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Frances Glessner Lee

Mother of forensic science (1878–1962)

Frances Glessner Lee
Summary

Mother of forensic science (1878–1962)

FieldValue
nameFrances Glessner Lee
imageFrances_Glessner_Lee.png
birth_name
birth_date
birth_placeChicago, Illinois, U.S.
death_date
death_placeBethlehem, New Hampshire, U.S.
known_for"Mother of forensic science"
notable_worksNutshell Studies of Unexplained Death
spouseBlewett Harrison Lee

Frances Glessner Lee (March 25, 1878 – January 27, 1962) was an American forensic scientist. She was influential in developing the science of forensics in the United States. To this end, she created the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, twenty true crime scene dioramas recreated in minute detail at dollhouse scale, used for training homicide investigators. Eighteen of the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death are still in use for teaching purposes by the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, and the dioramas are also now considered works of art. Glessner Lee also helped to establish the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard University, and endowed the Magrath Library of Legal Medicine there. She became the first female police captain in the United States, and is known as the "mother of forensic science".

Early life

Glessner Lee was born in Chicago on March 25, 1878. Her father, John Jacob Glessner, was an industrialist who became wealthy from International Harvester. She and her brother were educated at home; her brother went to Harvard.

As a child, Frances fell ill with tonsillitis, and her mother took her to the doctor. When the first doctor prescribed a dangerous treatment for her illness, the Glessners sought a second opinion and Frances underwent a successful surgery at a time when surgery was very dangerous and often lethal.

Frances became interested in learning more about medicine because of this experience. When summering in the White Mountains, local doctors allowed her to attend home visits with them. There Glessner learned the skills of nursing.

She inherited the Harvester fortune and finally had the money to pursue an interest in how detectives could examine clues.

Career

Glessner Lee was inspired to pursue forensic investigation by one of her brother's classmates, George Burgess Magrath, with whom she was close friends. He was studying medicine at Harvard Medical School and was particularly interested in death investigation. Magrath would become a professor in pathology at Harvard Medical School and a chief medical examiner in Boston, and together they lobbied to have coroners replaced by medical professionals.

In 1931, Glessner Lee endowed the Harvard Department of Legal Medicine—the first such department in the country—and her gifts would later establish the George Burgess Magrath Library, a chair in legal medicine, and the Harvard Seminars in Homicide Investigation.

She also endowed the Harvard Associates in Police Science, a national organization for the furtherance of forensic science; it has a division dedicated to her, called the Frances Glessner Lee Homicide School.

Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death

Main article: Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death

The Red Bedroom Diorama

In 1945, Glessner Lee donated her dioramas to Harvard for use in her seminars. She hosted a series of semi-annual seminars, where she presented 30 to 40 men with the "Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death", intricately constructed dioramas of actual crime scenes, complete with working doors, windows and lights. The 20 models were based on composites of actual cases and were designed to test the abilities of students to collect all relevant evidence. The models depicted multiple causes of death and were based on autopsies and crime scenes that Glessner Lee visited.

Glessner Lee paid close attention to detail in creating the models. The rooms were filled with working mousetraps and rocking chairs, food in the kitchens, and more, and the corpses accurately represented discoloration or bloating that would be present at the crime scene. Each model cost about $3,000–$4,500 to create. Viewers were given 90 minutes to study the scene. Eighteen of the original dioramas were still used for training purposes by Harvard Associates in Police Science in 1999. As of 2020, the models could be found at the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore, where they were still used in the annual Frances Glessner Lee homicide investigation seminar. You can see one of her nutshell studies, "Sitting Room & Woodshed," on display at The Rocks. It is a miniature work of art, a historic artifact, and a teaching tool for forensic science.

