Frances Glessner Lee

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

Early life

Glessner Lee was born in Chicago on March 25, 1878 to John Jacob Glessner and Frances Macbeth Glessner.

Her father, John Jacob Glessner, was an industrialist who became wealthy from International Harvester. She and her brother were educated at home; her brother went to Harvard.

Career

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

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

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

Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death

thumb|The Red Bedroom Diorama

In 1945, Glessner Lee donated her dioramas to Harvard for use in her seminars. She hosted a series of semi-annual seminars, where she presented 30 to 40 men with the "Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death", intricately constructed dioramas of actual crime scenes, complete with working doors, windows and lights. Viewers were given 90 minutes to study the scene. As of 2020, the models could be found at the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore, where they were still used in the annual Frances Glessner Lee homicide investigation seminar. You can see one of her nutshell studies, "Sitting Room & Woodshed," on display at The Rocks. It is a miniature work of art, a historic artifact, and a teaching tool for forensic science.

For her work, Glessner Lee was made a captain in the New Hampshire State Police on October 27, 1943, making her the first woman to join the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

The dioramas of the crime scenes Glessner depicted were as follows: three-room dwelling, log cabin, blue bedroom, dark bathroom, burned cabin, unpapered bedroom, pink bathroom, attic, woodsman's shack, barn, saloon and jail, striped bedroom, living room, two-story porch, kitchen, garage, parsonage parlor, and bedroom. Her father was an avid collector of fine furniture with which he furnished the family home. He wrote a book on the subject, and the family home, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, whose plot twists were often the result of overlooked details. Many of her dioramas featured female victims in domestic settings, illustrating the dark side of the "feminine roles she had rehearsed in her married life."

Glessner Lee is paid tribute to in the book Encyclopedia Horrifica by Joshua Gee.
Frances Glessner Lee and Erle Stanley Gardner were friends, and he dedicated several of his detective novels to her, including The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom.
The character of Agnes Lesser in the Father Brown episode "The Smallest of Things" is based on Glessner Lee.
The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibited 18 of the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death from October 20, 2017, to January 28, 2018. Sponsors included the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.
Frances Glessner Lee's life story is told in the graphic novel Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World written by Pénélope Bagieu.
Frances Glessner Lee and her pioneering work with crime scene dioramas are cited in some detail and play a crucial role in episode 17 of the 17th season of NCIS, "In a Nutshell".
In her book Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science, science journalist Erika Engelhaupt describes her own experience working with a team on solving the crime of one of the Nutshell dioramas and discusses Frances Glessner Lee's contribution to forensic science.

References

External links

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death Photographs
Of Dolls and Murder documentary website
Glessner House website