Unexplained Deaths: How One Woman Changed Homicide Investigation Forever

by Bruce Goldfarb

For most of human history, sudden and unexpected deaths of a suspicious nature, when they were investigated at all, were examined by lay persons without any formal training. People often got away with murder. Modern forensic investigation originates with Frances Glessner Lee - a pivotal figure in police science.

Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962), born a socialite to a wealthy and influential Chicago family, was never meant to have a career, let alone one steeped in death and depravity. Yet she became the mother of modern forensics and was instrumental in elevating homicide investigation to a scientific discipline.

Frances Glessner Lee learned forensic science under the tutelage of pioneering medical examiner Magrath - he told her about his cases, gave her access to the autopsy room to observe post-mortems and taught her about poisons and patterns of injury. A voracious reader, too, Lee acquired and read books on criminology and forensic science - eventually establishing the largest library of legal medicine.

Lee went on to create "The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death" - a series of dollhouse-sized crime-scene dioramas depicting the facts of actual cases in exquisitely detailed miniature - and perhaps the thing she is most famous for. Celebrated by artists, miniaturists and scientists, the Nutshell Studies are a singularly unusual collection. They were first used as a teaching tool in homicide seminars at Harvard Medical School in the 1930s, and then in 1945 the homicide seminar for police detectives that is the longest-running and still the highest-regarded training of its kind in America. Both of which were established by the pioneering Lee.

In Unexplained Deaths, Bruce Goldfarb weaves Lee's remarkable story with the advances in forensics made in her lifetime to tell the tale of the birth of modern forensics.

This audiobook was originally published in 2020 under the title 18 Tiny Deaths .

PLEASE When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime, History, Biography, Science, Crime, Audiobook

Audible Audio

First published February 4, 2020

About the author

Bruce Goldfarb has contributed to Baltimore magazine, Maryland magazine, Washington Post, USA Today, American Health, American Archaeology, and many other publications. He has written or edited seven medical reference book and textbooks, and publishes welcometobaltimorehon.com. Goldfarb's first work of popular nonfiction, 18 TINY DEATHS; THE UNTOLD STORY OF FRANCES GLESSNER LEE AND THE INVENTION OF MODERN FORENSICS will be published by Sourcebooks in February, 2020.

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is shaping itself up to be the worst book of the year so far. Apology - This review is long, negative and probably boring and I can't bring myself to go back and edit it. I had so little interesting material to work with. The format is so you don't have to wade through it like me but can click on anything that interests you, or nothing at all.

The mostly good introduction It's starts off well with a description of tiny detailed dioramas of crime scenes that Frances Glessner Lee had built for lectures and continues with a background to death investigations in the US, mostly via coroners who were politically appointees and unsurprisingly corrupt. Maybe a 3 star. But it's all downhill after that.

Frances family from the time her father was born more or less in excrutiating detail The lives of Frances Lee's parents are written about in far too much detail and they were remarkably boring people who liked collecting things and going to concerts. Ok, he was an attorney who made a lot of money before he was 40 and they encouraged the arts and were liberals in general. That would have been almost enough. But no, we have to go into major local crimes, theatre burnings and mass death. No relevance shown.

It didn't need to go into what games her younger brother played, family hobbies, her brother at college having spring-break type fun. It didn't need to go into 90% of all the stuff about her family that it did. Make that 95% and I might have skimmed the 5% and not been so annoyed (it went beyond boredom).

Things I objected to The occasional dialogue which was obviously just conjecture as were emotions and reactions ascribed mostly to the father I certainly didn't like the description of a gay friend being described as confirmed bachelor and bohemian. He was a camp gay man, what's wrong with saying that? They might not have said it back then (but I bet they did) but this is a book about then, that's not the same thing.

I also objected later on to the extreme misogyny of the author of writing about so many people as Mr. Alfred Jones the dadada and his wife, Mr Algernon Smith the famous whatever and his wife. The wives aren't possessions that tag along and they have names!

More tedious trivia that added nothing to the story that I had to try and concentrate on just in case it did I didn't care about tourists who drove up to see their estate and ordered lemonade from their cook, or who of the mother's social circle would eat fruit cake and drink wine with them.

