Here's the thing: saving money with Geico was almost better than playing pick up basketball, because there's always that guy joint your game ever passes the rock he constantly. Rex theories and who completely happy when put his hands up and say no foul, no foul with Geico. It's easy to switch save on car insurance? No need Fagin Ankle sprain, because you're absolutely exhausted. So which, in save with Geiger it's almost better than sports Saturday classics listeners. Today's classic is thanks to our listener, rich, who rode into remind us that there is a great Smithsonian exhibit currently running that features Frances Klesmer least nutshell dire Rama

here we have shared some articles about that exhibit on our social media, but we haven't mentioned it on the show, and so now. So, if you don't know what those directives are no worries, this episode from back and twenty fourteen is going to explain the whole thing and how a wealthy heiress advanced the field of forensic investigation, It's a pretty fascinating story of how one woman completely changed, an area of investigation and knowledge that she really had no prior connection to you. So I really love it for them. And we also wanted to make sure that we share information about the exhibit before we start on this classic episode so that you can easily find it. It is called murder. Is her hobby his glass normally and the nut shell studies of unexplained death, and it is running I now and it will continue to run until January, twenty Eightth, twenty eighteen and you're a fear. Listening is absurd. Sometime in the future. Right now is November of twenty seventeen, so

Find all the details about the whole thing at the Smithsonian American ART museums. Renwick gallery is also a series of public programmes. We can attend about the exhibit, Frances Glister Lee, and we will linked to all the information and the show notes for now. Think get a little background on the topic in this episode. Welcome to stuff you missed in history, class from Housetop works, dot com hello and welcome to the coming right and I'm Tracy wealth in today's topic. Is one that has been on my list for a very long time, almost from the time it Tracy came on to documents in history class and merely listeners have also requested it. It is a sort of equal parts, and horrifying, which is probably why people really love it so much in response to this end, it

features a woman who was you know a debutante heiress but sort of anything but the standard debutante aurettes. You may conjuring your mind when you hear those words. Even though she sort of forced into that role, and she had some be no society bucking instincts about where a woman should be in in her place, and how that was gonna work. You know she was still nonetheless, an heiress and part of that structure that happen. Her that had given her that position and her name was Frances questioner Lee and she was a very meticulous woman, there are stories that you'll hear that she was so exacting that she actually Number, the bottoms of vases and knickknacks and similarly able the shelves that they were supposed to go on with corresponding number so everything would always be in its exact space. That's just like a quick character in sight for you, because it it would maybe be no surprise, then, that this woman, who was surprising and

Ways was a major contributor to the world of forensic science and criminology, and we actually have a lot to thank her for so Frances Glass nor Lee came from a very wealthy family. Her father was John Jacob Glasnost and he made his fortune in the farm implement industry. Her mother, Sarah Frances Macbeth Lester, had met John Jacob when her family had taken him and is a border, and the questioners were very active and like a fierce. Both of France's parents wrote a great deal John served on the boards of many civic organisations, including the citizens, Association of Chicago and the Chicago Orphan Asylum, and he was also a trusty of the Chicago Orchestra Association. Fairer was something of a renaissance woman. Molly was she skilled seamstress, but she also studied piano, silversmith thing and beekeeping she organised

the rings for women where they could hear lectures and readings about contemporary writing, and she was one of the founders of the Chicago Chamber, music society and was a passionate advocate for the arts. Sarah and Johns First child was George Macbeth Klesmer and he was born in eighteen. Seventy one and because George had chronic and serious hay fever, the family ended at building a second summerhouse in New Hampshire, so he can get away from the the issues in Chicago in spring and summer. That would cause this hay fever to sort of be a problem for him. The couple had a second sign in eighteen: seventy, four, The baby John Francis sadly died when he was eight months old and then their daughter, Frances questioner was born on March twenty fifth of eighteen. Seventy eight because of Georgia is ongoing the issues, the children at we're home schooled instead of sent to school by a series.

