November 11, 2017 • 29 mins
Today's show revisits the story of a Chicago heiress who helped develop forensic investigation standards still in use today. Her most notable contribution to the field came in the form of tiny homicide dioramas.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, Saturday Classics listeners. Today's classic is thanks to our
listener Rich who wrote in to remind us that there's
a great Smithsonian exhibit currently running that features Francis Glessner
Lee's nutshell dioramas. Yeah, we have shared some articles about
that exhibit on our social media, but we haven't mentioned
it on the show until now. So if you don't
know what those dioramas are, no worries. This episode from
(00:24):
back in is going to explain the whole thing and
how a wealthy heiress advanced the field of forensic investigation.
It's a pretty fascinating story of how one woman completely
changed an area of uh investigation and knowledge that she
really had no prior connection to. So I really love
it for that reason, and we also wanted to make
(00:46):
sure that we share information about the exhibit before we
start on this classic episode so that you can easily
find it. It is called Murder is her hobby, Francis
Glessner Lee and the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, And
it is running right now and it will can tinue
to run until January. And you're if you're listening to
this episode sometime in the future. Right now is November
(01:10):
of so you can find all the details about this
whole thing at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery.
There's also a series of public programs you can attend
about the exhibit, and Francis Glessner Lee and We will
link to all the information and the show notes. For now.
You can get a little background on the topic in
this episode. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class
(01:33):
from house stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast I'll Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Today's
topic is one that has been on my list for
a very long time, almost from the time that Uh,
Tracy and I came on to Stuff you Missed in
(01:55):
History Class, and many listeners have also requested it. It
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 debutante heiress you may conjure in your mind
(02:17):
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 of that structure that had made her
(02:38):
h 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 be in its exact space. That's just like
(03:00):
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 wealthy family. Her father was John Jacob Glessner,
(03:21):
and he made his fortune in the farm implement industry.
Her mother, Sarah Francis Macbeth Glessner, had met John Jacob
when her family had taken him in as a border
and the Glossners were very active in civic affairs. Both
of Francis's parents wrote a great deal. John served on
the boards of many civic organizations, including the Citizens Association
(03:43):
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, silver smithing,
and beekeeping. She organized gather rings for women where they
could hear lectures and readings about contemporary writing, and she
(04:04):
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 Hampshire so he could
get away from the the issues in Chicago in spring
(04:27):
and summer that would cause this hay fever to uh
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 George's ongoing health issues,
(04:48):
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 are at home. Francis
grew up in Glessner House, which was designed by architect
Henry Hobson Richardson and was built in seven This house,
(05:09):
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 and
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. And this name you want
(05:32):
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 believed that ladies should
(05:54):
know nothing of the human body, which sort of makes
me giggle a little bit. But you know, you of 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 spent a little more
(06:15):
than a year traveling through Europe with her aunt Helen
macbeth from eighteen ninety six to eighteen ninety seven, and
after they returned to Chicago, Francis made her formal Society
debut in November of eighteen. Just a few months after
being presented into Society, Francis married lawyer blew it Lee,
who was distantly related to Robert Eally, and the new
(06:37):
couple moved into a townhouse the Glysteners had built for
Fanny on Prairie Avenue near the Glessner house. Her brother
George also had a townhouse 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 many interests. One
(07:00):
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 glessnar Lee who was born in Frances Lee born
(07:22):
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 glessnar Lee after her divorce. So,
(07:46):
once her marriage was over and she suddenly had a
new life to begin, Francis returned to a hobby that
she had actually learned as a child, which was making miniatures,
and in nine thirteen, 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
(08:06):
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which was one of the many arts
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
(08:28):
mentioned earlier, George Burgess McGrath, and this was forensic science.
