May 14, 2014 • 28 mins
Many forensic investigation standards of today have roots in the work of a Chicago heiress who was more interested in crime scenes than high society. Her most notable contribution to the field came in the form of tiny homicide dioramas. Read the show notes here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Colley Fry and I'm Tracy P. Wilson. Today's topic
is one that has been on my list for a
very long time, almost from the time, Uh, Tracy and
(00:23):
I came on to Documents in History Class, and many
listeners have also requested it. It is uh sort of
equal parts quaint and horrifying, which is probably why people
really love it so much and respond to this. Uh.
And it also features a woman who was, uh, you know,
a debutante heiress, but sort of anything but the standard
(00:44):
debutante eress you may conjure in your mind when you
hear those words. And even though she was sort of
forced into that role and she had some you know,
society bucking instincts about where a woman should be in uh,
in her place and how that was going to work,
you know, she was still nonetheless an heiress and part
(01:06):
of that structure that had made her, that had given
her that position. And her name was Francis Glessner Lee,
and she was a very meticulous woman. Uh. There are
stories that you'll hear that she was so exacting that
she actually would number the bottoms of vases and knickknacks
uh and similarly label the shelves that they were supposed
to go on with corresponding numbers, so everything would always
(01:27):
be in its exact space. That's just like a quick
character insight for you, because it would maybe be no
surprise then that this woman who was surprising in many ways,
was a major contributor to the world of forensic science
and criminology, and we actually have a lot to thank
her for. So Francis Glessner Lee came from a very
(01:47):
wealthy family. Her father was John Jacob Glessner, and he
made a sportune in the farm implement industry. Her mother,
Sarah Francis Macbeth Glessner, had met John Jacob when her
family had taken him and as a border and the
Glasseners were very active in civic affairs. Both of Francis's
parents wrote a great deal. John served on the boards
(02:09):
of many civic organizations, including the Citizens Association of Chicago
and the Chicago Orphan Asylum, and he was also a
trustee of the Chicago Orchestra Association. Sarah was something of
a renaissance woman. Not only was she skilled as a seamstress,
but she also studied piano, silversmithing, and beekeeping. She organized
gatherings for women where they could hear lectures and readings
(02:32):
about contemporary writing, and she was one of the founders
of the Chicago Chamber Music Society and was a passionate
advocate for the arts. Sarah and John's first child was
George Macbeth Glessner, and he was born in eighteen seventy one,
and because George had chronic and serious hay fever, the
family ended up building a second summer house in New
(02:52):
Hampshire so he could get away from the the issues
in Chicago in spring and summer that would cause this
hay fever to sort of be a problem for him.
The couple had a second son in eighteen seventy four,
although the baby, John Francis, sadly died when he was
eight months old, and then their daughter, Francis Glessner, was
born on March twenty five, eighteen seventy eight. Because of
(03:15):
George's ongoing health issues, the children were home schooled instead
of sent to school by a series of tutors, and
that was also actually pretty common for well to do
families at the time to school their children at home. Yeah,
we've had a lot of podcast subjects who all learned
at home. Francis grew up in Glessner House, which was
designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson and was built in
(03:36):
eighteen eighty seven. This house, which is on Chicago's Prairie
Avenue in the South Loop, is now a National Historic
Landmark and museum. Once the Glessners moved into Glessner House,
they spent winters there in summers in their New Hampshire
cabin which was called the Rocks, And during one of
those summers while they were in New Hampshire, the family
was joined by George's friend, another George named George Burgess McGrath.
(04:00):
And this name you want to just keep in the
back of your head because he would become a pretty
significant influence on Francis later in her life. As Francis,
who went by Fanny among her family members, started to
approach adulthood, she became interested in pursuing a career in
law or medicine, but her parents were really against this idea.
There are some unsubstantiated reports that their father, John actually
(04:22):
believed that ladies should know nothing of the human body,
which sort of makes me giggle a little bit. But
you know, you have one, You're going to fundamentally know
a few things. But it's an interesting mindset and not
all of that unusual for the early nineteen hundreds, I imagine.
So instead of going to university, which she had wanted
to do, in which her brother George was doing, Francis
(04:44):
spent a little more than a year traveling through Europe
with her aunt Helen macbeth from eighteen nine to eighteen
ninety seven, and after they returned to Chicago, Francis made
her formal Society debut in November of eighteen. Just a
few months there being presented into society, Francis married lawyer
blew It Lee, who was distantly related to Robert E. Lee,
(05:06):
and the new couple moved into a townhouse the Glesseners
had built for Fanny on Prairie Avenue near the Glessner house.
Her brother George also had a town house built by
their parents, and Francis was nineteen when she married. This
marriage was not an especially happy one. Eventually it became
clear that Francis and blew It really did not have
all that much in common and they didn't share that
(05:28):
many interests. Um. One story that her son eventually tells
is that, um, you know, she wanted to make things
and do things all the time, and blew it was
just not into that. So it really they just had
a separation of mind. Uh. The Perry eventually divorced in
nineteen fourteen, but not before they had already had three
children together. So their children were John Glessner Lee, who
(05:49):
was born in eight Frances Lee born in nineteen o three,
and Martha Lee, who was born in nineteen o six.
And before we go on and talk about sort of
what her life becomes after divorce, so let's take a
quick word from our sponsor. So now back to Francis
Glessner Lee after her divorce. So, once her marriage was
(06:10):
over and she suddenly had a new life to begin,
Fences returned to a hobby that she had actually learned
as a child, which was making miniatures, and inteen, while
she was separated but not yet divorced from her husband,
she completed her first solo miniature diorama, and this was
a detailed recreation of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which was
(06:31):
one of the many art organizations her mother was very
passionate about. And this was complete with tiny pieces of
sheet music and tiny instrument cases and little instrument stands,
and it was all compiled as a gift for her mother.
