A post from our friends at the Glessner House Museum for their blog: http://glessnerhouse.blogspot.com/2014/01/frances-glessner-lee-remembered.html
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.
Filmmaker John Kurtis Dehn's film Of Dolls & Murder makes the front page of the A&E section of the Baltimore Sun
New angle on an old Nutshells - thanks to the iphone
Filming the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death
We're in the edit suite today, editing interview footage of Alton Mosher, Nigel Manley and Clare Brown. We're also going through our hundreds and hundreds (thousands?) of photos from our various trips to Baltimore. We have such rich material to work with for this documentary! We feel so fortunate.
Great news! Filmmaker Susan Marks (co-director) was awarded a Minnesota State Arts Grant to help finish the new documentary film on Frances Glessner Lee!
Happy New Year!! Thanks for all the support you've given us over the past year. We sincerely appreciate it.
We are very excited for 2014. Why? Because we will wrap our documentary film on Frances Glessner Lee and finish our rewrites for our feature screenplay about her. Exciting stuff! If you are thinking you already know Frances' story - you may be surprised by what we've uncovered.
You might also think that after making Of Dolls & Murder we would be tired of all of this and ready to move on, but truly her story is well worth further exploration.
So here's to a great year! 2014 - the Year of Frances Glessner Lee!
Frances Glessner Lee and her Nutshell - Dark Bathroom in a new documentary film, Her Miniature Life of Crime.
It almost goes without saying that most of the research on the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death and Frances Glessner Lee cannot be done online, but every now and then you can find a little gem, like this one from the Harvard Crimson. Make sure you read the last few lines. So dark.
Parsonage. Photo by Susan Marks
A Colloquium on Violent Death Brings 30 Detectives to Harvard
Each of the studies shows the victim in exact
scale, one inch to one foot, and they are accurate down to the smallest
detail, even to the wool stockings...
On Monday morning,
August 19, 1946, at about 11, a high school girl named Dorothy Dennison
left her home to buy some meat for dinner. A few hours later, when she
still had not returned, Dorothy's mother telephoned the butcher. He
told her he had sold Dorothy a pound of hamburger shortly before noon,
but that he had not seen in which direction she was headed.
Police
Lt. Robert Peale received a call from Mrs. Dennison at 5:25 p.m. that
day and began investigating at once. A careful and systematic search
revcaled no trace of Dorothy until Friday, August 23, when Peale entered
the deserted home of the town parson -- who had been on vacation for
several months -- and found the missing girl.
Flat on her back in
the middle of the living room, her head resting in a pool of blood,
Dorothy's eyes were open, but surrounded with black stains. Her right
car was completely covered with blood. Her dress was ripped down to her
waist, exposing her mutilated breasts. Her skirt was also torn and a
large red bruise was visible on the inside of her right thigh.
It
was a shocking crime, though not an especially difficult one to solve.
The murderer was apprehended and the case forgotten -- but not before
it came to the attention of Harvard's Department of Legal Medicine,
which carefully researched the crime, then constructed a miniature
replica of the room in which the body was found. Not A Museum Piece
The
Department was not putting together a museum piece. It needed the
replica as a principle tool for perhaps the most unusual course offered
by the University.
Since the mid-1930's, the Department of Legal
Medicine has twice each year held a seminar on violent death, a seminar
open only to qualified police detectives with extensive experience in
the investigation of homicide.
The seminars are based on more
than 20 "nutshell" studies. Each is based on an actual murder, like the
Dennison case, or is compiled from details of several unrelated
murders. Each -- with one exception -- has a known solution and is
designed to illustrate principles which are discussed in seminar
lectures.
The studies require an attention to minute details that
would have put Sherlock Holmes to shame. The Dennison replica, for
example, has tiny marks, meant to represent hammer dents, in the floor.
Though they are easy to miss, they are essential clues to solving the
murder.
Last month, 31 detectives from across the country, most
of them state police, spent a week at Harvard, using the studies in
connection with discussions of everything from abortion and infanticide
to gunshot wounds.