I didn't like the meaningless quotes from diaries that didn't work towards Frances' invention of modern forensics. I didn't like the excrebly bad (even for a 9 year old) poem that Frances wrote to the doctor who took out her tonsils in her house and not a hospital. I cared still less about knowing what rich people wore to their weekly needlecraft circle or what Frances Lee's wedding dress was made from, what flowers she carried and the music played. The long anecdote explaining how the Mona Lisa came to prominence (it was stolen) was relevant only that yes, if fingerprinting had been invented the case might have been solved.

Architects. Why? I had no interest at all in the three architects who build their extravagent homes. I didn't want to know what other places they had built, their styles, what awards they had won and their place in American architectural history and what school they went to. Why would I?.

Confederate heroes. Well we all know what they were fighting for. Heroes? I didn't care at all about her husband's father being a Confederate hero and what he'd done to be considered that, who he'd ordered fired on and why. How can you be a hero when you are fighting to keep slavery as an economic system where punishment is mandated by the state? See They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South.

Needlecraft and a wedding I cared still less about knowing what rich people wore to their weekly needlecraft circle, what bags they carried or what Frances Lee's wedding dress was made from, what flowers her were, still less what was the processional and other music played and by whom.

The rich are different. And make excuses. Frances as befits a filthy rich heiress had excuses about why she didn't go to college or get a job. She wanted to go to Harvard which didn't admit women, no matter who your father was and how much money he might give. Nor did I care that she played her part as a proper wife was expected to do (organise the staff and flowers I think). Didn't matter he left anyway.

High spot, we're getting relevant here! I got a bit interested when she decided to make as present for her mother an entire 1:12 scale miniature of a 90 musician orchestra (with professional help, of course) as that related to the dioramas. But I couldn't sustain it.

Knowing far too much about John Jacob Glessner and hardly anything about his daughter but this book is supposed to be about her! In all that over-detailed verbiage you'd think that the personality of Frances would shine through, that I would be able to say well she would have voted this way, I can imagine her reading these books, these were her passions, these were the things she abhorred, but I can't. I just know she was a very wealthy lady who enjoyed needlework and making miniatures and was a mother. That's not much. (It was all TMI about her father, John Jacob Glessner and his personality).

Our heroine's attitude towards money which is one I've never heard expressed before. Frances has given a lot of money to her daughters not so that they might live off the interest but so they may have the "comfort of capital" of their own. This comfort she said was very important to her, although they didn't need the interest any more than she had done as their allowances were more than adequate. But oh the comfort of having capital, could warm your heart counting it on a cold night!

At last! One chapter past the half way mark, Frances is going to get into forensics. She establishes a department of legal medicine at Harvard and pays the salaries of Dr William Brickley and Dr Timothy Leary (!) as faculty. I almost got going there, got some enthusiasm, but no we have to get back into architecture and how the father had left one of his houses to the American Institute of Architects and how much they wanted from the daughter to remodel it. Yadayadayada That was it, I can stand no more.

Why this book does not get a 1 star or, the small plus point I really only give books I found really objectionable, usually full of hatred or prejudice or propaganda to persuade you that some evil bastards were really good guys if you just looked at it the PC way. So in order to preserve the integrity of that rating, this gets a 2 star. It was tedious, it was over-written, it never looked like getting to the point but it wasn't objectionable in any way.

Maybe a better editor could have guided the author, or maybe the author was just the wrong person to write this book. I don't doubt he is very learned and I'm sure his text books have the requisite dryness that restricts them to students of the field, maybe they would enjoy this book too. I didn't. DNF. I can't waste my life like this.


________________
All reviews so far are of freebies. Out of 30 text reviews, 14 do not disclose this. This is a bit like advertisements passing themselves off as "news". I cannot believe so many people thought this was a 4 or 5 star book. But who knows, perhaps they read text books curled up on the sofa?

17/2020

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read about this amazing woman in the book, "Savage Delights." She is another vital woman rescued from the obscurity if history. Her father was a self made Irish man who founded the company that was later called, International Harvester. It was the Gilded Age and Frances was aised in Chicago with great privilege. She was only expected to marry well and do the things that wealthy women did back then. This, however, was not enough for Frances, and luckily for those who got away with murder and those who needs wrongfully convicted, she started classes that trained the police. Police Science taught the art of crime detection and the science that could be used in the solving if crimes.

