and afterwards find there,-what?-not
that portion which has been satisfactorily identified, but parts which
could not be identified! How absurd that he should have destroyed all
those parts of the body by which identity is ordinarily proved,-the
head, hands, arms, and feet, and then undertake to find the remains
which were concealed in the vault for thp purpose of getting the reward;
when the great question would be in the first instance, whether they
were the remains of Dr. Parkman at all!
You will remember, that all that Mr. Littlefield found were the por-
tions deposited in the privy-vault. He did not find the portions in the
tea-chest, or the bones and teeth in the furnace; and he gave no intima-
tions by which they could be found. He found simply the pelvis, the
right thigh, and left leg. And how did he find them? I shall consider
that in a moment. The proposition, then, that they were put there for
the purpose of obtaining a reward, is preposterous.
Then take the other proposition. Could any man in his senses have
undertaken to use Dr. Webster's laboratory for the purpose of destroy-
ing those remains?-in the day-time, remember, when he was there, as
we show, not by Mr. Littlefield alone, but, as they show, negatively, by
their own evidence? For it is a most remarkable and significant fact,
that the three daughters of Dr. Webster, who came here to testify in the
defence, have, by their own testimony, in a most remarkable degree,
confirmed and corroborated Mr. Littlefield. They show their father away
from home at the very time Mr. Littlefield places him at the College,
and Mr. Littlefield shows him to be absent from the College at the very
time they place him at home. There is no conflict, but a perfect har-
mony, between the testimony of these witnesses.
Now, the absurdity of any person ,doing such a piece of work as
this, in that laboratory, without the knowledge of Dr. Webster, is mani-
fest. Suppose he had secured his opportunities when Dr. Webster was
out. There was the assay-furnace, in which, upon the evidence, a fire
had never been kindled before. Do you think that there could have been
a fire kindled and left burning in that furnace, without, Dr. Webster's
attention being attracted to it? For what purpose would any other per-
son than the defendant do such a thing? Who would be so fatuitously
presumptuous as to attempt to fasten upon a man in Dr. Webster's posi-
tion an accusation like this, and by such means as these?
Now, Gentlemen, I intend to state to you two or three propositions
upon this subject, which, I think, are clearly raised and borne out by the
evidence in the case.
If Dr. Parkman had been killed in that College and his body never
carried out, but subsequently conveyed into Dr. Webster's laboratory for
concealment, or for the purpose of being consumed, then it is evident that
either Dr. ebster or Mr. Littlefield must have known it. I think that
we cannot escape from that alternative. One conjecture of the defence
is, that some assassin might have lurked in the entry,-a little space of
eight feet wide,-and as he came out of Dr. Webster's room, waylaid and
slew him; and that he carried the body either to Dr. Webster's labora-
tory, and ran the risk of being detected by him, or into Littlefield's
apartments, or some other portion of the building, encountering an equal
risk of being detected by him. The idea of an assassin lying in wait,
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