The police officers were paired and each pair
assigned a different nutshell study. They had two or three days to go
over the models and accompanying, background information. At the end of
the week, sitting around a table in Building E-1 at the Med School,
each pair had to describe how they would have gone about solving their
crime and give a reasonable explanation of it. Parker A. Glass, of the
Department of Legal Medicine and chairman of the session, sat at the
head of the table, a large loose-leaf notebook with information on all
the cases opened before him. He cross-examined the detectives as they
presented their theories, asking an unexpected question or pointing out
some obscure, overlooked detail.
Pick the Butcher
The
detectives who studied the Dennison case told the group they had
concluded that the butcher had forced Dorothy to the parsonage, where he
killed her.
Glass, however, reminded them that the temperature
had fluctuated between 86 and 92 degrees during the week that Dorothy
was missing, and that humidity had remained extremely high. These
conditions, he said, would hasten the deterioration of the body, yet the
body was very well preserved when the police finally discovered it. He
pointed out that the replica showed the package of hamburger which
Dorothy had purchased the previous Monday was covered with maggots.
"Have
any of you ever seen a dead body left standing for four days in that
kind of heat and humidity?" he asked. A few of the detectives grunted.
They had seen such bodies. They realized that Dorothy could not have
died as early as Monday and that Glass had destroyed the detectives'
hypothesis.
Who, then, did kill her? She was found in the
parson's home, Glass said; the seminar should begin with that fact. He
then led the group, step by step, to the solution. (He later asked that
it not be made public, for fear that detectives who will be attending
the seminar in the future might read it.)
The other nutshell
studies illustrate almost every conceivable variety of death: murder,
suicide and accident. They depict hangings, drownings, knifings and, in
a few cases, heart attacks.
All of them were built by Mrs.
Francis Glessner Lee, a wealthy widow from Chicago, and a cabinet maker
she hired. Although the cases are permanently sealed shut to protect
the contents, Mrs. Lee insisted that every one be a working model, with
miniature doors that open and shut, lights that go on and off, windows
that go up and down. Each of the studies shows the victim and his
surroundings in exact scale, one inch to the foot, and they are accurate
down to the smallest detail, even to the wool stockings that Mrs. Lee
knitted herself.
Mrs. Lee did more than construct the replicas.
She was also responsible for the creation of the Department of Legal
Medicine itself.
A very close friend of Mrs. Lee's brother was
Dr. George McGrath, professor of Legal Medicine at Harvard (before the
department itself was created), and medical examiner for Boston.
Through her brother, Mrs. Lee became interested in McGrath's work,
especially in his belief in medical examiners as opposed to coroners.
The
medical examiner has no judicial power; the coroner does. The coroner,
who in many parts of the country is an elected official, can, after he
has investigated a case, select a jury, call witnesses, and advise the
jury on its verdict as to the manner of death. Furthermore, in some
areas the coroner is not required to be a physician, and undertakers
have, on occasion, assumed the position. A medical examiner, on the
other hand, must be a doctor, and has no independent authorities. He
can only report his findings to the district attorney.
At the
turn of the century, Massachusetts established the first medical
examiner system in the country. New York City followed soon afterwards.
For many years, the two areas were alone.
Then Mrs. Lee decided
to promote medical examiners by giving Harvard $250,000 to establish
Legal Medicine as an autonomous academic department. (The Cleveland
pathologist who was chosen to head the department had to spend two years
in Europe studying Legal Medicine before he could assume the post,
since there was no school in this country which could teach it to him.)
In succeeding years she continued to donate money, much of it going to
the department's library--still the best library of Legal Medicine in
the country.
The seminars in homicide investigation were also Mrs.
Lee's ideas. She hoped to bring detectives from around the country and
convince them of the need for medical examiners.
She designed
each of the nutshell studies to illustrate some aspect of that basic
proposition and, at the same time, to acquaint police officers with a
few basic medical principles. One, for example, demonstrates the
principle that blood will always settle in the area of the corpse which
is closest to the ground at the time of death. Thus, if a person dies
while lying on his back, gravity will draw the blood to that area and
lividity (an easily observable, red discoloration) will set in. The
study shows an apparent suicide, lying face down, yet with obvious
lividity in the lower back--demonstrating that someone turned it over
after death occurred.
Mrs. Lee attended every seminar, displaying
and explaining the studies, until her death. She always hoped that
after seeing the advantages of the medical examiner system, the
detectives would return to their states and fight to get the coroners
replaced. For the present, however, she has failed; there are still
coroners in more than 40 states.
