Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Colley Fry and I'm Tracy P. Wilson. Today's topic
Speaker 1: is one that has been on my list for a
Speaker 1: very long time, almost from the time, Uh, Tracy and
Speaker 1: I came on to Documents in History Class, and many
Speaker 1: listeners have also requested it. It is uh sort of
Speaker 1: equal parts quaint and horrifying, which is probably why people
Speaker 1: really love it so much and respond to this. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it also features a woman who was, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a debutante heiress, but sort of anything but the standard
Speaker 1: debutante eress you may conjure in your mind when you
Speaker 1: hear those words. And even though she was sort of
Speaker 1: forced into that role and she had some you know,
Speaker 1: society bucking instincts about where a woman should be in uh,
Speaker 1: in her place and how that was going to work,
Speaker 1: you know, she was still nonetheless an heiress and part
Speaker 1: of that structure that had made her, that had given
Speaker 1: her that position. And her name was Francis Glessner Lee,
Speaker 1: and she was a very meticulous woman. Uh. There are
Speaker 1: stories that you'll hear that she was so exacting that
Speaker 1: she actually would number the bottoms of vases and knickknacks
Speaker 1: uh and similarly label the shelves that they were supposed
Speaker 1: to go on with corresponding numbers, so everything would always
Speaker 1: be in its exact space. That's just like a quick
Speaker 1: character insight for you, because it would maybe be no
Speaker 1: surprise then that this woman who was surprising in many ways,
Speaker 1: was a major contributor to the world of forensic science
Speaker 1: and criminology, and we actually have a lot to thank
Speaker 1: her for. So Francis Glessner Lee came from a very
Speaker 1: wealthy family. Her father was John Jacob Glessner, and he
Speaker 1: made a sportune in the farm implement industry. Her mother,
Speaker 1: Sarah Francis Macbeth Glessner, had met John Jacob when her
Speaker 1: family had taken him and as a border and the
Speaker 1: Glasseners were very active in civic affairs. Both of Francis's
Speaker 1: parents wrote a great deal. John served on the boards
Speaker 1: of many civic organizations, including the Citizens Association of Chicago
Speaker 1: and the Chicago Orphan Asylum, and he was also a
Speaker 1: trustee of the Chicago Orchestra Association. Sarah was something of
Speaker 1: a renaissance woman. Not only was she skilled as a seamstress,
Speaker 1: but she also studied piano, silversmithing, and beekeeping. She organized
Speaker 1: gatherings for women where they could hear lectures and readings
Speaker 1: about contemporary writing, and she was one of the founders
Speaker 1: of the Chicago Chamber Music Society and was a passionate
Speaker 1: advocate for the arts. Sarah and John's first child was
Speaker 1: George Macbeth Glessner, and he was born in eighteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: and because George had chronic and serious hay fever, the
Speaker 1: family ended up building a second summer house in New
Speaker 1: Hampshire so he could get away from the the issues
Speaker 1: in Chicago in spring and summer that would cause this
Speaker 1: hay fever to sort of be a problem for him.
Speaker 1: The couple had a second son in eighteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: although the baby, John Francis, sadly died when he was
Speaker 1: eight months old, and then their daughter, Francis Glessner, was
Speaker 1: born on March twenty five, eighteen seventy eight. Because of
Speaker 1: George's ongoing health issues, the children were home schooled instead
Speaker 1: of sent to school by a series of tutors, and
Speaker 1: that was also actually pretty common for well to do
Speaker 1: families at the time to school their children at home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've had a lot of podcast subjects who all learned
Speaker 1: at home. Francis grew up in Glessner House, which was
Speaker 1: designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson and was built in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty seven. This house, which is on Chicago's Prairie
Speaker 1: Avenue in the South Loop, is now a National Historic
Speaker 1: Landmark and museum. Once the Glessners moved into Glessner House,
Speaker 1: they spent winters there in summers in their New Hampshire
Speaker 1: cabin which was called the Rocks, And during one of
Speaker 1: those summers while they were in New Hampshire, the family
Speaker 1: was joined by George's friend, another George named George Burgess McGrath.
Speaker 1: And this name you want to just keep in the
Speaker 1: back of your head because he would become a pretty
Speaker 1: significant influence on Francis later in her life. As Francis,
Speaker 1: who went by Fanny among her family members, started to
Speaker 1: approach adulthood, she became interested in pursuing a career in
Speaker 1: law or medicine, but her parents were really against this idea.