McGrath had studied medicine at Harvard and then had gone
on to become a medical examiner. And McGrath'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
(08:48):
keep her company, and she just became utterly engulfed in
her passion for it. UH and she became so interested
in it that in the nineteen thirties she actually gave
Harvard an endowment of two d and fifty thou dollars,
which has been estimated to be about three point eight
million in today's money adjusted for the establishment of a
(09:08):
department of legal medicine. And it's often speculated in biographies
of gless Earn Lee that she 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 by
her family. She also continued to give financial gifts to
(09:29):
the university. Uh This went on through the years to
further the department's growth and development, and her friend McGrath
became chair of the new department and taught pathology 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 u
we cannot say enough how much she did not fit
(09:50):
the usual mold of a moneyed society heiress. So while
the other women of society were throwing dinner parties for
equally wealthy friends and as though see it's she would
often host large dinner parties for detectives and investigators and
scientists so she could pick their brains about their work.
I love it so much too, and as you know,
(10:10):
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 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
(10:31):
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 three gless near Lee
really made a bit of history because she had been
learning about forensics and had really been kind of moving
(10:51):
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 perhaps a seminar. This was an
invitation only event where attendees were treated to lavish meals
(11:11):
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 thousand dollar china
set for the hotel that hosted this event every year,
(11:33):
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. I'm gonna think maybe she was just person nickety,
I think a little bit um And through all of
her talks with investigators and detectives and her discussions with
(11:55):
mc grant about his work, this idea had been forming
in gless Early'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, you know, through
education of how criminal investigation worked. So she came to
(12:20):
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 can be corrupted
or lost. And additionally, for investigators in training, there were
(12:41):
just never enough crime scenes in which they could practice
their skills. So Gless nearly 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 ninety three to
nineteen fifty, so some of this was going on concurrently
with her development of these seminars. She assembled this group
(13:06):
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 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,
(13:29):
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 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
(13:51):
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, 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.
(14:13):
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 certain aesthetic 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. Uh, the smallest of
(14:36):
these dioramas is eight by fourteen inches and the largest
is a thirty inch square three room dwelling. And I
cannot stress enough how 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
(14:59):
socks that she hand knitted on straight pins, and she
would like whittle She would hand whittled tiny tiny clothes
pins that would fill 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
(15:19):
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 some cases, if it was a case where the
scene was supposed to be found with this body having
been there for a while, the blood spatter is carefully
(15:41):
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.
She didn't do all of this all by herself, although
most of it was, but she would also use carpon
or sometimes she had a carpenter that she retained and
(16:02):
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
tidy functioning locks with anybody keys. In the scenes where
(16:22):
their children, 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 capture
(16:44):
my attention, UH, 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 reduced these two UH investigators police officers and detectives,
(17:05):
and they used them to develop the methods that are
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 in word two 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
(17:28):
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, like their people didn't really have a standardized
and methodical way of looking at a scene to try
(17:50):
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. So one
of the things that she even did as part of
(18:12):
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 they
(18:32):
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, they
(18:55):
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 happ seminars. And they've been used
to train investigators at the gathering for years, so normally
(19:19):
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
(19:40):
this goal. One of the goals of this practice, as
I said, she was developing this 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
(20:03):
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
(20:25):
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 her and
(20:45):
her work with McGrath, coroners for example, didn't need 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 a to uh make sure that trained medical
personnel were involved in investigations and it wasn't just people
(21:07):
guessing that did not know the workings of the human body.
Francis died in New Hampshire at the Rocks at the
small home that her family had had built there, on
January nineteen, 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
(21:28):
part of a public display at the Maryland Medical Examiner's
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.