Such an interesting book, about s very unusual woman. To aid in her classes she built miniature boxes, that depicted crime scenes. True down to the smallest detail, these are still used today in Boston. The book also goes into the coroner versus medical examiner crisis that many cities were exoeriencing. Coroner's were often untrained, and corrupt. So it was a mix of biography and history. Police detectives and the public owe much to this amazing woman.

[Obsidian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.

This one is definitely a good read for those who are True Crime enthusiasts. This starts off a little slow, but I found myself fascinated by the end of the book. Goldfarb follows the true story of Frances Glessner Lee who I am just going to say, is the mother of forensics as we understand it in the United States today.

Lee was a wealthy heiress with an interest in medicine which of course was discouraged for a woman living in the time and place that she did (Chicago in the late 1800s). When Lee's father died, she finally was able to take that money and use it to help detectives follow what they should do in order to develop clues to solve murders. I kind of fell in love with the idea of her creating "rooms" in which detectives and others could use to hone their skills. She was pretty much the original creator of "The Escape Room."

The only reason why I gave this 4 stars and not 5 is that it does take a while to get going and a few of Goldfarb's sections just drifted along. I noticed a lot of repetition in places.

As someone who loves True Crime, Forensic Files, and other shows, I could not believe I had never heard of Lee before.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 18 Tiny Deaths of the title refer to 18 tiny rooms called the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Each room contained a crime scene in miniature, to be used for the training of students in forensics. But in this book, there's really very little about the tiny rooms and certainly nothing about the solutions of the crimes they represent. After all, their value as training tools would be destroyed...But still, we could have some examples of them...? As it is, you can find out more about them on youtube.
This book, published in 2020, is about the woman who created the tiny rooms--Frances Glessner Lee. A most remarkable woman, from a wealthy Chicago family, she dedicated her life to promoting and advancing forensic science. The book gets off to a slow start, giving us a lot of detail about Lee's background, family, etc. It gets more interesting when Lee meets Dr. George Magrath, the medical examiner of Boston. Influenced by Magrath, Lee worked hard to have coroners (political and often corrupt) replaced by trained medical examiners. Using her wealth, she was able to get the Department of Legal Medicine established at Harvard.
As determined (or stubborn) as Frances Lee was and even with all the wealth she had at her disposal, she ran into strong resistance. She was not nearly as successful as she hoped she would be. According to the book, medical examiner systems are now present in DC and twenty-two states. The rest of the states either use all coroners or both coroners and medical examiners. The author states that there are 1 million sudden and violent deaths in the USA every year. Half of these unexplained deaths are never subject to a thorough inquiry by a qualified forensic pathologist. So there's no way to know how many murders slip below the radar every year in this country.
All in all, this is an interesting book which raised an issue that I had never even considered before. Due to the popular CSI shows, people think that all crimes are subject to forensic examination. That's far from the truth. But I still want to know more about those tiny rooms.

[Montzalee Wittmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics
by Bruce Goldfarb
I had heard of the the fantastic little drama reenactments staged for police and forensic science but never got around to getting the full scoop on it. Well this sure does! If you don't like science or history then this is not the book for you! This book travels back in time to tell the reader how a coroner came about! Wow, what craziness! Then it gives examples. We continue forward and learn how they change. The change came slowly and not a whole lot improved. Each with examples.
Now I love history and science so I loved the book. It showed why the need for a Modern Forensic world. Then comes Frances. We get a history about her and her family which I found interesting. When you learn about a person from a different era we learn about that time period too. Then we come to the boxes! OMG!!! Unbelievable!!! So detailed. She was very rich and each box cost a fortune to make! I was totally fascinated at the precise details. But these weren't her first!
She made a whole symphony orchestra for her mother when she became too ill to go herself. Each detailed perfectly.
Amazing book! Loved it. She was an amazing woman!

[Shaelene (aGirlWithBookss) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was one of my most anticipated books for 2020, forensics is something I’ve always had a strong interest in. So I was thrilled when I got approved for this arc.

Frances Lee Glessner was born into a very wealthy family in Chicago and incredibly well educated. She always had a strong fascination with medicine and death.