Speaker 1: There are some unsubstantiated reports that their father, John actually
Speaker 1: believed that ladies should know nothing of the human body,
Speaker 1: which sort of makes me giggle a little bit. But
Speaker 1: you know, you have one, You're going to fundamentally know
Speaker 1: a few things. But it's an interesting mindset and not
Speaker 1: all of that unusual for the early nineteen hundreds, I imagine.
Speaker 1: So instead of going to university, which she had wanted
Speaker 1: to do, in which her brother George was doing, Francis
Speaker 1: spent a little more than a year traveling through Europe
Speaker 1: with her aunt Helen macbeth from eighteen nine to eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, and after they returned to Chicago, Francis made
Speaker 1: her formal Society debut in November of eighteen. Just a
Speaker 1: few months there being presented into society, Francis married lawyer
Speaker 1: blew It Lee, who was distantly related to Robert E. Lee,
Speaker 1: and the new couple moved into a townhouse the Glesseners
Speaker 1: had built for Fanny on Prairie Avenue near the Glessner house.
Speaker 1: Her brother George also had a town house built by
Speaker 1: their parents, and Francis was nineteen when she married. This
Speaker 1: marriage was not an especially happy one. Eventually it became
Speaker 1: clear that Francis and blew It really did not have
Speaker 1: all that much in common and they didn't share that
Speaker 1: many interests. Um. One story that her son eventually tells
Speaker 1: is that, um, you know, she wanted to make things
Speaker 1: and do things all the time, and blew it was
Speaker 1: just not into that. So it really they just had
Speaker 1: a separation of mind. Uh. The Perry eventually divorced in
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen, but not before they had already had three
Speaker 1: children together. So their children were John Glessner Lee, who
Speaker 1: was born in eight Frances Lee born in nineteen o three,
Speaker 1: and Martha Lee, who was born in nineteen o six.
Speaker 1: And before we go on and talk about sort of
Speaker 1: what her life becomes after divorce, so let's take a
Speaker 1: quick word from our sponsor. So now back to Francis
Speaker 1: Glessner Lee after her divorce. So, once her marriage was
Speaker 1: over and she suddenly had a new life to begin,
Speaker 1: Fences returned to a hobby that she had actually learned
Speaker 1: as a child, which was making miniatures, and inteen, while
Speaker 1: she was separated but not yet divorced from her husband,
Speaker 1: she completed her first solo miniature diorama, and this was
Speaker 1: a detailed recreation of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which was
Speaker 1: one of the many art organizations her mother was very
Speaker 1: passionate about. And this was complete with tiny pieces of
Speaker 1: sheet music and tiny instrument cases and little instrument stands,
Speaker 1: and it was all compiled as a gift for her mother.
Speaker 1: She also took advantage of her newfound independence to learn
Speaker 1: about a subject that she had been introduced to by
Speaker 1: the family friend we mentioned earlier, George Burgess McGrath, and
Speaker 1: this was forensic science. McGrath had studied medicine at Harvard
Speaker 1: and then had gone on to become a medical examiner.
Speaker 1: And mc grath's work was immensely interesting to Francis. There's
Speaker 1: a story that while she was ill at one point
Speaker 1: he would come and visit her every night and talk
Speaker 1: about his work uh to keep her company, and she
Speaker 1: just became utterly engulfed in her passion for it UH.
Speaker 1: And she became so interested in it that in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties she actually gave Harvard an endowment of two
Speaker 1: d and fifty thousand dollars, which has been estimated to
Speaker 1: be about three point eight million in today's money, adjusted
Speaker 1: for the establishment of a Department of Legal Medicine. And
Speaker 1: it's often speculated in biographies of glessnarn Lee that she
Speaker 1: was as a divorcee who now made her own decisions
Speaker 1: and was truly independent. She was making up for the
Speaker 1: education that she had been denied when she was a
Speaker 1: young woman and had wanted to study but had not
Speaker 1: been allowed to you by her family. She also continued
Speaker 1: to give financial gifts to the university. Uh This went
Speaker 1: on through the years to further the department's growth and development,
Speaker 1: and her friend McGrath became chair of the new department
Speaker 1: and taught mythology as part of the program. And as
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, Frances was from a very wealthy family
Speaker 1: and she had married well, even though the marriage did
Speaker 1: not last. But she we cannot say enough how much
Speaker 1: she did not fit the usual mold of a moneyed
Speaker 1: society heiress. So while the other women of society were
Speaker 1: throwing dinner parties for equally wealthy friends and associates, she
Speaker 1: would often host large dinner party sport detectives and investigators
Speaker 1: and scientists so she could pick their brains about their work.