She also took advantage of her newfound independence to learn
about a subject that she had been introduced to by
the family friend we mentioned earlier, George Burgess McGrath, and
(06:53):
this was forensic science. McGrath had studied medicine at Harvard
and then had gone on to become a medical examiner.
And mc grath's work was immensely interesting to Francis. There's
a story that while she was ill at one point
he would come and visit her every night and talk
about his work uh to keep her company, and she
just became utterly engulfed in her passion for it UH.
(07:16):
And she became so interested in it that in the
nineteen thirties she actually gave Harvard an endowment of two
d and fifty thousand dollars, which has been estimated to
be about three point eight million in today's money, adjusted
for the establishment of a Department of Legal Medicine. And
it's often speculated in biographies of glessnarn Lee that she
(07:36):
was as a divorcee who now made her own decisions
and was truly independent. She was making up for the
education that she had been denied when she was a
young woman and had wanted to study but had not
been allowed to you by her family. She also continued
to give financial gifts to the university. Uh This went
on through the years to further the department's growth and development,
(07:57):
and her friend McGrath became chair of the new department
and taught mythology as part of the program. And as
we mentioned earlier, Frances was from a very wealthy family
and she had married well, even though the marriage did
not last. But she we cannot say enough how much
she did not fit the usual mold of a moneyed
society heiress. So while the other women of society were
(08:19):
throwing dinner parties for equally wealthy friends and associates, she
would often host large dinner party sport detectives and investigators
and scientists so she could pick their brains about their work.
I love it so much. I do too, And as
you know, part of her again meticulous character that people
love to talk about. In any interview with anybody that
knew her, they seemed to really want to be very
(08:41):
clear that this was an exacting person. Um like the
menus would just be really she would be so picky
about everything that they ate and it had to be perfect,
and she you know wanted them to absolutely have the
best of everything, as though they were you know, her
equals in terms of financial footing in society. Um. These
dinner parties were apparently amazing. And in nineteen forty three
(09:06):
gless near Lee really made a bit of history because
she had been learning about forensics and had really been
kind of moving in these circles for so long that
she was made honorary Captain of the New Hampshire State
Police at this time, and that was a title that
no other woman held at that point. In she hosted
the first Harvard Associates and Police Science or HAPs A seminar.
(09:29):
This was an invitation only event where attendees were treated
to lavish meals and an intensive week of learning the
latest methods in crime scene investigation from experts in the field.
And those were also equally meticulous these social events that
centered around it. There's a story that I read in
in one of my sources that she purchased an eight
(09:51):
thousand dollar China set for the hotel that hosted this
event every year, and it was only used for this event.
It was basically her china that she kept at the
hotel for this thing that would happen twice a year.
And because I guess There's wasn't good enough. I'm not
it was unclear why she felt compelled to buy this
whole set of china. But I'm gonna think maybe she
was just person nickety, I think a little bit um
(10:14):
And through all of her talks with investigators and detectives
and her discussions with mc grant about his work, this
idea had been forming in glessn Earlie's mind about how
she could personally further the field of investigation outside of
just being a financial donor. I mean, she was really
funneling a lot of money into this department at Harvard
with the intent that she was going to raise the standards, uh,
(10:37):
you know, through education of how criminal investigation worked. So
she came to realize that if the police had prolonged
access to a crime scene, they could find the clues
that would reveal the events that had occurred there, which
to us is kind of like, well, yeah, but crime
scenes just can't be maintained indefinitely, and the evidence there
(10:58):
can be corrupted or law. And additionally, for investigators in training,
there were just never enough crime scenes in which they
could practice their skills. So less Near Lee came up
with an idea to train investigators and to develop their
observation skills. So this is sort of the thing she's
most well known for over a seven year period from
(11:19):
ninety three to nineteen fifty, so some of this was
going on concurrently with her development of these seminars. She
assembled this group of projects called the Nutshell Studies of
Unexplained Death. And these were tiny dioramas that would have
been in most regards idyllic dollhouse scenes, weren't not for
(11:40):
the fact the fact that each of them depicted a
death of some kind. So each of these scenes, they're
eighteen and all was assembled based on case reports and
court records about actual deaths, and some of the dioramas
would combine multiple cases. And while all of the case
details were meticulously recreated, that they core in each grizzly
(12:01):
scene was chosen by the heiress. So these have been
described by many with some degree of amusement because they're
clearly like the impression that a wealthy woman who has
only known a life of luxury has of how the
middle and lower class lived. They're often pretty garish. Yeah,
it's one of those things that people kind of giggle about, uh,
(12:22):
even though you know she really wasn't into all of
the society trappings, it was clearly all she had known.
So even in their cabin in New Hampshire, which was
a very small and sort of simple affair, it's still
had the best of everything. And again, this is a
woman that's spent thousands of dollars to have the perfect
china for for police seminars. So clearly she knew a
(12:44):
certain esthetic and a certain life, and so when she
imagined what uh, poor people lived like, or even middle
class people, it was kind of very funny the things
she would put together and pick out as how their
houses would look. The smallest of these dioramas is eight
by fourteen inches and the largest is a thirty inch
square three room dwelling. And I cannot stress enough how
(13:08):
incredibly detailed these are there in one inch to one
foot scale, but they have teeny tiny cigarettes that she
hand rolled. They have mice in the walls and sometimes
mice and little traps. There are socks that she hand
knitted on straight pins, and she would like whittle. She
would hand whittle tiny, tiny clothes pins that would fill
(13:30):
these dioramas. So they were full of, you know, sort
of the debris of life and and all of the
things that are just normal parts of any given home
in this teeny tiny scale that she had meticulously created.
So again the word meticulous keeps coming up. And there's
a reason she was. Uh. The skin on the dolls
that she used was carefully painted to mimic decomposition. In
(13:54):
some cases, if it was a case where the scene
was supposed to be found with this body having been
here for a while, the blood spatter is carefully applied
to walls in cases where there is one. There's one
piece that's entitled burned cabin, and she had again meticulously
built this entire cabin and then she burned it down
with a blowtorch. Um And she was also using uh,
(14:18):
she didn't do all of this all by herself, although
most of it was, but she would also use carpenters.
