Called the “mother of forensic science,” Frances Glessner Lee dedicated her life and used her wealth to reforming murder investigations; she became a “driving force” in the male-dominated field of police and detective work, particularly in the 1930s and ’40s. For Globe Magazine, Patricia Wen weaves a profile of this curious, fearless, and pioneering woman with history and true crime—specifically the 1940 murder case of a young woman named Irene Perry. Lee is also known for her “Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death”: 18 meticulously detailed miniature dioramas, used to train detectives to analyze evidence at crime scenes.
Lee spared no time or expense in making her nutshells, spending months and as much as $135,000 in today’s money on each. She personally made many of the items within the crime scenes, working with her carpenter in New Hampshire. Tiny pencils contained real lead, a police whistle can emit a shriek, and one room had a miniature Sherlock Holmes novel.
The minutely detailed models didn’t portray the elegant spaces of Lee’s own life — the mansions, the Ritz, the Chicago Symphony — but environments where working-class people lived and died, predominantly women. Lee is unlikely to have used the word feminist to describe herself, her biographers say, yet her dioramas often seem to point to the oppressed place of women in society.