You too, I was also actually pretty common for well to do. Families at the time to schools are children at home, where we ve had a lot of pod cast subjects who I learned at home. Francis grew up in glass in our house, which was designed by Architect Henry Hobson Richardson and was built in eighteen. Eighty, seven, this house, which is unsure Cockers Prairie Avenue in South Loop, is now a national historic landmark in museum. Once the glass nerves moved into glass nor house spent winters there and summers and their new Hampshire cabin, which was called the rocks and during one of those summers, while they were in I'm sure the family was during joined by Georgia's friend and other George named George Burgess Mc Grath, and this name you want to just keep in the back your head because he would become a pretty significant influence on Francis later in her life as Francis he went by fanny among her family members. Estimated to approach

dont head, she became interested in pursuing a career in law or medicine, but her parents were really against this idea. There are some unsubstantiated reports that are father. John actually believe that, ladies, should know nothing of the human body. What sort of makes me giggle a little bit, but you know you have one you're gonna, fundamentally, no offense, it works, but it's an interesting mindset, and not all of that unusual for the early nineteenth hundreds. I imagine so instead of going to university. She had wanted to do in which her brother George was doing Frances and a little more than a year, travelling through Europe with her aunt Helen Macbeth from eighteen, ninety six to eighteen, ninety, seven and after return to Chicago Francis made her formal society debut in November of eighteen. Ninety, seven, just a few months after being presented into society. Frances married lawyer blew it Lee who was distantly related to Robert E Lee, and the new couple moved into a town house. The listeners had built for Fanny on Prairie Avenue near the questioner house.

Her brother George also had a town house built by their parents, and Francis was nineteen when she married this marriage was not an especially happy. One eventually became clear that France's and blew it really did not have all that much in common and they didn't share, Many interests, one story that her son eventually tells us that you know she wanted to make things and do things Alla time and Blue is just not into that. So it really. They just had a separation of mind. The pair eventually divorced and nineteen fourteen, but before they had already had three children together, so their children were John Glass Nerli who was born in eighteen. Ninety eight Frances Lee born in nineteen o three and Martha Lee, who was born in nineteen o six before we go on and talk about sort of what her life becomes after divorce. Let's take a quick word from our sponsor this episode of stuff. You, MRS history, glasses, brought. You buy Norton three sixty with light

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Go to Norton, DOT, com, slash history, that's Norton, DOT, com, slash history for twenty five percent off back to France's question only after her divorce. So once her marriage was over and she suddenly had a new life to begin phrases, turned to a hobby, that she had actually learned as a child which was making miniatures and in nineteen thirteen while she was separated, but not yet divorced from her husband She completed her first, so low miniature dire Rama, and this is a detailed creation of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which was one of the many arts organisations. Her mother was very passionate about, and this was complete with tiny pieces of sheet music and tiny instrument. Cases and little instrument stands and it was all compiled as a gift.

Mother. She also take advantage of her new found independence to learn about a subject that she'd been introduced to buy the family friend we mentioned earlier George Burgess Mcgrath, and this was the forensic science Mcgrath had studied- Edison at Harvard and then had gone on, to become a medical examiner. Emma grass work was immensely interesting to Francis there's, a story that well, was ill at one point, he would come visit her every night and talk about his work to keep her company and she just became utterly, is engulfed in her passion for it and she became so. Interested in it that in the nineteen thirty's she gave harm an endowment of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which has been estimated to be about three point. Eight million in today's money, adjusted for the establishment of a department of legal medicine, has often speculated in biography,

of glass, namely that she was as a divorce say, who now made her own decisions and was truly independent, she's making up for the education. That she had been in mind when she was a young woman and had wanted to study but had not been allowed to buy her family. She also continued to give financial gives to the university. This went on through the years to further the departments, growth and development, and her friend, Mcgrath became chair of the new department and taught pathology is part of the programme and, as we mentioned or here. Francis was from a very wealthy family and she had married well, even though the marriage did not last, but she we cannot say enough how much she did fit the usual mould of money. Eddie Heiress. So why other women of society were throwing dinner. Parties were equally wealthy friends and associates. She would often host large dinner parties or detectives investigators and scientists, so she could pick their brains about their work.

Even though my idea to end as being part of her again meticulous character that people love it about in any interview with anybody that new her, they seem to really want to be very clear that this was an exacting person like the menus would just be really should be so picky about everything that they ate and it had to be perfect, and she, you know, wanted them to absolutely have the best of everything as though they were. You know her equals in terms of financial footing in society These dinner parties were apparently amazing and in nineteen, forty, three glasses or Lee really made a bit of history because you ve been learning about forensics. Imp had really been kind of moving in, circles for so long that she was made honorary captain of the New Hampshire state police at this time, and I was attacked,