This book is supposed to tell us how she got into forensics to become one of the people that helped to establish medical examiners as well as courses at Harvard on the subject. However I never got that far as this novel is DRY AS A BONE.
I love nonfiction, it makes up the majority of my reading, I’ve read some dry nonfiction in my life. But this was just too dry, and boring.

We are reminded every few pages about how wealthy Lee and her family are. For at least half of the book, we are following her and her wealthy family and all the eccentric things they got up to. This is all interspersed with tidbits about how the coroner system worked in the states during her time, as well as some notable cases that went unsolved because of shoddy work on part of the coroners. While this was interesting, it's not what I intended to read and I found myself not wanting to pick the book up or read at all.

So, I DNF’d it at 50%.
I realized I didn’t enjoy reading this at all and couldn’t force myself to read more.

2 stars.

** ARC provided by Sourcebooks & NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please forgive my typos

Frances Glessner Lee is NOT a likable person! She’s one of those who uses her money to “persuade “ people to always get what she wants. It’s disgusting.
Oh I just do not like her! She is so controlling! I realize it’s her money, but she holds it over everyone’s heads. And if she thinks you are not 100% on the same wavelength as she is, you are easily replaced. The woman has a high school education and she’s telling doctors and Harvard professors what she expects from them. To quote every adolescent ever “she’s not the boss of them”, but oh yes, she’s making sure she is. It’s disgusting.
I realize the effect she had on the birth of forensic science. There is no question about that, but she is extremely tactless. Almost all of her proposals were never passed with no reason given. My guess is because she was a woman who was extremely pushy and gave no leeway-her way or the highway. Well that is until she bribed someone, which is so hello pot you’re black according to what she was up against. Truly by the end of the book I walked away feeling shocked that this woman was so spot on on crime with no education in a world where mst men let alone those in the criminal work force had no qualms with learning from a woman regardless how rich she was.

[Don Gerstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had never heard of Frances Glessner Lee before reading this book, and I thoroughly enjoyed author Bruce Goldfarb’s book. There are many elements contained within its pages. Readers are permitted an intimate look at Ms. Lee’s ancestors as well as the events of her earlier life (before the main focus of the book, her tireless efforts to advance the field of modern forensics).

The explanation of the origins of the coroner system was enlightening and one can begin to understand the frustrations Ms. Lee dealt with throughout her life as this system is still employed in many states. The impact of Ms. Lee’s efforts cannot be overstated. The classes she started while at Harvard still continue, with her miniature and lifelike dioramas still being employed. Though some of her work has been swallowed and is almost forgotten (such as the Magrath Library, containing over 3000 books), there are countless reminders of exactly what Ms. Lee accomplished.

It is noted in the book that “18 Tiny Deaths” is the first biography about Frances Glessner Lee. I found it to be a satisfying description of a woman who chose to pioneer a new field, her struggles to bring her dreams to fruition, and the many accomplishments that she was instrumental in bringing about. Recommended to everyone. Five stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for an advance electronic copy of this title.

[Jeanette · Rating 3 out of 5]

This read was strange. It's about the title but then again great lengths of it are about her associates or mentor or events quite apart from Frances Glessner Lee's life story. At 57% of the kindle read and later at about 70% I almost stopped and made it a DNF. Very dry and not much more than the monetary and association history of what made this change from coroner to medical autopsy or evidence officer system possible in the majority of the USA. Not all and still within current methods - real medical evidence is not always a surety with a death. Not even within sudden deaths of unknown cause. (BTW, in large urban and smaller townships environments both it is still a corrupt field for making money in body storage or kickbacks from sending to the favorite undertaker etc.)

But I wanted to hear more about her rooms and a whole less about her money. Various legacy information and budgeting for the people like Magrath is entrenched within this book.

Closer to a 2 star book. But I rounded it up from 2.5 for the information you got about Frances and her obsession with details in miniatures. Actually though, I never really felt I KNEW Frances herself much at all. Because I know the places and the Chicago history sites, seen most of them myself not too many decades after this, the book was more interesting to me than it might be for others. And these Gilded Age realities are nearly entirely gone by the 1980's or 1990's.