Sometimes she had a carpenter that she retained and really trusted,
and he would work on some of the smaller woodworking
elements of it. So in these dioramas, the shades and
the drawers all work. The doors have these tiny functioning
locks with anybody keys. In the scenes where there are children,
(14:38):
there are miniature toys that are carefully recreated to mimic
full sized versions. And aside from their criminology impact, these
dioramas are just incredible works of art all on their own.
But the most important thing about these scenes, as much
as I could personally go on and on about all
of their little details that just completely kept you my attention, UH,
(15:01):
they provided really important learning models for investigators. So through
an analysis of each of these tiny crime scenes, UH,
a systematic approach to crime scene investigation was really developed.
She basically introduced these two UH investigators, police officers, and detectives,
and they used them to develop the methods that are
(15:23):
still being used today. UH. These include like using search
zones to analyze a crime scene and investigative patterns where
they'll sometimes circle a scene from like the outside and
spiral inward too so that they don't miss any details.
And these are standard procedures now and they came from
these tiny, little sort of dollhouse dioramas. Yeah, what's amazing
(15:44):
to me isn't just that their standard procedure now, but
that before anybody put together a methodology like this, the
whole field of crime scene investigation was kind of chaos.
Like we talked about in our acts Man of New
Orleans episodes. Yeah, like there people didn't really have a
standardized and methodical way of looking at a scene to
(16:06):
try to find evidence, and so they didn't and so
even when they would consult with uh other other investigators,
sometimes they just weren't working off the same page because
they didn't use the same approaches in all cases, and
it just made things really tricky and needlessly complicated. Uh So,
one of the things that she even did as part
(16:27):
of her seminars that she was hosting is she was
basically creating a network of investigative researchers, so men that
had gone through UH eventually I presume women attended, but
in the early days it was all men that had
gone through these classes, and these seminars would then be
connected to one another after they graduated the seminar, and
(16:48):
they would consult with each other, and she sort of
developed this, you know, she catalyzed this network developing where
detectives could talk to each other about things they had
found at crime scenes and really, um, you know, kind
of grow the field in a way that it never
would have grown otherwise if somebody hadn't said, let's all
get in a room together and talk about what we're doing.
It's very cool. So all of these scenes, I mean,
(17:11):
they all had a backstory of their own. They were
put together based on actual case reports and actual information
about crimes. But the goal, according to Gless nearly was
not to solve the crime that had happened in the diorama.
It was to practice observation, and the nutshells became part,
as I said, of these half seminars, and they've been
used to train investigators at the gathering for years, so
(17:34):
normally when she was first doing this, I don't know
if the methodology of using them has changed, but like
each student would be assigned two of the models and
they would get approximately ninety minutes of study for each scene.
And then later the student investigators would give a verbal
report before the group and they would all have a
discussion of their findings that would ensue and one of
(17:56):
this goal, one of the goals of this practice, as
I said, she was developing the network and this dialogue
among different investigators of how they would approach things. But
it was also to get students away from this concept
of following a hunch and instead to take in all
of the evidence that they see on a crime scene
with an open mind, like instead of just looking for
things that verify what they suspect has happened, she wanted
(18:18):
them to learn to look at everything in a crime
scene and not let any stray detail go because they
didn't think it supported what actually happened. This is reminding
me of like an episode of Bones. It should because
a lot of that grew out of this uh. She
is also allegedly I didn't put it in here initially,
but there have been rumors for years that she was
(18:40):
actually the inspiration for Angela Landsbury's character on Murder she
wrote because she was an older woman at this point
doing all of this excited crime scene investigation. Gless nearly
continued to advocate for medical training for leal agents and
systemized investigation practices and law enforcement all the way until
the end of her life. Yeah. Prior to herr UH
and her work with McGrath Coroners for example, didn't need
(19:04):
to have any medical training. It was, you know, an
appointment that they would get and then they would rely
on on the people below them to cover the medical basis.
But she really wanted to make sure that there was
a systematic way to uh make sure that trained medical
personnel were involved in investigations and it wasn't just people
guessing that did not know the workings of the human body.
(19:26):
Francis died in New Hampshire at the Rocks at the
small home that her family had had built there, on
January nine, two and four years later, the Department of
Legal Medicine that she had endowed at Harvard was dissolved
for lack of funding. The collection of Nutshell studies became
part of a public display at the Maryland Medical Examiner's
(19:47):
Office when the Department of Legal Medicine was closed. So
not only are they available for a public viewing, but
they're also used as teaching tools for forensic investigation. Yeah,
I think now you have to actually request permission to
go see them. I think there's one in the lobby.
I've read a few different reports, and they follow at
different times, like different years that they've been written. I
(20:09):
think there's one or two still in the lobby that
people can just walk in and see and you can
examine all of them if you just make an appointment
to go up. I think they're on the third floor
of the Maryland Medical Examiner's Office. Uh So, in the
Nutshells actually underwent a restoration that costs about fifty dollars,
just a general sort of upkeep and refresh, although they
still have the Kukie decor. In twenty twelve, a documentary
(20:32):
about the Nutshell Studies was made entitled of Dolls and Murder,
and it examines the place of Glessners Lee's work in
relation to the forensic world, as well as the role
of women in society. Yeah, a lot of modern historians
have kind of wanted to analyze her place in terms
of like an an early phase of feminism, which I
(20:54):
didn't get into here. It's covered by other people. I
really wanted to focus on her crime work. Uh But
one of the most interesting things about Glessner and Lee's
work is perhaps the fact that while she was a
self taught criminologist that was afforded access to this hobby
just because she was an heiress with immense wealth. She
became incredibly respected by the men that she worked with
(21:15):
and the men that she helped to train, and she
once said quote, I didn't do a lick of work
to deserve what I have. Therefore, I feel I have
been left in obligation to do something that will benefit everybody.