Speaker 1: I love it so much. I do too, And as
Speaker 1: you know, part of her again meticulous character that people
Speaker 1: love to talk about. In any interview with anybody that
Speaker 1: knew her, they seemed to really want to be very
Speaker 1: clear that this was an exacting person. Um like the
Speaker 1: menus would just be really she would be so picky
Speaker 1: about everything that they ate and it had to be perfect,
Speaker 1: and she you know wanted them to absolutely have the
Speaker 1: best of everything, as though they were you know, her
Speaker 1: equals in terms of financial footing in society. Um. These
Speaker 1: dinner parties were apparently amazing. And in nineteen forty three
Speaker 1: gless near Lee really made a bit of history because
Speaker 1: she had been learning about forensics and had really been
Speaker 1: kind of moving in these circles for so long that
Speaker 1: she was made honorary Captain of the New Hampshire State
Speaker 1: Police at this time, and that was a title that
Speaker 1: no other woman held at that point. In she hosted
Speaker 1: the first Harvard Associates and Police Science or HAPs A seminar.
Speaker 1: This was an invitation only event where attendees were treated
Speaker 1: to lavish meals and an intensive week of learning the
Speaker 1: latest methods in crime scene investigation from experts in the field.
Speaker 1: And those were also equally meticulous these social events that
Speaker 1: centered around it. There's a story that I read in
Speaker 1: in one of my sources that she purchased an eight
Speaker 1: thousand dollar China set for the hotel that hosted this
Speaker 1: event every year, and it was only used for this event.
Speaker 1: It was basically her china that she kept at the
Speaker 1: hotel for this thing that would happen twice a year.
Speaker 1: And because I guess There's wasn't good enough. I'm not
Speaker 1: it was unclear why she felt compelled to buy this
Speaker 1: whole set of china. But I'm gonna think maybe she
Speaker 1: was just person nickety, I think a little bit um
Speaker 1: And through all of her talks with investigators and detectives
Speaker 1: and her discussions with mc grant about his work, this
Speaker 1: idea had been forming in glessn Earlie's mind about how
Speaker 1: she could personally further the field of investigation outside of
Speaker 1: just being a financial donor. I mean, she was really
Speaker 1: funneling a lot of money into this department at Harvard
Speaker 1: with the intent that she was going to raise the standards, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, through education of how criminal investigation worked. So
Speaker 1: she came to realize that if the police had prolonged
Speaker 1: access to a crime scene, they could find the clues
Speaker 1: that would reveal the events that had occurred there, which
Speaker 1: to us is kind of like, well, yeah, but crime
Speaker 1: scenes just can't be maintained indefinitely, and the evidence there
Speaker 1: can be corrupted or law. And additionally, for investigators in training,
Speaker 1: there were just never enough crime scenes in which they
Speaker 1: could practice their skills. So less Near Lee came up
Speaker 1: with an idea to train investigators and to develop their
Speaker 1: observation skills. So this is sort of the thing she's
Speaker 1: most well known for over a seven year period from
Speaker 1: ninety three to nineteen fifty, so some of this was
Speaker 1: going on concurrently with her development of these seminars. She
Speaker 1: assembled this group of projects called the Nutshell Studies of
Speaker 1: Unexplained Death. And these were tiny dioramas that would have
Speaker 1: been in most regards idyllic dollhouse scenes, weren't not for
Speaker 1: the fact the fact that each of them depicted a
Speaker 1: death of some kind. So each of these scenes, they're
Speaker 1: eighteen and all was assembled based on case reports and
Speaker 1: court records about actual deaths, and some of the dioramas
Speaker 1: would combine multiple cases. And while all of the case
Speaker 1: details were meticulously recreated, that they core in each grizzly
Speaker 1: scene was chosen by the heiress. So these have been
Speaker 1: described by many with some degree of amusement because they're
Speaker 1: clearly like the impression that a wealthy woman who has
Speaker 1: only known a life of luxury has of how the
Speaker 1: middle and lower class lived. They're often pretty garish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that people kind of giggle about, uh,
Speaker 1: even though you know she really wasn't into all of
Speaker 1: the society trappings, it was clearly all she had known.