(21:48):
I've read a few different reports and they follow at
different times, like different years that they've been written. I
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 cost about fifty dollars,
(22:10):
just a general sort of upkeep and refresh, although they
still have the Kukie decor in. A documentary 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
(22:32):
kind of wanted to analyze her place in terms of
like an an early phase of feminism, which I didn't
get into here. It's covered by other people. I really
wanted to focus on her crime work. 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
(22:53):
she was an heiress with immense wealth, she became incredibly
respected by the men that she worked with 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 an
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
(23:16):
criminology systems, that is why in her early 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
(23:37):
for this, I saw many men that she had worked
with through the years really described her as 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
(23:58):
it was not in a formal setting. And she wrote
an article in nineteen fifty two for the 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. And it says, quote, technical skill, scientific knowledge,
(24:18):
and professional training, however, are not all there is to
legal medicine. There is something else, something hard 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
(24:39):
is a constant and continuous search for truth in the
interests of science and justice, to expose the guilty, 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. Yea, And now I have a
listener mail right. I have two pieces because they're both shortish. Uh.
(25:03):
First is from our listener Allen, who writes to us often. UH.
And he's sent us some really beautiful pictures lately while
he's been traveling the world. Uh. And he says, Hi,
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
(25:26):
the PTSD clinic. In listening to 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 Achilles and
Vietnam by Jonathan Shay m d, pH d. As a
(25:48):
really good book on the subject 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 the 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 Ambrose Beer story. So my
second note is from our listener Kate, and she wrote
(26:10):
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 of we get some
(26:34):
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 me. 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
(26:54):
to summit Everest. She is a native of Fukushima, and
she made her historic ascent in the nineteen seventy five
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 nine nine. And she really broke cultural
tradition on her ascent because she left her three year
(27:17):
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 at the
(27:37):
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 Everest
each year. Uh, and we'll link to a couple of
really great articles about her in the show notes if
(27:59):
you want to ead 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 averst
rabies for someone that doesn't want to climate but but
I highly recommend reading up on her because she's really incredible.
She only was the she only got to be the
(28:21):
only woman that had ever summitted for like less than
two weeks. I think eleven days later, some another woman summitted,
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. Thank you so much
(28:42):
for joining us for this Saturday Classic. Since this is
out of the archive, if you heard an email address
or a Facebook U r L or something similar during
the course of the show, that may be obsolete. Now.
So here is our current contact information. We are at
History Podcast at how stuff works dot com, and then
we're at Missed in the History all over social media
(29:02):
that is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram.
Thanks again for listening. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how staff works dot com.
Hey, Saturday Classics listeners. Today's classic is thanks to our
listener Rich who wrote in to remind us that there's
a great Smithsonian exhibit currently running that features Francis Glessner
Lee's nutshell dioramas. Yeah, we have shared some articles about
that exhibit on our social media, but we haven't mentioned
it on the show until now. So if you don't
know what those dioramas are, no worries. This episode from
(00:24):
back in is going to explain the whole thing and
how a wealthy heiress advanced the field of forensic investigation.
It's a pretty fascinating story of how one woman completely
changed an area of uh investigation and knowledge that she
really had no prior connection to. So I really love
it for that reason, and we also wanted to make
(00:46):
sure that we share information about the exhibit before we
start on this classic episode so that you can easily
find it. It is called Murder is her hobby, Francis
Glessner Lee and the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, And
it is running right now and it will can tinue
to run until January. And you're if you're listening to
this episode sometime in the future. Right now is November
(01:10):
of so you can find all the details about this
whole thing at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery.
There's also a series of public programs you can attend
about the exhibit, and Francis Glessner Lee and We will
link to all the information and the show notes. For now.
You can get a little background on the topic in
this episode. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class
(01:33):
from house stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast I'll Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Today's
topic is one that has been on my list for
a very long time, almost from the time that Uh,
Tracy and I came on to Stuff you Missed in
(01:55):
History Class, and many listeners have also requested it. It
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 debutante heiress you may conjure in your mind
(02:17):
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 of that structure that had made her
(02:38):
h 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 be in its exact space. That's just like
(03:00):
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 wealthy family. Her father was John Jacob Glessner,
(03:21):
and he made his fortune in the farm implement industry.