So if you're wondering why an heiress thought that it
would be fun to do this and became so impassionate
about developing criminology systems, that is why in her early
(21:36):
years of studying and working for forensic science, she may
have been seen as kind of this wealthy, eccentric lady,
but that image has been completely eclipsed by the important
influence of her work. Yeah, many men, uh. In looking
at research for this, I saw many men that she
had worked with through the years really described her as
(21:57):
one of the best criminologists they had ever met. Like
she definitely knew what she was talking about. She wasn't
just making cute dollhouse scenes to play with um. She
was very focused and it was it was not random
at all. She really was super smart, super well educated,
even if it was not in a formal setting. And
she wrote an article in nineteen fifty two for the
(22:19):
Journal of Criminal Law and criminology. And I just wanted
to read the last paragraph of it because it it
is really sort of beautiful and it's a good way
to end discussion about her. It says, quote, technical skill,
scientific knowledge, and professional training, however, are not all there
is to legal medicine. There is something else, something hard
(22:40):
to define, which must accompany them. Quote. The application of
medical knowledge and skill to the uses and purposes of
the law unquote is not the whole story. It is
far more than that. It is an unremitting quest for facts.
It is a constant and continuous search for truth in
the interests of science and justice, to expose the guilty,
(23:01):
to clear the innocent. It is a dedication of its
own peculiar wisdom and experience to the service of mankind.
That sort of sums up her entire approach to it,
which makes me love it. Yeah, And now I have
a listener mail listener mail. I have two pieces because
they're both shortish. Uh. First is from our listener, Allen,
who writes to us often. Uh. And he's sent us
(23:22):
some really beautiful pictures lately while he's been traveling the world. Uh.
And he says, high, as you may know from the
tiger picture I sent. I was in India and now
I'm catching up on my podcast, so I'm behind as
a result. I just heard the one on Ambrose Beers.
With that in mind, I would like to tell you
something of interest. I as a retired psychologist volunteer at
the v A in the PTSD clinic. In listening to
(23:44):
his life after the Civil War, it really sounded like
he had PTSD. The behaviors you describe sound a lot
like those of people suffering from PTSD, as did the
experiences he had in the service, including the loss of
his close friend UH. And Alan goes on to recommend
the book uh Achilles and Vietnam by Jonathan Shay m d,
pH d, as a really good book on the subject
(24:04):
if people are interested in it. That occurred to me
as well. But as someone who is not clinically versed
in PTSD, I'm I'm always reluctant to make those jumps,
even if it it seems like if it's some old
So it's just good to have somebody who is a
pro UH kind of back up what I think probably
many of us were thinking in listening to the Amber's
beer story. So my second note is from our listener Kate,
(24:25):
and she wrote us on Facebook and she says, I
recently discovered your podcast and I'm really enjoying it. I
just listened to the two Everest podcasts and was left
wondering about the first woman to summit the mountain? Do
you know anything about her or the history of women climbing?
Oh my gosh, do I love this topic. I love,
love love this topic. So I was really glad Kate
asked about it. It's a little too modern really for
us to cover on the show. Yeah, we have kind
(24:48):
of a We get some suggestions sometimes for things that
are a little more modern than we usually talk about,
and our our cutoff is kind of the late sixties,
early seventies. Yeah, and so, but I will answer this
as listener mail. It gives me a good opportunity to
talk a little bit more about Everest and a woman
who is really amazing. Her name is Junko Tabei and
she was the first woman to summit Everest. She is
(25:11):
a native of Fukushima and she made her historic ascent
in nineteen seventy five, and she's really incredible in many ways.
Her life story is fabulous because she fought very hard
for women's equality in Japan. She actually founded the Ladies
Climbing Club of Japan in nineteen sixty nine. And she
really broke cultural tradition on her ascent because she left
(25:32):
her three year old daughter at home with her husband.
Just unheard of culturally at that point to just go
off and climb a mountain. And her husband is also
a mountaineer, so presumably he really had some understanding of,
you know, the drive that made her want to do this.
Her expedition was incredible because it consisted of a fifteen
woman team, which was the first. Uh. It was mocked
(25:53):
at the time by a lot of male mountaineers. Uh.
So the events surrounding her summit were already pretty extraordinary.
And uh she has since become an advocate of sustainable
mountaineering in the hopes that she can stop some of
the destruction that's happening as more and more climbers take
on Everesty each year. Uh. And we'll link to a
couple of really great articles about her in the show
(26:14):
notes if you want to read more about her. I
have immense respect for her. She's an amazing woman. She's
still alive. Uh, She's just she has the most beautiful smile.
I love everything about her. I have a little bit
of everest ravies for someone that doesn't want to climbate,
but but I highly recommend reading up on her because
she's really incredible. She only was the she only got
(26:36):
to be the only woman that had ever summitted for
like less than two weeks. I think eleven days later,
some another woman summited, but she um She continues her
work in trying to really maintain the mountain and I
love her sustainable mountaineering UH work that she's been doing.
So if you would like to write to us, you
should do that. You can do it in a number
of ways. You can write to as via email at
(26:58):
History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can check in
with us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash history
class stuff. We're on Twitter at missed in History UH.
We are also on missed in History dot tumbler dot com,
and we're on Pinterest pinning like mad women. UH. If
you'd like to learn a little bit more about what
we talked about today, you can go to our UH
(27:20):
parent site House to Works and type in crime scene
investigation in the search bar and you will get an
article called how crime scene investigation works. One of the
really cool things in that article is a series of
diagrams about the UH the investigation patterns that were developed
as a consequence of the work with Francis Clessner Lee,
like the spiral that I talked about and the sort
of zone investigation approach to crime scenes UH. And you
(27:43):
can learn about that and almost anything you would like
at our parents site, which is house to Works. And
you can also visit us on our own magical exciting
history site, which is missed in history dot com. We
hope you do both of those things for more on
thousands of other topics because it houstoff Works dot com.