No other women held at that point in nineteen forty five she hosted the first harboured associates and police science or perhaps a seminar. This was an invitation only event where attendees retreated to lavish meals. In an intensive week of learning, the latest methods and crime scene investigation from experts in the field and those were also equally meticulous, these social events that centred around it there's a story I read in in one of my sources that she purchased in eight thousand dollar. China sat for the hotel that hosted this event every year and it only used for this event. It was basically her China, which kept at the hotel for this thing. That would happen twice a year and because I guess there's wasn't good enough. I'm not! It was unclear why she felt compelled to buy this whole set of China, I'm gonna, think maybe she was just personality. I think a little bit and through all of her talks with investigators and detectives and her discussions with Mcgrath about his work

this idea has been forming English normally mind about how she could personally further the field of investigation outside of just being a financial donor. I mean she was really following a lot of money into this department at Harvard with the intent that she was gonna raise the standards in a through education of how criminal investigation worked. So she came to realize that if the police had prolonged access, the crime scene, they could find the clues. That would reveal the events that have occurred there, which to us this kind of like, while yeah but crime scenes can't be maintained indefinitely and the evidence there can be corrected are lost and Personally, for investigators and training, there were just never enough crime seems in which they could practice their skills. So Glass Nerli came up with an idea to train investigators and to develop their observation skills.

So this sort of thing she's, most well known for over a seven year period from nineteen forty three, the nineteen fifty system of this- was going on concurrently with her development of these seminars. She assembled this group of projects called the nut shell stuff. He's of unexplained deaths, and these were tiny dire ramos that would have been in most regards idyllic dollhouse scenes were it not for the fact, the fact that each of them depicted a death of some kind. So each of these themes, their eighteen and all, was assembled based on case reports and court records, actual debts, and some of the dire Armas would combine multiple cases and all of the case details were meticulously recreated the date core any degree the scene was chosen by the heiress, so these have been done I've by many with some degree of amusement, because there clearly like the impression that

wealthy woman, who is only known a life of luxury, has of how the middle and lower class live. There often pretty garish yeah it's one of those things that people kind of go about even now. You know she really wasn't into all of the society. Trappings state was clearly all she had so even in their cabin in New Hampshire It was a very small and sort of simple affair. It still had the best of every and again. This is a woman that spent thousands of dollars to have the perfect China for her for policing are so clearly his. She knew a certain aesthetic and a certain life, and so when she imagined wet- People live like or even middle class people. It was kind of very funny the thing she would put together and pick out as how their houses would look. The smallest of these directives is eight by fourteen inches, and the largest is a thirty and square three room dwelling, and I cannot stress enough how incredibly detail

These are there in one inch to one foot scale, but they have teeny tiny cigarettes that she hand role. They have mice in the walls and sometimes mice and little traps. There are socks that she hand knitted on straight pins, and she would break with all that should hand little tiny, tiny clothes pins. That would fill these dynamic, so they were full of in a sort of the debris of life and in all of the things that are just normal parts of any given home in this teeny tiny scale that she had meticulously created. So again, the word meticulous keeps coming up, The reason she was the skin on the dolls that she used was carefully painted to mimic de composition. In some cases it was a case where the scene was supposed to be found, but this body having been there for a while the blood spatter, is carefully applied. The walls in cases where there is one there's one piece: that's entitled, burnt cabin.

She had again meticulously built this entire cabin and then she burned it down with a blowtorch and she so using she didn't do all of this all by herself, although most of it was but should also use carpenter. Sometimes she had a carpenter that she retain and really trusted, and he would work on some of the smaller woodworking elements of it, Luke episode of stuff, you missed in history class, is brought to you by W W, formerly wait watchers they launched a new might be to be programme as their most groundbreaking and customize programme. Ever I joined Debbie W because I was really looking for something that was going to help encourage means. You make healthier eating choices. They have really done that when you join them W W program, you will take a personal assessment. It ask questions. You're eating habits in your behaviors minute scientifically matches you up with which plan is going to be the best for you, I'm on the

who plan and it has made such a big difference or me in terms of encouraging Meis eat. Healthy foods join W W, formerly wait. Watchers unlock your customers weight loss plan that can make losing weight easier for you head on. Where'd, you Debbie Debbie, dot com, that's w w dot com to joint Debbie Debbie. Today, with a limited time offer giving dire almost the same and the drawers all work, the doors have these tiny functioning locks with anybody keys in the sea where there are children, there're miniature toys that are carefully recreated to mimic full sized versions and aside from their criminal policy impact. These directives are just incredible works of art all on their own, but the most important thing about these scenes as much as I can. Personally, go on and on about all of their it little details that just completely capture my attention. They

bided, really important. Learning models for investigators, so through an analysis of each of these tiny crime seems a systematic approach to crime. Scene investigation was really developed. She basically introduce these two investigators, police officers and attacked us, and they use them to develop the methods that are still being used today. These include, like using search zones to analyze a crime scene and investigative patterns, were though, sometimes circle us from like the outside and spiral in word, so that they don't miss any details, and these are standard procedures now and they came from these tiny little sort of dollhouse dire Romas. Yet what the maize into me isn't just that their standard procedure now, but that before. Anybody put together a methodology like this. The whole field of crime scene investigation was kind of chaos