Speaker 1: So even in their cabin in New Hampshire, which was
Speaker 1: a very small and sort of simple affair, it's still
Speaker 1: had the best of everything. And again, this is a
Speaker 1: woman that's spent thousands of dollars to have the perfect
Speaker 1: china for for police seminars. So clearly she knew a
Speaker 1: certain esthetic and a certain life, and so when she
Speaker 1: imagined what uh, poor people lived like, or even middle
Speaker 1: class people, it was kind of very funny the things
Speaker 1: she would put together and pick out as how their
Speaker 1: houses would look. The smallest of these dioramas is eight
Speaker 1: by fourteen inches and the largest is a thirty inch
Speaker 1: square three room dwelling. And I cannot stress enough how
Speaker 1: incredibly detailed these are there in one inch to one
Speaker 1: foot scale, but they have teeny tiny cigarettes that she
Speaker 1: hand rolled. They have mice in the walls and sometimes
Speaker 1: mice and little traps. There are socks that she hand
Speaker 1: knitted on straight pins, and she would like whittle. She
Speaker 1: would hand whittle tiny, tiny clothes pins that would fill
Speaker 1: these dioramas. So they were full of, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of the debris of life and and all of the
Speaker 1: things that are just normal parts of any given home
Speaker 1: in this teeny tiny scale that she had meticulously created.
Speaker 1: So again the word meticulous keeps coming up. And there's
Speaker 1: a reason she was. Uh. The skin on the dolls
Speaker 1: that she used was carefully painted to mimic decomposition. In
Speaker 1: some cases, if it was a case where the scene
Speaker 1: was supposed to be found with this body having been
Speaker 1: here for a while, the blood spatter is carefully applied
Speaker 1: to walls in cases where there is one. There's one
Speaker 1: piece that's entitled burned cabin, and she had again meticulously
Speaker 1: built this entire cabin and then she burned it down
Speaker 1: with a blowtorch. Um And she was also using uh,
Speaker 1: she didn't do all of this all by herself, although
Speaker 1: most of it was, but she would also use carpenters.
Speaker 1: Sometimes she had a carpenter that she retained and really trusted,
Speaker 1: and he would work on some of the smaller woodworking
Speaker 1: elements of it. So in these dioramas, the shades and
Speaker 1: the drawers all work. The doors have these tiny functioning
Speaker 1: locks with anybody keys. In the scenes where there are children,
Speaker 1: there are miniature toys that are carefully recreated to mimic
Speaker 1: full sized versions. And aside from their criminology impact, these
Speaker 1: dioramas are just incredible works of art all on their own.
Speaker 1: But the most important thing about these scenes, as much
Speaker 1: as I could personally go on and on about all
Speaker 1: of their little details that just completely kept you my attention, UH,
Speaker 1: they provided really important learning models for investigators. So through
Speaker 1: an analysis of each of these tiny crime scenes, UH,
Speaker 1: a systematic approach to crime scene investigation was really developed.
Speaker 1: She basically introduced these two UH investigators, police officers, and detectives,
Speaker 1: and they used them to develop the methods that are
Speaker 1: still being used today. UH. These include like using search
Speaker 1: zones to analyze a crime scene and investigative patterns where
Speaker 1: they'll sometimes circle a scene from like the outside and
Speaker 1: spiral inward too so that they don't miss any details.
Speaker 1: And these are standard procedures now and they came from
Speaker 1: these tiny, little sort of dollhouse dioramas. Yeah, what's amazing
Speaker 1: to me isn't just that their standard procedure now, but
Speaker 1: that before anybody put together a methodology like this, the
Speaker 1: whole field of crime scene investigation was kind of chaos.
