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TRIAL. OF JOHN W. WEBSTER.
ceeded in every instance, were either mistaken in respect to the time
when he was seen, or the identity of the person.
The entire police of the city were brought into requisition; hand-
bills were issued, offering the most liberal rewards; one of them a reward
of three thousand dollars. When these rewards were offered to the
public, and no tidings of him were obtained, whatever might have been
the hopes and expectations of those who had looked for his reappear-
ance those hopes and expectations gave way; and the apprehensions
which had begun to be entertained by his friends, the police, and the
public, deepened into certainty, that he was no longer in the land of the
living.
In the course of Sunday, the day following the first publication in
the newspapers,-and I now propose for your convenience, Gentlemen,
to state, in chronological order, what will be proved,-on Sunday, the
family of Dr. Parkman learned from Dr. Webster, that on the Friday
previous, Dr. Parkman had been in his company at the Medical College
at half-past one o'clock. The circumstances under which that commu-
nication was made to the family, I may have occasion to advert to in
another stage of these proceedings. I now speak of it only as one fact
in connection with Dr. Parkman's disappearance, and with the search
for him that was subsequently made. That search was continued
through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and up to Friday of
the week following his disappearance; and although those who were
engaged in it did occasionally hear, as I have already remarked, that
he had been seen after the time when he was represented by the prisoner
to have been in his rooms at the Medical College, and although they
pursued every report and followed up diligently every rumor which
came to their knowledge, going to Salem, to East Boston, to different
parts of this city where he was reported to have been seen, yet no reli-
able information could be obtained respecting him.
The evidence will show you how thorough a search for him was
made. Handbills were circulated in every direction. The river was
dredged. The yards, the out-buildings, the dwelling-houses in .the west
part of the city, where he was known to have had a large property, were
thoroughly and faithfully searched. And beyond the city, for an extent
of sixty miles throughout the adjacent towns, the most diligent inquiries
were set on foot by the chief of police Mr. Marshal Tukey. In short,
Gentlemen, such a search was instituted as must have led to his discov-
ery if he had still been living.
It may with propriety be stated here, that some persons have hon-
estly believed that they saw pr. Parkman after the period when he
entered the Medical College. But it is not within the knowledge of the
Government, whatever may be the impressions thus entertained, that
any person has appeared who could state that Dr. Parkman was seen
alive and conversed with, after the time when we shall show him to have
been at the Medical College-ten or fifteen minutes before two o'clock,
on Friday, the twenty-third day of November; and the inevitable and
unavoidable inference is, that he is dead.
This, inference, you perceive, Gentlemen is derived from evidence
entirely independent of another class of facts, which I shall now pro-
ceed to state; and you will judge how irresistibly those facts compel us to
the conclusion that that inference is justly drawn.
On Monday and Tuesday there was a search at the Medical College;
the manner of it, the extent of it, the character of it, particularly with
reference to the rooms which were occupied by this prisoner, Dr. Web-
ster, will demand your consideration hereafter. I only state now, that
while in other portions of the building the search was prosecuted with
extreme thoroughness, the examination of Dr. Webster's apartments
was a mere formal one no suspicion on the part of the police then hav-
ing attached to him; and such a suspicion, of course, being very unlikely,
unless upon some strong grounds, to be fastened upon him by any one.
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