like we talked about in our acts. Man of New Orleans episodes yeah, like their own people, didn't really have a state Lastly, methodical way of looking at Athena tried by evidence, and so they didn't, and so, even when they would consult with her other investigator. Sometimes they just were working on the same page cause. They didn't use the same approaches in all cases and it just me things really tricky and needlessly complicated. So one of the things that achieving did as part of her seminars that she was hosting is she was basically creating a network of investigative researcher, so men had gone through. Eventually, I presume

attended, but in the early days it was all men that had gone through these classes in these seminars would then be connected to one another after the graduated, the seminar and they would consult with each other and she sort of developed this. You know she catalyze this network, developing. Where detectors could talk to each other about things they had found it crime scenes and really you no kind of grow the field in a way that it never would have grown. Otherwise, if somebody hadn't said let I'll get in a room together and talk about what we're doing it's very cool So all these scenes mean they all had a backstory of their own. They were put together based on actual case reports and actual information about crimes, but the gall, according to Glass Nerli, was not to solve the crime that had happened. In the dire Rama. It was to practise observation not shells became part, as I said, of these half seminars and they ve been used to train investigators at the gathering for years. So normally when she was,

Pursuing this item of the methodology of using them has changed, but like each student would be assigned to models and they would get approximately ninety minutes of study for each scene, and then later the student investigators would give a verbal report before the group and they We all have a discussion of their findings that would ensue, and one of this goal one of the goals of this practice. As I said, she was developing this network and this dialogue among different investigators of how they would approach things, but it was also to get students away from this concept of following a hunch and instead to take in all of the evidence that they see on a crime scene, with an open mind like, instead of just looking for things that verify what they suspect has happened. She wanted them to learn to look at everything in a crime scene not let any street detail go because they didn't think it supported what actually happened since reminding me of like an episode of bones. It should because a lot of their grew out of this

He is also allegedly it and put it in here initially, but there have been first four years that she was actually the inspiration for Angela Landsbergis Character, a murder. She wrote because she was an older woman at this point. Doing all of this excited crime. Scene, investigation, glass, narrowly continue to advocate were medical training for legal agents and systematic investigation practices, law enforcement all the way until the end of her life, your prior to her and her work with Mcgrath coroners, Example didn't need to have any medical training. It was you note, an appointment that they and then they would rely on on the people below them to cover the medical bases, but she really wanted to make sure that there is a systematic way too make sure that trained medical personnel were involved in investigations, and it wasn't just people guessing that did not know the workings of the human body, for

this died in New Hampshire at the rocks at the the small home that her family had had built there. On January, twenty seventh of nineteen sixty two and four years later. The department of legal medicine that she had endowed at Harvard was dissolved for lack of funding. The collection of nutshell. Studies became part of it. Small home at the Maryland Medical had office when the department seventh of medicine was closed. So not only are they available for public viewing, but there also use this teaching tools or forensic investigation yeah. I think you have to actually request permission to go see them. I think there's one in the lobby. I read a few different reports and eight fall at different times like different years as they ve been written. I think there's one or two still in the lobby that p just walk in and see and you can examine all of them. If you just make an appointment to go up. I think they're on the third floor of the Marilla Medical Examiners office. So at night

I need to the net shells actually underwent a restoration that cross about fifty thousand dollars, just a general sort of upkeep and refresh, although they still have the cookie decor ends twelve, a documentary about the nut. Shell studies was made entitled of dolls and murder, and it examines the place of questioners leaves work in relation to the forensic world as well as the role of women in society Yeah. A lot of modern historians have colonel wanted to analyze her place in terms of lake and an early phase of feminism, which I didn't get into here. It's covered by other people. I really wanted to focus on her crime work but one of the most interesting things about western leaves work is perhaps the fact that, while she was a self talk, criminologist that was afforded access to this hobby just because she was an heiress with immense wealth, she became incredibly risk. Did by the men that she worked with, and the men that she helped to train, and she once said quote, I didn't do a liquor.