For her work, Glessner Lee was made a captain in the New Hampshire State Police on October 27, 1943, making her the first woman to join the International Association of Chiefs of Police. This has been reported as honorary, but in 18 Tiny Deaths by Bruce Goldfarb, New Hampshire Police Superintendent Ralph Caswell (who appointed her captain) is quoted as saying, "This was not an honorary post. She was a full-fledged captain with all the authority and responsibility of the post."

The dioramas of the crime scenes Glessner depicted were as follows: three-room dwelling, log cabin, blue bedroom, dark bathroom, burned cabin, unpapered bedroom, pink bathroom, attic, woodsman's shack, barn, saloon and jail, striped bedroom, living room, two-story porch, kitchen, garage, parsonage parlor, and bedroom. They were once part of an exhibit in the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Personal life

Glessner married a lawyer, Blewett Harrison Lee, who was from the family line of General Robert E. Lee, with whom she had three children. The marriage ended in divorce in 1914.

Glessner Lee's perfectionism and dioramas reflect her family background. Her father was an avid collector of fine furniture with which he furnished the family home. He wrote a book on the subject, and the family home, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, is now the John J. Glessner House museum on the near South Side of Chicago.

The first miniature Glessner built was of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She did so for her mother's birthday, and it was her biggest project at the time. Glessner Lee was fond of the stories of Sherlock Holmes, whose plot twists were often the result of overlooked details. Many of her dioramas featured female victims in domestic settings, illustrating the dark side of the "feminine roles she had rehearsed in her married life."

References

References

  1. Goldfarb, Bruce. (2020). "18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics".
  2. Hamilton, William L.. (2018). "Heiress Plotted 19 Grisly Crimes. Investigation Underway.". The New York Times.
  3. "Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body: Biographies: Frances Glessner Lee (1878–1962)".
  4. "Murder Is Her Hobby: Frances Glessner Lee and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death".
  5. Main, Douglas. (June 10, 2014). "The 'Mother of Forensic Science' Built Dollhouse Crime Scenes". Popular Science.
  6. Botz, Corinne. (2004). "The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death". The Monacelli Press.
  7. Kahn, Eve. (October 7, 2004). "Murder Downsized". The New York Times.
  8. Miller, Laura J.. (September–October 2005). "Frances Glessner Lee: Brief life of a forensic miniaturist: 1878–1962".
  9. "The People".
  10. Ramsland, Katherine. "The Nutshell Studies of Frances Glessner Lee".
  11. (August 17, 1992). "The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death".
  12. Nuwer, Rachel. (June 9, 2014). "Murder in Miniature". Slate.
  13. Respers, Lisa. (February 24, 1999). "Helping to Crack Cases: 'Nutshells': Miniature replicas of crime scenes from the 1930s and 1940s are used in forensics training". The Baltimore Sun.
  14. Engelhaupt, Erika. (2020). "Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science". National Geographic Partners, LLC.
  15. Goldfarb, Bruce. (February 4, 2020). "18 Tiny Deaths". Sourcebooks.
  16. Botz, Corinne. (2004). "The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death". The Monacelli Press.
  17. Horowitz-Ghazi, Alexi. (November 18, 2017). "The Tiny, Murderous World of Frances Glessner Lee". National Public Radio.
  18. Townsend, Catherine. (March 28, 2017). "A Look Back at the "Mother of Forensic Science" And Her Dollhouses of Death". CrimeFeed.
  19. Crabtree, Sheigh. (May 16, 2007). "The devil is in 'CSI's' details". Los Angeles Times.
  20. Gee, Joshua. (2007). "Encyclopedia Horrifica". Scholastic.
  21. Kennedy, Cray. (October 17, 2017). "Frances Glessner Lee and Erle Stanley Gardner".
  22. "The Smallest of Things".
  23. "Murder in a Nutshell Film Screening".
  24. Bagieu, Pénélope. (2018). "Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World". First Second.
  25. ""NCIS" In a Nutshell (TV Episode 2020)".
  26. Smyth, Courtney. (2023). "The Undetectables". Titan Books.
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