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Monday, January 27, 2014
Frances Glessner Lee Remembered
Frances Glessner Lee in 1961
Today
marks the 52nd anniversary of the death of Frances Glessner Lee, the
last surviving family member to have lived in the house at 1800 South Prairie
Avenue. A highly-regarded pioneer in the
field of legal medicine, Lee has just been honored by her inclusion in a new
children’s book focusing on the work of female scientists.
Lee became
interested in legal medicine (also known as forensic science or homicide investigation)
through her friendship with Dr. George Burgess Magrath, a long-time family
friend and classmate of her brother George at Harvard University. In 1932, Lee gave a gift of $250,000 to
Harvard to create the chair in legal medicine in the medical school. The endowment ensured the perpetuation of the
department in which Dr. Magrath had taught since 1907.
Two years
later, Lee presented the school with a library of over 1,000 volumes, which was
dedicated as the George Burgess Magrath Library of Legal Medicine. The library, unique in the United States at
the time, was personally assembled by Lee and contained many rare volumes and
documents, some dating back to the 15th century.
In the
mid-1940s, Lee initiated biannual seminars in homicide investigation at
Harvard. State policemen from around the
country vied for the opportunity to attend and earn the distinction of being a
Harvard Associate in Police Science. The
seminars included an examination of the “Nutshell Studies” – miniature rooms
depicting death scenes meticulously created by Lee for the study and analysis
of evidence. The 18 rooms are still in
use today and now reside at the Medical Examiner’s Office in Baltimore,
Maryland.
Frances Glessner Lee at work on the Nutshells in the early 1940s
In 1943,
Lee was honored for her contributions to the field by being appointed as a
State Police Captain in the state of New Hampshire, the first female to be
appointed to that position in the country.
She was later given honorary status in many other state and municipal
police departments as well, and in 1956 received an honorary doctorate in Civil
Laws from New England College.
She died
peacefully at her home at The Rocks Estate in New Hampshire on January 27, 1962
at the age of 83 and was interred in the Maple Street Cemetery in Bethlehem,
New Hampshire.
The new
book, Girls Research! Amazing Tales of
Female Scientists, was written by Jennifer Phillips and published in 2014 by
Capstone Press. The premise of the book
is to introduce a young audience to the significant accomplishments of women
who not only made important strides in the field of science, but in the early
days, had to overcome obstacles to get an education, jobs, and respect.
The two-page
entry for Frances Glessner Lee states, in part:
“Glessner
Lee wanted a career. Being creative and
determined, she found a way to get one.
In fact she created an entirely new profession – the field of forensic
science. You’ve probably heard of the
TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. In that show scientists study crime scenes to
find out who committed a murder. . . Many of the techniques forensic scientists
used today were created by Glessner Lee.”
The book
places Frances Glessner Lee in an elite group of female scientists including
Anna Freud, Marie Curie, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Jocelyn Elders, Florence
Nightingale, Mary Leakey and many others.