(28:05):
M
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Colley Fry and I'm Tracy P. Wilson. Today's topic
is one that has been on my list for a
very long time, almost from the time, Uh, Tracy and
(00:23):
I came on to Documents in History Class, and many
listeners have also requested it. It is uh sort of
equal parts quaint and horrifying, which is probably why people
really love it so much and respond to this. Uh.
And it also features a woman who was, uh, you know,
a debutante heiress, but sort of anything but the standard
(00:44):
debutante eress you may conjure in your mind when you
hear those words. And even though she was sort of
forced into that role and she had some you know,
society bucking instincts about where a woman should be in uh,
in her place and how that was going to work,
you know, she was still nonetheless an heiress and part
(01:06):
of that structure that had made her, that had given
her that position. And her name was Francis Glessner Lee,
and she was a very meticulous woman. Uh. There are
stories that you'll hear that she was so exacting that
she actually would number the bottoms of vases and knickknacks
uh and similarly label the shelves that they were supposed
to go on with corresponding numbers, so everything would always
(01:27):
be in its exact space. That's just like a quick
character insight for you, because it would maybe be no
surprise then that this woman who was surprising in many ways,
was a major contributor to the world of forensic science
and criminology, and we actually have a lot to thank
her for. So Francis Glessner Lee came from a very
(01:47):
wealthy family. Her father was John Jacob Glessner, and he
made a sportune in the farm implement industry. Her mother,
Sarah Francis Macbeth Glessner, had met John Jacob when her
family had taken him and as a border and the
Glasseners were very active in civic affairs. Both of Francis's
parents wrote a great deal. John served on the boards
(02:09):
of many civic organizations, including the Citizens Association of Chicago
and the Chicago Orphan Asylum, and he was also a
trustee of the Chicago Orchestra Association. Sarah was something of
a renaissance woman. Not only was she skilled as a seamstress,
but she also studied piano, silversmithing, and beekeeping. She organized
gatherings for women where they could hear lectures and readings
(02:32):
about contemporary writing, and she was one of the founders
of the Chicago Chamber Music Society and was a passionate
advocate for the arts. Sarah and John's first child was
George Macbeth Glessner, and he was born in eighteen seventy one,
and because George had chronic and serious hay fever, the
family ended up building a second summer house in New
(02:52):
Hampshire so he could get away from the the issues
in Chicago in spring and summer that would cause this
hay fever to sort of be a problem for him.
The couple had a second son in eighteen seventy four,
although the baby, John Francis, sadly died when he was
eight months old, and then their daughter, Francis Glessner, was
born on March twenty five, eighteen seventy eight. Because of
(03:15):
George's ongoing health issues, the children were home schooled instead
of sent to school by a series of tutors, and
that was also actually pretty common for well to do
families at the time to school their children at home. Yeah,
we've had a lot of podcast subjects who all learned
at home. Francis grew up in Glessner House, which was
designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson and was built in
(03:36):
eighteen eighty seven. This house, which is on Chicago's Prairie
Avenue in the South Loop, is now a National Historic
Landmark and museum. Once the Glessners moved into Glessner House,
they spent winters there in summers in their New Hampshire
cabin which was called the Rocks, And during one of
those summers while they were in New Hampshire, the family
was joined by George's friend, another George named George Burgess McGrath.
(04:00):
And this name you want to just keep in the
back of your head because he would become a pretty
significant influence on Francis later in her life. As Francis,
who went by Fanny among her family members, started to
approach adulthood, she became interested in pursuing a career in
law or medicine, but her parents were really against this idea.
There are some unsubstantiated reports that their father, John actually
(04:22):
believed that ladies should know nothing of the human body,
which sort of makes me giggle a little bit. But
you know, you have one, You're going to fundamentally know
a few things. But it's an interesting mindset and not
all of that unusual for the early nineteen hundreds, I imagine.
So instead of going to university, which she had wanted
to do, in which her brother George was doing, Francis
(04:44):
spent a little more than a year traveling through Europe
with her aunt Helen macbeth from eighteen nine to eighteen
ninety seven, and after they returned to Chicago, Francis made
her formal Society debut in November of eighteen. Just a
few months there being presented into society, Francis married lawyer
blew It Lee, who was distantly related to Robert E. Lee,
(05:06):
and the new couple moved into a townhouse the Glesseners
had built for Fanny on Prairie Avenue near the Glessner house.
Her brother George also had a town house built by
their parents, and Francis was nineteen when she married. This
marriage was not an especially happy one. Eventually it became
clear that Francis and blew It really did not have
all that much in common and they didn't share that
(05:28):
many interests. Um. One story that her son eventually tells
is that, um, you know, she wanted to make things
and do things all the time, and blew it was
just not into that. So it really they just had
a separation of mind. Uh. The Perry eventually divorced in
nineteen fourteen, but not before they had already had three
children together. So their children were John Glessner Lee, who
(05:49):
was born in eight Frances Lee born in nineteen o three,
and Martha Lee, who was born in nineteen o six.
And before we go on and talk about sort of
what her life becomes after divorce, so let's take a
quick word from our sponsor. So now back to Francis
Glessner Lee after her divorce. So, once her marriage was
(06:10):
over and she suddenly had a new life to begin,
Fences returned to a hobby that she had actually learned
as a child, which was making miniatures, and inteen, while
she was separated but not yet divorced from her husband,
she completed her first solo miniature diorama, and this was
a detailed recreation of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which was
(06:31):
one of the many art organizations her mother was very
passionate about. And this was complete with tiny pieces of
sheet music and tiny instrument cases and little instrument stands,
and it was all compiled as a gift for her mother.
She also took advantage of her newfound independence to learn
about a subject that she had been introduced to by
the family friend we mentioned earlier, George Burgess McGrath, and
(06:53):
this was forensic science. McGrath had studied medicine at Harvard
and then had gone on to become a medical examiner.