When I picture anything like this process of art miniatures I always think of Coleen Moore's Doll House at Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Not rooms on the 1 to 12 scale used to depict death realities of logistics.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked reading this biography. The subject is a wealthy old lady who constructed "dioramas" of the different types of crime scenes as a teaching aid in modern forensics at Harvard University. Her dioramas are still in use today. In a male-dominated profession, few men took her too seriously. Harvard condescended to her because they wanted her pile of money when she died. And yet she did more than her better-educated peers to establish forensics as the serious field of medicine it is today. She befriended the mystery writer, Erle Stanley Garner, and Hollywood even called on her to make a movie. I admire Ms. Lee's pluck, grit, and doggedness. True crime buffs might especially enjoy her biography.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.
This book is a great history of the "medico-legal" subject. A lot of research went into this. It's a fascinating look at not only Frances Glessner Lee but also George Magrath and others who helped Lee shape what is now known as forensic science. I think this subject is definitely underrated in the true crime genre so I highly recommend this book.

[Susan Faloon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frances Glessner Lee appeared to be a "rich woman who didn't have enough to do." What she really was created a widespread industry reaching from "Legal Medicine" , i.e. forensics to homicide investigations, on to the multi million dollar entertainment world of true crime stories, fiction books, movies etc. This wealthy woman held a fascination for unexplained deaths and her journey totally revolutionized how crime involving murder is investigated, processed and determined today.

This account of her life is fascinating and at times mind boggling as to how this woman literally fought her way to the point where law officers could receive good and thorough educations on how to conduct investigations. It's an amazing story to me. Once again, as seen in history, a woman saw a need and pushed those men who would listen to her toward breakthroughs that changed the world relating to the handling of a crime scene and the intricacy of processing, investigating and bringing justice to the victim.

Author Bruce Goldfarb, a journalist with a medical background became the Executive Assistant to the Chief Medical Examiner of Maryland. Serving as public information officer, Goldfarb also became de facto curator to the amazing seventy year old dioramas created by Lee which was just one of her offerings from a life dedicated to the medical legalities involved with unexplained death. He wrote this book after meticulously researching Lee's life and work. It is excellent.
Readers who are interested in books, televisions shows and movies about true crime or fictional homicide investigations should find Frances Glessner Lee an amazing woman as I have. Law officers or students of forensics should learn about the woman who studied and financially funded the fight for better education for them to do their jobs in the 1930's on into the 1950's. She gave the world a great gift yet the basically shy woman took very little credit as she wanted the process and education to be the thing in the spotlight, not her part in it.

This book took me awhile to read, there's a lot to take in. I can't begin to explain what a widespread influence Lee had during her lifetime and afterward. She even became friends with one of the most popular crime authors of the day and a movie starring Ricardo Montalban came to be because of her diligent work with "Legal Medicine". I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for my advanced copy of the book. It's a fascinating account of an amazing woman.

[Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a slog to get through this book. The parts that were interesting could have been told in a magazine article of 3-4 pages.

The book traces the history of ‘the Coroner vs the Medical Examiner” largely brought about by Dr. George Burgess Magrath.

Magrath and Lee were close friends and it is his influence that prompted her interest in the matter thus propelling her towards her later endeavors.

Lee contributed huge amounts of money to Harvard where the Department of Legal Medicine was established for the most part by her initiative.

She came from a wealthy family and donated millions to Harvard, until she didn't like them anymore.

She did contribute greatly to what is known today as Forensic Science, but it did not warrant this drawn out book of nearly 300 pages.

This was, for me, time wasted. If you are reading this book and have the urge to skip, fell free to do so.

[Lauren Stoolfire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics by Bruce Goldfarb isn't quite what I was expecting, but still an intriguing read. It does take a while to get going and it does go off on quite a few tangents, but it's still intriguing if you're mostly in it for Lee's work. I can definitely say that I'll have to watch the movie Mystery Street directed by John Sturges though that's for sure since it's connection to true events.

[PATCHES · Rating 4 out of 5]

Discussion TONIGHT! For the Morbidly Curious Book Club. Link in my bio!

[Tedi · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are always points in biographies or historical nonfiction such as this that I think to myself “I do not care.”

That never once happened with this book. I was captivated through every chapter. Frances Glessner Lee had a vision and she pursued it with determination and vigor, relentlessly. While the money she had certainly helped the situation, what this story truly was to me was a story of passion and how finding our passion can transform our lives.