Speaker 1: Like we talked about in our acts Man of New
Speaker 1: Orleans episodes. Yeah, like there people didn't really have a
Speaker 1: standardized and methodical way of looking at a scene to
Speaker 1: try to find evidence, and so they didn't and so
Speaker 1: even when they would consult with uh other other investigators,
Speaker 1: sometimes they just weren't working off the same page because
Speaker 1: they didn't use the same approaches in all cases, and
Speaker 1: it just made things really tricky and needlessly complicated. Uh So,
Speaker 1: one of the things that she even did as part
Speaker 1: of her seminars that she was hosting is she was
Speaker 1: basically creating a network of investigative researchers, so men that
Speaker 1: had gone through UH eventually I presume women attended, but
Speaker 1: in the early days it was all men that had
Speaker 1: gone through these classes, and these seminars would then be
Speaker 1: connected to one another after they graduated the seminar, and
Speaker 1: they would consult with each other, and she sort of
Speaker 1: developed this, you know, she catalyzed this network developing where
Speaker 1: detectives could talk to each other about things they had
Speaker 1: found at crime scenes and really, um, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of grow the field in a way that it never
Speaker 1: would have grown otherwise if somebody hadn't said, let's all
Speaker 1: get in a room together and talk about what we're doing.
Speaker 1: It's very cool. So all of these scenes, I mean,
Speaker 1: they all had a backstory of their own. They were
Speaker 1: put together based on actual case reports and actual information
Speaker 1: about crimes. But the goal, according to Gless nearly was
Speaker 1: not to solve the crime that had happened in the diorama.
Speaker 1: It was to practice observation, and the nutshells became part,
Speaker 1: as I said, of these half seminars, and they've been
Speaker 1: used to train investigators at the gathering for years, so
Speaker 1: normally when she was first doing this, I don't know
Speaker 1: if the methodology of using them has changed, but like
Speaker 1: each student would be assigned two of the models and
Speaker 1: they would get approximately ninety minutes of study for each scene.
Speaker 1: And then later the student investigators would give a verbal
Speaker 1: report before the group and they would all have a
Speaker 1: discussion of their findings that would ensue and one of
Speaker 1: this goal, one of the goals of this practice, as
Speaker 1: I said, she was developing the network and this dialogue
Speaker 1: among different investigators of how they would approach things. But
Speaker 1: it was also to get students away from this concept
Speaker 1: of following a hunch and instead to take in all
Speaker 1: of the evidence that they see on a crime scene
Speaker 1: with an open mind, like instead of just looking for
Speaker 1: things that verify what they suspect has happened, she wanted
Speaker 1: them to learn to look at everything in a crime
Speaker 1: scene and not let any stray detail go because they
Speaker 1: didn't think it supported what actually happened. This is reminding
Speaker 1: me of like an episode of Bones. It should because
Speaker 1: a lot of that grew out of this uh. She
Speaker 1: is also allegedly I didn't put it in here initially,
Speaker 1: but there have been rumors for years that she was
Speaker 1: actually the inspiration for Angela Landsbury's character on Murder she
Speaker 1: wrote because she was an older woman at this point
Speaker 1: doing all of this excited crime scene investigation. Gless nearly
Speaker 1: continued to advocate for medical training for leal agents and
Speaker 1: systemized investigation practices and law enforcement all the way until
Speaker 1: the end of her life. Yeah. Prior to herr UH
Speaker 1: and her work with McGrath Coroners for example, didn't need
Speaker 1: to have any medical training. It was, you know, an
Speaker 1: appointment that they would get and then they would rely
Speaker 1: on on the people below them to cover the medical basis.
Speaker 1: But she really wanted to make sure that there was
Speaker 1: a systematic way to uh make sure that trained medical
Speaker 1: personnel were involved in investigations and it wasn't just people
Speaker 1: guessing that did not know the workings of the human body.
Speaker 1: Francis died in New Hampshire at the Rocks at the
Speaker 1: small home that her family had had built there, on
Speaker 1: January nine, two and four years later, the Department of
Speaker 1: Legal Medicine that she had endowed at Harvard was dissolved
Speaker 1: for lack of funding. The collection of Nutshell studies became
Speaker 1: part of a public display at the Maryland Medical Examiner's
Speaker 1: Office when the Department of Legal Medicine was closed. So
Speaker 1: not only are they available for a public viewing, but
Speaker 1: they're also used as teaching tools for forensic investigation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think now you have to actually request permission to
Speaker 1: go see them. I think there's one in the lobby.