And mc grath's work was immensely interesting to Francis. There's
a story that while she was ill at one point
he would come and visit her every night and talk
about his work uh to keep her company, and she
just became utterly engulfed in her passion for it UH.
(07:16):
And she became so interested in it that in the
nineteen thirties she actually gave Harvard an endowment of two
d and fifty thousand dollars, which has been estimated to
be about three point eight million in today's money, adjusted
for the establishment of a Department of Legal Medicine. And
it's often speculated in biographies of glessnarn Lee that she
(07:36):
was as a divorcee who now made her own decisions
and was truly independent. She was making up for the
education that she had been denied when she was a
young woman and had wanted to study but had not
been allowed to you by her family. She also continued
to give financial gifts to the university. Uh This went
on through the years to further the department's growth and development,
(07:57):
and her friend McGrath became chair of the new department
and taught mythology as part of the program. And as
we mentioned earlier, Frances was from a very wealthy family
and she had married well, even though the marriage did
not last. But she we cannot say enough how much
she did not fit the usual mold of a moneyed
society heiress. So while the other women of society were
(08:19):
throwing dinner parties for equally wealthy friends and associates, she
would often host large dinner party sport detectives and investigators
and scientists so she could pick their brains about their work.
I love it so much. I do too, And as
you know, part of her again meticulous character that people
love to talk about. In any interview with anybody that
knew her, they seemed to really want to be very
(08:41):
clear that this was an exacting person. Um like the
menus would just be really she would be so picky
about everything that they ate and it had to be perfect,
and she you know wanted them to absolutely have the
best of everything, as though they were you know, her
equals in terms of financial footing in society. Um. These
dinner parties were apparently amazing. And in nineteen forty three
(09:06):
gless near Lee really made a bit of history because
she had been learning about forensics and had really been
kind of moving in these circles for so long that
she was made honorary Captain of the New Hampshire State
Police at this time, and that was a title that
no other woman held at that point. In she hosted
the first Harvard Associates and Police Science or HAPs A seminar.
(09:29):
This was an invitation only event where attendees were treated
to lavish meals and an intensive week of learning the
latest methods in crime scene investigation from experts in the field.
And those were also equally meticulous these social events that
centered around it. There's a story that I read in
in one of my sources that she purchased an eight
(09:51):
thousand dollar China set for the hotel that hosted this
event every year, and it was only used for this event.
It was basically her china that she kept at the
hotel for this thing that would happen twice a year.
And because I guess There's wasn't good enough. I'm not
it was unclear why she felt compelled to buy this
whole set of china. But I'm gonna think maybe she
was just person nickety, I think a little bit um
(10:14):
And through all of her talks with investigators and detectives
and her discussions with mc grant about his work, this
idea had been forming in glessn Earlie's mind about how
she could personally further the field of investigation outside of
just being a financial donor. I mean, she was really
funneling a lot of money into this department at Harvard
with the intent that she was going to raise the standards, uh,
(10:37):
you know, through education of how criminal investigation worked. So
she came to realize that if the police had prolonged
access to a crime scene, they could find the clues
that would reveal the events that had occurred there, which
to us is kind of like, well, yeah, but crime
scenes just can't be maintained indefinitely, and the evidence there
(10:58):
can be corrupted or law. And additionally, for investigators in training,
there were just never enough crime scenes in which they
could practice their skills. So less Near Lee came up
with an idea to train investigators and to develop their
observation skills. So this is sort of the thing she's
most well known for over a seven year period from
(11:19):
ninety three to nineteen fifty, so some of this was
going on concurrently with her development of these seminars. She
assembled this group of projects called the Nutshell Studies of
Unexplained Death. And these were tiny dioramas that would have
been in most regards idyllic dollhouse scenes, weren't not for
(11:40):
the fact the fact that each of them depicted a
death of some kind. So each of these scenes, they're
eighteen and all was assembled based on case reports and
court records about actual deaths, and some of the dioramas
would combine multiple cases. And while all of the case
details were meticulously recreated, that they core in each grizzly
(12:01):
scene was chosen by the heiress. So these have been
described by many with some degree of amusement because they're
clearly like the impression that a wealthy woman who has
only known a life of luxury has of how the
middle and lower class lived. They're often pretty garish. Yeah,
it's one of those things that people kind of giggle about, uh,
(12:22):
even though you know she really wasn't into all of
the society trappings, it was clearly all she had known.
So even in their cabin in New Hampshire, which was
a very small and sort of simple affair, it's still
had the best of everything. And again, this is a
woman that's spent thousands of dollars to have the perfect
china for for police seminars. So clearly she knew a
(12:44):
certain esthetic and a certain life, and so when she
imagined what uh, poor people lived like, or even middle
class people, it was kind of very funny the things
she would put together and pick out as how their
houses would look. The smallest of these dioramas is eight
by fourteen inches and the largest is a thirty inch
square three room dwelling. And I cannot stress enough how
(13:08):
incredibly detailed these are there in one inch to one
foot scale, but they have teeny tiny cigarettes that she
hand rolled. They have mice in the walls and sometimes
mice and little traps. There are socks that she hand
knitted on straight pins, and she would like whittle. She
would hand whittle tiny, tiny clothes pins that would fill
(13:30):
these dioramas. So they were full of, you know, sort
of the debris of life and and all of the
things that are just normal parts of any given home
in this teeny tiny scale that she had meticulously created.
So again the word meticulous keeps coming up. And there's
a reason she was. Uh. The skin on the dolls
that she used was carefully painted to mimic decomposition. In
(13:54):
some cases, if it was a case where the scene
was supposed to be found with this body having been
here for a while, the blood spatter is carefully applied
to walls in cases where there is one. There's one
piece that's entitled burned cabin, and she had again meticulously
built this entire cabin and then she burned it down
with a blowtorch. Um And she was also using uh,
(14:18):
she didn't do all of this all by herself, although
most of it was, but she would also use carpenters.