Also, there was the true crime bit which I loved just as much. Where would forensics be without Frances Glessner Lee? It is truly hard to say because she is so interwoven in its beginnings that the histories of both are inseparable.

TLDR; I loved this.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars This book is really the biography of the remarkable Frances Glessner Lee. For the first 100 pages of the book, you learn about her parents and family. Her father rose from being a bookkeeper to becoming one of the principals in what developed into International Harvester Corporation.

Her parents built an unusual for their time home in a luxurious neighbor near downtown Chicago. It is obvious from the beginning that Frances is a very intelligent and hard working girl. In more modern times, she would have found her calling as a research scientist, doctor, or at the helm of a corporation.

However, being the daughter of a wealthy man carried its own expectations and restrictions. Through her brother who attended Harvard she made the acquaintance with many intelligent men and cultivated friendships.

Fortunately, for forensic science, she found herself recovering from surgery at the Phillips House where another family friend George Macbeath was recovering as well. He was the medical examiner for part of Boston. He told her tales of his work and sparked her interest in Forensic science.

Using her considerable wealth, she got Harvard to establish a speciality in Legal Medicine that Macbeath taught. By dangling her fortune and spending some of it she enticed Harvard to continue to expand this program. She helped the US move from a system of elected or appointed coroners to medical examiners. Many or most of the coroners lacked medical training or law enforcement training.

The 18 little deaths refers to a training device that Lee developed to educate law enforcement officers as to what to look for at crime scenes and build their powers of observation.

Very well researched but the writing tends to be academic in style. Nevertheless, Frances Lee’s extraordinary accomplishments and personality are well documented. Worth Reading.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to read up about Frances Glessner Lee after stumbling across this book recently. I have always been intrigued about the story of the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death after stumbling across several references to them over the years.

The idea that someone created miniature dioramas to aid in the training of crime scene investigations and the understanding of unexplained deaths is both ingenious and creative especially when you consider the time and efforted needed to achieve this (some of the stories of how some of the items where created are amazing) but when you realised the context in which it all came about it makes it all the more incredible.

I will admit that there is a of history and biography in this book focusing on as you would gets Frances Glessner Lee so if you are expecting a book of procedures and scientific processes this is not the one for you - however to understand the dedication and determination of a person who could easily have been contented living of "family money" this is a real inspiration.

[JoAn · Rating 4 out of 5]

18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics by Bruce Goldfarb was a fascinating read. Mrs. Lee was a force to be reckoned for her time and I found myself admiring her determination to bring modern medical investigations to aid the police. I found the history of coroners to be very interesting and how often this practice continues to this day because of the cost and also political motivations of many states and cities. I would truly love to see the dioramas that were produced under Mrs. Lee's exacting standards.

I received a copy of this book from my public library.

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

18 TINY DEATHS: THE UNTOLD STORY OF FRANCE GLESSNER LEE AND THE INVENTION OF MODERN FORENSIC
Bruce Goldfarb


This is a book right up my alley as I teach forensics to college students and working professionals alike and did my share of crime scenes previous to this career change. I have to agree with many of the reviewers that it might be dry, seems just a tad right of the title, and drags a bit in places, BUT... the history of why and how we train to investigate and view and handle evidence is an important aspect of current protocols in practice today. The book did not go into detail about these topics but alluded to them. I wish that I had these death scenes as too many students today are not prepared to view a snapshot of life's worse moments because they have very little concept of exactly what they are looking at. They see themselves solving the crime and saving the day, but they don't see the work it takes. Lee's broad sweep of life is what it takes, knowledge of architecture, building material and how they react and show evidence, how to look past the surface.

While Lee's story is mostly centered on the legomedical school and medical examiner vs coroner, I was thinking of the schools in Texas that offer than degree path and I largely attribute that to Capt Lee's actions with Harvard. But this might not be the review of Capt Lee's life that you are looking for, so unless you are invested in forensics, it might be a tough read.

4 stars

Happy Reading!

[Clued-in With A Book (Elvina Ulrich) · Rating 5 out of 5]

***4.75 stars***

"… forensics science - the application of medicine to matters of law and justice."

