It was the eleventh day of December of the year 1938 when Dr. George Burgess Magrath passed away. He was a great doctor that influenced many individuals in the field of legal medicine and in the “detection of crime.” But there was one person whom he influenced the most. Frances Glessner Lee, friend of Magrath for nearly thirty years, accomplished great feats for her time and carried on the legacy of her dear friend.¹

From a young age, Frances Glessner Lee, a Chicago heiress, was enthralled with the idea of solving crimes. She was an avid fan of Edgar Allen Poe, who wrote pieces that were some of the first “detective stories,” and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, with his famous detective Sherlock Holmes.² Because of this, she admired the fields of law and medicine greatly, and wanted to pursue an education in them. Unfortunately, Lee had many challenges to overcome, one being going into a male-dominated workforce. During the early 1900s, there were still many negative opinions about women working.³ Still, the greatest challenge Lee faced was her own father, John Jacob Glessner. John Glessner, Lee’s personal “jailer” as she liked to call him, intercepted her path in pursuing an education in forensic science. Because of this, she had no choice but to accept that there was no chance of achieving her dreams.⁴

That was until she encountered George Burgess Magrath, a college friend of her older brother from Harvard University. Magrath, who was working as a medical examiner by the time the two met in 1929, captivated Lee with his tales of investigating deaths.⁵ As they talked, they discussed many facets of the coroner position, including the influence of politics on the job and the insufficient training both medical examiners and detectives received on the topic of crime investigations. With their conversation and Magrath’s encouragement, Lee was finally given the push she needed to pursue her “fascination with policing and her commitment to the use of medical science in criminal investigation.”⁶

After her initial encounter with Magrath, Lee’s passion for criminal investigation increased tenfold. Although Lee didn’t go to a university, as she was home educated, she dedicated herself to “reading up on criminology and collecting books and papers on the subject.”⁷ Magrath continued to help Lee become more involved in the forensic scene by introducing her to Dr. Alan Gregg, the chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation’s General Education Board. This foundation was “committed to advancing and professionalizing forensic medicine.”⁸ By the year 1931, Lee’s continued financial contributions to and advisement of the Rockefeller Foundation helped establish the first Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard University, with Magrath as its first chair.⁹ In 1934, she donated 1,000 books to establish a library in Magrath’s honor, named the George Burgess Magrath Library of Legal Medicine.¹⁰

After her father’s death in 1936, Lee inherited a large portion of his estate, which she used to donate $250,000 to Harvard University’s Department of Legal Medicine.¹¹ For the next few years, the department flourished under Lee’s donations, and it helped train students to become medical examiners. During that time, both Lee and Magrath  revelled in their accomplishments until December 11, 1938: the day Magrath passed away. For Lee, that time had been especially difficult, as she lost her closest friend. Still, that did not stop her from continuing forward. Instead, her resolve to improve the process of criminal investigation was strengthened.¹²

As Lee saw it, something had to be done to advance the techniques of criminal investigation. The sub-par training in medical examination, which was lacking in both medical training and appropriate credentials, could not continue.¹³ So, she devised a plan that would not only educate students to be more fastidious at crime scenes, but would go on to teach thousands of students for years to come.¹⁴ She called this idea the “Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.” These “studies” were eighteen intricate, handcrafted models, or miniatures as she called them, of different “crime scenes.”¹⁵ Some of these miniatures were based on real investigations and others based on pure imagination.¹⁶

To bring these studies to life, Lee acquired the assistance of two men: a carpenter by the name of Ralph Mosher and, later, his son Alton Mosher. They helped stage her Nutshells by creating foundations and furniture.¹⁷ While the Moshers helped build the miniatures, Lee created the “victims” for her numerous crime scenes by hand, meticulously adding important details to the dolls she made.¹⁸

These models were designed to competently train police officers in “the art of crime scene investigation” and to be used as tools for future crime scene investigators.¹⁹ They were also used to emphasize an important principal in forensic investigation: “to convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell.”²⁰

Starting the building process of the miniatures in the 1940s, Lee, along with Mosher and his son, created three Nutshells every year. After the initial Nutshells were created, they were introduced to a biannual seminar that started in 1946, called the Harvard Associates of Police Science. These seminars were hosted by Lee to give students, police officers, and other law professionals the opportunity to harness their investigation skills by gathering clues from miniature crime scenes.²¹ During these ninety-minute challenges presented by Lee, all participants were given official “reports” of the study and its “witnesses.” These reports, which were filled with information correlating to the miniatures, were meant to give students the sense of examining a real crime scene. Participants exercised their skills in observation, note-taking, reporting, and depicting the scenes in front of them.²²

With the introduction of the Nutshell Studies to her seminars, Lee facilitated improvement in the forensic science world by training of police officers in crime scene investigations.²³ For years, her Nutshell Studies would continue to be used in seminars. Even after her death in 1962, Lee’s teachings were referenced throughout numerous works, such as Katherine Biber’s paper “Little Clues: Frances Glessner Lee’s Archives of Domestic Homicide.” She also increased the awareness of numerous social problems in the twentieth century through her dioramas, since they often reflected issues including domestic violence, “social paranoia, questions of the safety of new suburban neighborhoods, and the changing role of women in the home.”²⁴ Lee even influenced much of twentieth-century crime literature and crime films, such as author Erle Stanley Gardner’s novel the Case of the Dubious Bridegroom and Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rope.²⁵ With this influence, Lee was able to accomplish her dreams and foster the improvement of the field of forensic science.