To deserve what I have. Therefore, I feel I have been left an obligation to do something that will benefit everybody Sophie wondering why an heiress thought that it would be fun to do this and became so impassioned about developing criminology systems. That is why, in her early years of studying and working for forensic science, she may have been seen as a kind of this wealthy eccentric lady you that image has been completely eclipsed by the IMF. The influence of her work: young men. And in looking at research for this I saw many men that she had worked with through the years really describe. Her is one of the best criminologists they had ever met like she definitely knew what she was talking about. She wasn't just making cute dollhouse scenes to play with whom she was very focused in. It was, it was not random at all. She really was super smart, super well educated, even if it were

the formal sitting and she wrote an article nineteen, fifty two for the Journal of Criminal law and criminal energy, and I just wanted to read the last paragraph of it because it is really sort of beautiful and it's a good way to end discussion about her nets has quote technical skill. Sign I acknowledge and professional training, however, are not all there is to legal medicine. There is something else something hard to define which must accompany them quote. The application of medical knowledge and skill to the uses and purposes of the law. Unquote is not the whole story It is far more than that. It is an unremitting quest for facts. It is a constant and continuous search for truth in the interests of science in justice to expose the guilty to clear the innocent. It is a dedication of its own, peculiar wisdom and experience to the service of mankind. A sort of sums

her entire approach to it, which makes me love it here and now I have listener, may rayless NEO. I have two pieces. Gazebo shortage first is from this Alan who writes to us often and he's sent us some really beautiful pictures lately, while he's been traveling, the world nieces highs we know from the tiger picture I sent. I was in India now I'm catching up on. My broadcast saw him behind. As a result, I just heard the one on Ambrose Beers, With that in mind, I would like to tell you something of interest I, as a retired psychologist volunteered a visa in the PTSD clinic in listening to him, life after the civil war, it really sounded like he had PTSD the behaviors. You describe sound a lot like those of people suffering from PTSD, as did the experiences he had on the service, including a loss of

close friend an ailing goes on to recommend the book Achilles in Vietnam by Jonathan Shea Empty Phd as a really good book on the subject of people are interested in it. That occurred to me as well, but as someone who is not clinically versed in PTSD, I'm I'm always reluctant to make those jumps, even if it it seems like if it's all so, it's just get to have. Somebody who is a pro can a back up what I think, probably many of us were thinking in listening to the embers beer story. So my second note is I was not Tate and she wrote us on Facebook and she says I recently discovered your podcasting, I'm really enjoying it. I just listen to the two avarice podcast and was left wondering about the first woman. To sum up, the mountain: do you know anything about her or the history of climbing, oh, my gosh. Do I love this topic? I love of this topic. Socially gonna keep asked about it, it's a little too modern really for us to cover, on the show that we have a kind of it when we get some suggestions, sometimes for things that are

more modern than we used to talk about an hour are cut off, is kind of the late sixties early. Seventy MIA and so, but I will answer this- is listener. Mail is a good opportunity to talk a little bit more about Everest and a woman who is really amazing. Her name is. Co tabby, and she was the first woman to summit Everest. She is a native of Fukushima and she made her historic assent in nineteen. Seventy five and she's really incredible in many ways, her life story is fabulous because she fought very hard for women's equality in Japan. She actually founded the Ladys Climbing Club of Japan in nineteen sixty nine and she really broke cultural tradition on her assent because she left her three year old daughter at home, with her husband is unheard of culturally

point two just go off and climate Mountain and her husband is also a mountaineer to. Presumably he really had some understanding of either the drive that made her want to do this. Her expedition was incredible because it consisted of a fifteen woman team, which was the first It was marked at the time by a lot of male mountaineers. So the events surrounding Some were already pretty extraordinary and she has since become an advocate if sustainable mountaineering in the hopes that she can stop some of the destruction. That's happening as more and more climbers take on Everest each year and will linked to a couple of really great articles about her in the show notes. If you want to read more about her, I have immense respect for her she's, an amazing woman, she's still alive sheets, just she has the most beautiful smile. I love everything about her. A little bit of Everest rabies for someone that doesn't want a climate, but but I highly recommend reading up on her she's, really incredible. She only was the

shilling to be the only woman than had ever submitted for like less than two weeks. I think when these later some another woman submitted, but she I am to continue her work in trying to really maintain the mountain, and I love her sustainable mountaineering work that shit. Doing, thank you so much for joining us for this Saturday classic surfaces, the archive, if you heard an email address or a facebook, U R, L or something similar during the course of the show that may be obsolete now. So here is our current contact information. We write history podcast at Helstone. Dot com and then we're out missed in history all over social media. That is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and

Graham thanks again for listening for more or less and thousands of other topics visit how stuff works outcome. The future is closer than you think, and it all starts in the palm of your hand, you may have heard the news five g is coming in this new Iheart series. This time tomorrow, presented by team above a business, join me as will ocean. Am I cursed care price as we walk you through the true revolution in mobility that will check, the way we interact with the world around us join us, and here, just how close we are getting to a more connected, This time tomorrow is now available on the eye hot radio up or wherever you listen to broadcasts