Her mother, Sarah Francis Macbeth Glessner, had met John Jacob
when her family had taken him in as a border
and the Glossners were very active in civic affairs. Both
of Francis's parents wrote a great deal. John served on
the boards of many civic organizations, including the Citizens Association
(03:43):
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, silver smithing,
and beekeeping. She organized gather rings for women where they
could hear lectures and readings about contemporary writing, and she
(04:04):
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 Hampshire so he could
get away from the the issues in Chicago in spring
(04:27):
and summer that would cause this hay fever to uh
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 George's ongoing health issues,
(04:48):
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 are at home. Francis
grew up in Glessner House, which was designed by architect
Henry Hobson Richardson and was built in seven This house,
(05:09):
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 and
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. And this name you want
(05:32):
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 believed that ladies should
(05:54):
know nothing of the human body, which sort of makes
me giggle a little bit. But you know, you of 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 spent a little more
(06:15):
than a year traveling through Europe with her aunt Helen
macbeth from eighteen ninety six to eighteen ninety seven, and
after they returned to Chicago, Francis made her formal Society
debut in November of eighteen. Just a few months after
being presented into Society, Francis married lawyer blew it Lee,
who was distantly related to Robert Eally, and the new
(06:37):
couple moved into a townhouse the Glysteners had built for
Fanny on Prairie Avenue near the Glessner house. Her brother
George also had a townhouse 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 many interests. One
(07:00):
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 glessnar Lee who was born in Frances Lee born
(07:22):
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 glessnar Lee after her divorce. So,
(07:46):
once her marriage was over and she suddenly had a
new life to begin, Francis returned to a hobby that
she had actually learned as a child, which was making miniatures,
and in nine thirteen, 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
(08:06):
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which was one of the many arts
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
(08:28):
mentioned earlier, George Burgess McGrath, and this was forensic science.
McGrath had studied medicine at Harvard and then had gone
on to become a medical examiner. And McGrath'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
(08:48):
keep her company, and she just became utterly engulfed in
her passion for it. UH and she became so interested
in it that in the nineteen thirties she actually gave
Harvard an endowment of two d and fifty thou dollars,
which has been estimated to be about three point eight
million in today's money adjusted for the establishment of a
(09:08):
department of legal medicine. And it's often speculated in biographies
of gless Earn Lee that she 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 by
her family. She also continued to give financial gifts to
(09:29):
the university. Uh This went on through the years to
further the department's growth and development, and her friend McGrath
became chair of the new department and taught pathology 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 u
we cannot say enough how much she did not fit
(09:50):
the usual mold of a moneyed society heiress. So while
the other women of society were throwing dinner parties for
equally wealthy friends and as though see it's she would
often host large dinner parties for detectives and investigators and
scientists so she could pick their brains about their work.
I love it so much too, and as you know,
(10:10):
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 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
(10:31):
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 three gless near Lee
really made a bit of history because she had been
learning about forensics and had really been kind of moving
(10:51):
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 perhaps a seminar. This was an
invitation only event where attendees were treated to lavish meals
(11:11):
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 thousand dollar china
set for the hotel that hosted this event every year,
(11:33):
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. I'm gonna think maybe she was just person nickety,
I think a little bit um And through all of
her talks with investigators and detectives and her discussions with
(11:55):
mc grant about his work, this idea had been forming
in gless Early'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, you know, through
education of how criminal investigation worked. So she came to
(12:20):
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 can be corrupted
or lost. And additionally, for investigators in training, there were
(12:41):
just never enough crime scenes in which they could practice
their skills. So Gless nearly 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 ninety three to
nineteen fifty, so some of this was going on concurrently
with her development of these seminars. She assembled this group
(13:06):
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 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,
(13:29):
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 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
(13:51):
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, 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.
(14:13):
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 certain aesthetic 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. Uh, the smallest of
(14:36):
these dioramas is eight by fourteen inches and the largest
is a thirty inch square three room dwelling. And I
cannot stress enough how 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
(14:59):
socks that she hand knitted on straight pins, and she
would like whittle She would hand whittled tiny tiny clothes
pins that would fill 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
(15:19):
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 some cases, if it was a case where the
scene was supposed to be found with this body having
been there for a while, the blood spatter is carefully
(15:41):
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.