Sometimes she had a carpenter that she retained and really trusted,
and he would work on some of the smaller woodworking
elements of it. So in these dioramas, the shades and
the drawers all work. The doors have these tiny functioning
locks with anybody keys. In the scenes where there are children,
(14:38):
there are miniature toys that are carefully recreated to mimic
full sized versions. And aside from their criminology impact, these
dioramas are just incredible works of art all on their own.
But the most important thing about these scenes, as much
as I could personally go on and on about all
of their little details that just completely kept you my attention, UH,
(15:01):
they provided really important learning models for investigators. So through
an analysis of each of these tiny crime scenes, UH,
a systematic approach to crime scene investigation was really developed.
She basically introduced these two UH investigators, police officers, and detectives,
and they used them to develop the methods that are
(15:23):
still being used today. UH. These include like using search
zones to analyze a crime scene and investigative patterns where
they'll sometimes circle a scene from like the outside and
spiral inward too so that they don't miss any details.
And these are standard procedures now and they came from
these tiny, little sort of dollhouse dioramas. Yeah, what's amazing
(15:44):
to me isn't just that their standard procedure now, but
that before anybody put together a methodology like this, the
whole field of crime scene investigation was kind of chaos.
Like we talked about in our acts Man of New
Orleans episodes. Yeah, like there people didn't really have a
standardized and methodical way of looking at a scene to
(16:06):
try to find evidence, and so they didn't and so
even when they would consult with uh other other investigators,
sometimes they just weren't working off the same page because
they didn't use the same approaches in all cases, and
it just made things really tricky and needlessly complicated. Uh So,
one of the things that she even did as part
(16:27):
of her seminars that she was hosting is she was
basically creating a network of investigative researchers, so men that
had gone through UH eventually I presume women attended, but
in the early days it was all men that had
gone through these classes, and these seminars would then be
connected to one another after they graduated the seminar, and
(16:48):
they would consult with each other, and she sort of
developed this, you know, she catalyzed this network developing where
detectives could talk to each other about things they had
found at crime scenes and really, um, you know, kind
of grow the field in a way that it never
would have grown otherwise if somebody hadn't said, let's all
get in a room together and talk about what we're doing.
It's very cool. So all of these scenes, I mean,
(17:11):
they all had a backstory of their own. They were
put together based on actual case reports and actual information
about crimes. But the goal, according to Gless nearly was
not to solve the crime that had happened in the diorama.
It was to practice observation, and the nutshells became part,
as I said, of these half seminars, and they've been
used to train investigators at the gathering for years, so
(17:34):
normally when she was first doing this, I don't know
if the methodology of using them has changed, but like
each student would be assigned two of the models and
they would get approximately ninety minutes of study for each scene.
And then later the student investigators would give a verbal
report before the group and they would all have a
discussion of their findings that would ensue and one of
(17:56):
this goal, one of the goals of this practice, as
I said, she was developing the network and this dialogue
among different investigators of how they would approach things. But
it was also to get students away from this concept
of following a hunch and instead to take in all
of the evidence that they see on a crime scene
with an open mind, like instead of just looking for
things that verify what they suspect has happened, she wanted
(18:18):
them to learn to look at everything in a crime
scene and not let any stray detail go because they
didn't think it supported what actually happened. This is reminding
me of like an episode of Bones. It should because
a lot of that grew out of this uh. She
is also allegedly I didn't put it in here initially,
but there have been rumors for years that she was
(18:40):
actually the inspiration for Angela Landsbury's character on Murder she
wrote because she was an older woman at this point
doing all of this excited crime scene investigation. Gless nearly
continued to advocate for medical training for leal agents and
systemized investigation practices and law enforcement all the way until
the end of her life. Yeah. Prior to herr UH
and her work with McGrath Coroners for example, didn't need
(19:04):
to have any medical training. It was, you know, an
appointment that they would get and then they would rely
on on the people below them to cover the medical basis.
But she really wanted to make sure that there was
a systematic way to uh make sure that trained medical
personnel were involved in investigations and it wasn't just people
guessing that did not know the workings of the human body.
(19:26):
Francis died in New Hampshire at the Rocks at the
small home that her family had had built there, on
January nine, two and four years later, the Department of
Legal Medicine that she had endowed at Harvard was dissolved
for lack of funding. The collection of Nutshell studies became
part of a public display at the Maryland Medical Examiner's
(19:47):
Office when the Department of Legal Medicine was closed. So
not only are they available for a public viewing, but
they're also used as teaching tools for forensic investigation. Yeah,
I think now you have to actually request permission to
go see them. I think there's one in the lobby.
I've read a few different reports, and they follow at
different times, like different years that they've been written. I
(20:09):
think there's one or two still in the lobby that
people can just walk in and see and you can
examine all of them if you just make an appointment
to go up. I think they're on the third floor
of the Maryland Medical Examiner's Office. Uh So, in the
Nutshells actually underwent a restoration that costs about fifty dollars,
just a general sort of upkeep and refresh, although they
still have the Kukie decor. In twenty twelve, a documentary
(20:32):
about the Nutshell Studies was made entitled of Dolls and Murder,
and it examines the place of Glessners Lee's work in
relation to the forensic world, as well as the role
of women in society. Yeah, a lot of modern historians
have kind of wanted to analyze her place in terms
of like an an early phase of feminism, which I
(20:54):
didn't get into here. It's covered by other people. I
really wanted to focus on her crime work. Uh But
one of the most interesting things about Glessner and Lee's
work is perhaps the fact that while she was a
self taught criminologist that was afforded access to this hobby
just because she was an heiress with immense wealth. She
became incredibly respected by the men that she worked with
(21:15):
and the men that she helped to train, and she
once said quote, I didn't do a lick of work
to deserve what I have. Therefore, I feel I have
been left in obligation to do something that will benefit everybody.