Frances Glessner Lee is a familiar name to any true crime fans, especially forensics aficionados. She was the first female captain in US after being commissioned by the New Hampshire State Police in 1943, and was known as the "mother of forensic science", spending most of her life educating, reforming and teaching medical and law officers about the importance and credibility of forensic science or legal medicine as it was known back then. She was also well-known for her true crime scene dioramas she created in dollhouse scale known as the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death which were used as training material and is still used in forensic seminars today.

18 Tiny Deaths details Lee's remarkable story and her relentless effort and endless contributions to legal medicine/forensic science. The author did an excellent in-depth research as this book is replete with facts and true crime stories which were intriguing. I enjoyed Lee's background story which was pivotal to her work and contributions to legal medicine/forensic science later on in her life. I learnt about George Burgess Magrath, a medical examiner, who was the one to inspire Lee in this field. This book also talks about the history of coroner system which was a notoriously corrupt practice back then, wrongly convicted many innocent lives.

Overall, this is a must read if forensic science is something you enjoy. I enjoyed the history part, true crime cases (albeit not long) and how Lee managed to revolutionize the legal medicine or forensic science we have today. It's insightful and entertaining.

Favourite quotes/sayings by Frances Glessner Lee:

"Legal Medicine may be likened to a three-legged stool, the three legs being medicine, the law and the police. If any one of these is weak, the stool will collapse."

"It must be understood, these models are not 'whodunits' - they cannot be solved merely by looking at them," Lee said. "They are intended to be an exercise in observing, interpreting, evaluating and reporting."

"The cocktail hour has come to be important time with me - not for the liquor, but for the pause, the relaxation, the daintiness and pettiness of the service,"

Pub. date: Feb 4, 2020

***I received a complimentary digital copy of this book from SOURCEBOOKS (non-fiction) through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All views expressed in this review are my own and was not influenced by the author, publisher or any third party.***

[Dawn Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a crime geek - I love books on crime, I watch crime-based shows, I read cozy mysteries and regular mysteries. And I, at one time, wanted to be a criminal forensic scientist or pathologist. Alas, that was not to be as I am allergic to many of the chemicals that they use daily and there there is the whole math issue. I think that disappointment is why I really dive into books and shows about this subject - I live vicariously now through all of that. BUT! with all that knowledge, I had NO FREAKING IDEA that a woman [and a formidable one at that] both created and developed what is now modern forensics. So when I saw this book, I jumped at it. And B O Y -howdy am I glad I did. What an amazing read and an even more amazing woman. WOW.

This book is really for true forensic fans/geeks/lovers. It is, at times, fairly technical. And at times, it is not. Her story is really amazing and how she was treated [I am looking at you Harvard University] over the years just blows my mind, even though I know what it was like for women then [and now. You'd think things would have changed. Sigh.] I really loved every second of this book - in the discovery of how photos helped catch criminals. The conversations about H.H. Holmes [who I had learned about in Erik Larson's "Devil in the White City" - a serial killer that STILL makes my blood run cold], and other conversations that I had previously read about, but had no idea that the basis of them came from Frances Lee.

IF you truly love forensics and stories about crimes that were seemingly impossible to solve, but were eventually solved because of the amazingness of forensics, then this book is for you. We all should know about this woman, her life and her huge contribution to the invention of forensics. You will not be sorry.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks [Nonfiction] Publishing for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exactly as the title says, it is both about Frances Glessner Lee and her life, and about the invention of "legal medicine" as a field of study. There's quite a lot of intersection, but if you are reading for one or the other you might not like what you consider digressions. I felt like the background into Lee's life was important to set the stage of her class and the pattern of noblesse oblige while also showing why she couldn't get into medicine herself. (Important to note the noblesse oblige vs charity because of Harvard not seeing the value in things like her lavish suppers, while she was attempting to increase the prestige of homicide detectives, make them more than they were considered, lift the profession. She was very aware of giving them a lot of dignity while they learned)

A little slow to get into at first, which is a problem I generally have with all but the absolute most engaging nonfiction, and while this is probably more like a 4 star read compared to my usual nonfic reading habits, I'd give a 3 stars overall. Some of the sentences are choppy and there is a lot of repetition, possibly because this was a review copy, or possibly because there are a lot of school and program titles and they may have style guides that require the proper name every time, with Goldfarb rewording it more simply afterwards.