She didn't do all of this all by herself, although
most of it was, but she would also use carpon
or sometimes she had a carpenter that she retained and
(16:02):
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
tidy functioning locks with anybody keys. In the scenes where
(16:22):
their children, 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 capture
(16:44):
my attention, UH, 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 reduced these two UH investigators police officers and detectives,
(17:05):
and they used them to develop the methods that are
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 in word two 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
(17:28):
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, like their people didn't really have a standardized
and methodical way of looking at a scene to try
(17:50):
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. So one
of the things that she even did as part of
(18:12):
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 they
(18:32):
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, they
(18:55):
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 happ seminars. And they've been used
to train investigators at the gathering for years, so normally
(19:19):
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
(19:40):
this goal. One of the goals of this practice, as
I said, she was developing this 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
(20:03):
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
(20:25):
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 her and
(20:45):
her work with McGrath, coroners for example, didn't need 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 a to uh make sure that trained medical
personnel were involved in investigations and it wasn't just people
(21:07):
guessing that did not know the workings of the human body.
Francis died in New Hampshire at the Rocks at the
small home that her family had had built there, on
January nineteen, 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
(21:28):
part of a public display at the Maryland Medical Examiner's
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.
(21:48):
I've read a few different reports and they follow at
different times, like different years that they've been written. I
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 cost about fifty dollars,
(22:10):
just a general sort of upkeep and refresh, although they
still have the Kukie decor in. A documentary 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
(22:32):
kind of wanted to analyze her place in terms of
like an an early phase of feminism, which I didn't
get into here. It's covered by other people. I really
wanted to focus on her crime work. 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
(22:53):
she was an heiress with immense wealth, she became incredibly
respected by the men that she worked with 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 an
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
(23:16):
criminology systems, that is why in her early 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
(23:37):
for this, I saw many men that she had worked
with through the years really described her as 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
(23:58):
it was not in a formal setting. And she wrote
an article in nineteen fifty two for the 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. And it says, quote, technical skill, scientific knowledge,
(24:18):
and professional training, however, are not all there is to
legal medicine. There is something else, something hard 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
(24:39):
is a constant and continuous search for truth in the
interests of science and justice, to expose the guilty, 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. Yea, And now I have a
listener mail right. I have two pieces because they're both shortish. Uh.
(25:03):
First is from our listener Allen, who writes to us often. UH.
And he's sent us some really beautiful pictures lately while
he's been traveling the world. Uh. And he says, Hi,
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
(25:26):
the PTSD clinic. In listening to 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 Achilles and
Vietnam by Jonathan Shay m d, pH d. As a
(25:48):
really good book on the subject 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 the 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 Ambrose Beer story. So my
second note is from our listener Kate, and she wrote
(26:10):
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 of we get some
(26:34):
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 me. 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
(26:54):
to summit Everest. She is a native of Fukushima, and
she made her historic ascent in the nineteen seventy five
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 nine nine. And she really broke cultural
tradition on her ascent because she left her three year
(27:17):
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 at the
(27:37):
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 Everest
each year. Uh, and we'll link to a couple of
really great articles about her in the show notes if
(27:59):
you want to ead 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 averst
rabies for someone that doesn't want to climate but but
I highly recommend reading up on her because she's really incredible.
She only was the she only got to be the
(28:21):
only woman that had ever summitted for like less than
two weeks. I think eleven days later, some another woman summitted,
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. Thank you so much
(28:42):
for joining us for this Saturday Classic. Since this is
out of the archive, if you heard an email address
or a Facebook U r L or something similar during
the course of the show, that may be obsolete. Now.
So here is our current contact information. We are at
History Podcast at how stuff works dot com, and then
we're at Missed in the History all over social media
(29:02):
that is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram.
Thanks again for listening. For more on this and thousands
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