So if you're wondering why an heiress thought that it
would be fun to do this and became so impassionate
about developing criminology systems, that is why in her early
(21:36):
years of studying and working for forensic science, she may
have been seen as kind of this wealthy, eccentric lady,
but that image has been completely eclipsed by the important
influence of her work. Yeah, many men, uh. In looking
at research for this, I saw many men that she
had worked with through the years really described her as
(21:57):
one of the best criminologists they had ever met. Like
she definitely knew what she was talking about. She wasn't
just making cute dollhouse scenes to play with um. She
was very focused and it was it was not random
at all. She really was super smart, super well educated,
even if it was not in a formal setting. And
she wrote an article in nineteen fifty two for the
(22:19):
Journal of Criminal Law and criminology. And I just wanted
to read the last paragraph of it because it it
is really sort of beautiful and it's a good way
to end discussion about her. It says, quote, technical skill,
scientific knowledge, and professional training, however, are not all there
is to legal medicine. There is something else, something hard
(22:40):
to define, which must accompany them. Quote. The application of
medical knowledge and skill to the uses and purposes of
the law unquote is not the whole story. It is
far more than that. It is an unremitting quest for facts.
It is a constant and continuous search for truth in
the interests of science and justice, to expose the guilty,
(23:01):
to clear the innocent. It is a dedication of its
own peculiar wisdom and experience to the service of mankind.
That sort of sums up her entire approach to it,
which makes me love it. Yeah, And now I have
a listener mail listener mail. I have two pieces because
they're both shortish. Uh. First is from our listener, Allen,
who writes to us often. Uh. And he's sent us
(23:22):
some really beautiful pictures lately while he's been traveling the world. Uh.
And he says, high, as you may know from the
tiger picture I sent. I was in India and now
I'm catching up on my podcast, so I'm behind as
a result. I just heard the one on Ambrose Beers.
With that in mind, I would like to tell you
something of interest. I as a retired psychologist volunteer at
the v A in the PTSD clinic. In listening to
(23:44):
his life after the Civil War, it really sounded like
he had PTSD. The behaviors you describe sound a lot
like those of people suffering from PTSD, as did the
experiences he had in the service, including the loss of
his close friend UH. And Alan goes on to recommend
the book uh Achilles and Vietnam by Jonathan Shay m d,
pH d, as a really good book on the subject
(24:04):
if people are interested in it. That occurred to me
as well. But as someone who is not clinically versed
in PTSD, I'm I'm always reluctant to make those jumps,
even if it it seems like if it's some old
So it's just good to have somebody who is a
pro UH kind of back up what I think probably
many of us were thinking in listening to the Amber's
beer story. So my second note is from our listener Kate,
(24:25):
and she wrote us on Facebook and she says, I
recently discovered your podcast and I'm really enjoying it. I
just listened to the two Everest podcasts and was left
wondering about the first woman to summit the mountain? Do
you know anything about her or the history of women climbing?
Oh my gosh, do I love this topic. I love,
love love this topic. So I was really glad Kate
asked about it. It's a little too modern really for
us to cover on the show. Yeah, we have kind
(24:48):
of a We get some suggestions sometimes for things that
are a little more modern than we usually talk about,
and our our cutoff is kind of the late sixties,
early seventies. Yeah, and so, but I will answer this
as listener mail. It gives me a good opportunity to
talk a little bit more about Everest and a woman
who is really amazing. Her name is Junko Tabei and
she was the first woman to summit Everest. She is
(25:11):
a native of Fukushima and she made her historic ascent
in nineteen seventy five, and she's really incredible in many ways.
Her life story is fabulous because she fought very hard
for women's equality in Japan. She actually founded the Ladies
Climbing Club of Japan in nineteen sixty nine. And she
really broke cultural tradition on her ascent because she left
(25:32):
her three year old daughter at home with her husband.
Just unheard of culturally at that point to just go
off and climb a mountain. And her husband is also
a mountaineer, so presumably he really had some understanding of,
you know, the drive that made her want to do this.
Her expedition was incredible because it consisted of a fifteen
woman team, which was the first. Uh. It was mocked
(25:53):
at the time by a lot of male mountaineers. Uh.
So the events surrounding her summit were already pretty extraordinary.
And uh she has since become an advocate of sustainable
mountaineering in the hopes that she can stop some of
the destruction that's happening as more and more climbers take
on Everesty each year. Uh. And we'll link to a
couple of really great articles about her in the show
(26:14):
notes if you want to read more about her. I
have immense respect for her. She's an amazing woman. She's
still alive. Uh, She's just she has the most beautiful smile.
I love everything about her. I have a little bit
of everest ravies for someone that doesn't want to climbate,
but but I highly recommend reading up on her because
she's really incredible. She only was the she only got
(26:36):
to be the only woman that had ever summitted for
like less than two weeks. I think eleven days later,
some another woman summited, but she um She continues her
work in trying to really maintain the mountain and I
love her sustainable mountaineering UH work that she's been doing.
So if you would like to write to us, you
should do that. You can do it in a number
of ways. You can write to as via email at
(26:58):
History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can check in
with us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash history
class stuff. We're on Twitter at missed in History UH.
We are also on missed in History dot tumbler dot com,
and we're on Pinterest pinning like mad women. UH. If
you'd like to learn a little bit more about what
we talked about today, you can go to our UH
(27:20):
parent site House to Works and type in crime scene
investigation in the search bar and you will get an
article called how crime scene investigation works. One of the
really cool things in that article is a series of
diagrams about the UH the investigation patterns that were developed
as a consequence of the work with Francis Clessner Lee,
like the spiral that I talked about and the sort
of zone investigation approach to crime scenes UH. And you
(27:43):
can learn about that and almost anything you would like
at our parents site, which is house to Works. And
you can also visit us on our own magical exciting
history site, which is missed in history dot com. We
hope you do both of those things for more on
thousands of other topics because it houstoff Works dot com.
(28:05):
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