I was given a review copy to read through NetGalley, and I did not allow that to change my review in any way.

[April · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a rather disjointed; rather dry, and mostly dull account of Frances Lee’s push to get the US away from a coronor system and into the practice of using medical examiners. Instead of focusing on the fascinating dioramas the book is largely geared towards following (in, again, a supremely disjointed and jarring method) the rise of forensics in the US thanks to Lee’s use of vast sums of money (ie: ONE diorama would have cost between 20-30k in current day funds to create).

I resorted to lots of skimming because the tale of this well and science-inclined socialite was just rather lackluster for me in its presentation. Also? Don’t hope for any in depth description of the Nutshell Dioramas or pictures as you WILL be disappointed.

Mostly this is 300 pages about how Lee was bored, rich, and her arguing with people and/Harvard University.

[Dree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and SourceBooks for providing me with an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.
————
I expected this book to be a career biography about doctor/investigator/scientist who was instrumental in developing the field of forensics as we know it. I expected that she had been forgotten due to her own success. I was a little off all the way around.

This is a birth-to-death biography of Frances Glessner Lee—gilded age heiress untrained in any field. In midlife she found out about the field of legal medicine through a close friend, and she put all her efforts and devoted the rest of her life (and much of her money) to developing a department at Harvard and introducing the possibilities to police and legal departments around the country.

There is very little science here—this is largely about the strength of one personality who used her connections, her time, her talents, her wallet, and threats of withdrawing money to accomplish what she envisioned.

Did she accomplish it? Not in the form she envisioned, but yes, her skills (and money) were important. She received several honorary degrees and police captaincies during her lifetime. She even had a hand in the first police procedural movie (Mystery Street with Ricardo Montalban).

This book is well written and meticulously researched, and Goldfarb has amazing access to materials as an employee of the Maryland ME’s office.

I learned a lot reading this book--about the establishment of forensic science/legal medicine, about Harvard's Medical School, about the coroner and medical examiner systems, and about police death investigations. This is, however, a biography of Lee's entire life--including her childhood. There is little about the actual "invention" of modern forensics. This is a history of science, not the science itself.

Perfect for: fans of biographies and police procedurals and those interested in the history of crime, Harvard’s medical school, and policework.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I love picking up a nonfiction book on a totally random (to me) subject and this was one of those times, found through the library’s new books feed. The book wasn’t quite what I expected (I expected more on the dioramas themselves; they didn’t make an appearance until two-thirds through the book) but I found something even better. Lee’s story is amazing. Her family was very well off and education wasn’t important for girls. Her life could have easily fallen into oblivion, filled with social graces that don’t make headlines. Instead, she took her hobby and ran with it. Read the book. Look at everything she accomplished with her life, far more than many will even today, and imagine what she could have done with a 21st century education. She’s truly an inspiration on following your dreams no matter what they are. She’s definitely my new hero. As a stay at home mom in the suburbs, what do I have to offer society as a whole? Now if only I could turn my copious book reading into a fancy legacy...

[Woody Chichester · Rating 4 out of 5]

I tore through this to get to the stuff about the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Deaths. Along the way, I got an education on the beginnings of Legal Medicine, better known today as forensic science. Lots on George B. McGrath, as well as the Glessner family background. Written in matter of fact, historical fashion, this has some fun (albeit tragic) read aloud tidbits, too. Molasses flood of 199, anyone? FGL4EVA!

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent story describing the persistence of one woman in the development of legal medicine, or forensics. What an incredibly difficult fight to gain recognition and training for people in this field, especially as a woman. I will admit to having slightly more interest than people not from Illinois, as Frances is originally from Chicago. But I find her battles with Harvard admirable no matter where she is from

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

I live in the Chicago area and have been aware of the Glessner House on Prairie Avenue, and that it can be toured. On the other hand, I had no idea who these people are. So I was really interested in reading this book to answer that question. The father was a rich man who worked for International Harvester. But the book is about the fascinating daughter, Frances, who was a the "mother of forensic science".

[Kaitlyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t know if I just wasn’t in the mood for this book or what because all the reviews are glowing, but I was incredibly bored reading this.

I think the story itself is interesting and I liked learning about the science behind it all, but it seemed like the author just wanted to share every single piece of research they did so it ended up just reading like a timeline of events to me.