Speaker 1: I've read a few different reports, and they follow at
Speaker 1: different times, like different years that they've been written. I
Speaker 1: think there's one or two still in the lobby that
Speaker 1: people can just walk in and see and you can
Speaker 1: examine all of them if you just make an appointment
Speaker 1: to go up. I think they're on the third floor
Speaker 1: of the Maryland Medical Examiner's Office. Uh So, in the
Speaker 1: Nutshells actually underwent a restoration that costs about fifty dollars,
Speaker 1: just a general sort of upkeep and refresh, although they
Speaker 1: still have the Kukie decor. In twenty twelve, a documentary
Speaker 1: about the Nutshell Studies was made entitled of Dolls and Murder,
Speaker 1: and it examines the place of Glessners Lee's work in
Speaker 1: relation to the forensic world, as well as the role
Speaker 1: of women in society. Yeah, a lot of modern historians
Speaker 1: have kind of wanted to analyze her place in terms
Speaker 1: of like an an early phase of feminism, which I
Speaker 1: didn't get into here. It's covered by other people. I
Speaker 1: really wanted to focus on her crime work. Uh But
Speaker 1: one of the most interesting things about Glessner and Lee's
Speaker 1: work is perhaps the fact that while she was a
Speaker 1: self taught criminologist that was afforded access to this hobby
Speaker 1: just because she was an heiress with immense wealth. She
Speaker 1: became incredibly respected by the men that she worked with
Speaker 1: and the men that she helped to train, and she
Speaker 1: once said quote, I didn't do a lick of work
Speaker 1: to deserve what I have. Therefore, I feel I have
Speaker 1: been left in obligation to do something that will benefit everybody.
Speaker 1: So if you're wondering why an heiress thought that it
Speaker 1: would be fun to do this and became so impassionate
Speaker 1: about developing criminology systems, that is why in her early
Speaker 1: years of studying and working for forensic science, she may
Speaker 1: have been seen as kind of this wealthy, eccentric lady,
Speaker 1: but that image has been completely eclipsed by the important
Speaker 1: influence of her work. Yeah, many men, uh. In looking
Speaker 1: at research for this, I saw many men that she
Speaker 1: had worked with through the years really described her as
Speaker 1: one of the best criminologists they had ever met. Like
Speaker 1: she definitely knew what she was talking about. She wasn't
Speaker 1: just making cute dollhouse scenes to play with um. She
Speaker 1: was very focused and it was it was not random
Speaker 1: at all. She really was super smart, super well educated,
Speaker 1: even if it was not in a formal setting. And
Speaker 1: she wrote an article in nineteen fifty two for the
Speaker 1: Journal of Criminal Law and criminology. And I just wanted
Speaker 1: to read the last paragraph of it because it it
Speaker 1: is really sort of beautiful and it's a good way
Speaker 1: to end discussion about her. It says, quote, technical skill,
Speaker 1: scientific knowledge, and professional training, however, are not all there
Speaker 1: is to legal medicine. There is something else, something hard
Speaker 1: to define, which must accompany them. Quote. The application of
Speaker 1: medical knowledge and skill to the uses and purposes of
Speaker 1: the law unquote is not the whole story. It is
Speaker 1: far more than that. It is an unremitting quest for facts.
Speaker 1: It is a constant and continuous search for truth in
Speaker 1: the interests of science and justice, to expose the guilty,
Speaker 1: to clear the innocent. It is a dedication of its
Speaker 1: own peculiar wisdom and experience to the service of mankind.
Speaker 1: That sort of sums up her entire approach to it,
Speaker 1: which makes me love it. Yeah, And now I have
Speaker 1: a listener mail listener mail. I have two pieces because
Speaker 1: they're both shortish. Uh. First is from our listener, Allen,
Speaker 1: who writes to us often. Uh. And he's sent us
Speaker 1: some really beautiful pictures lately while he's been traveling the world. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he says, high, as you may know from the
Speaker 1: tiger picture I sent. I was in India and now
Speaker 1: I'm catching up on my podcast, so I'm behind as
Speaker 1: a result. I just heard the one on Ambrose Beers.
Speaker 1: With that in mind, I would like to tell you
Speaker 1: something of interest. I as a retired psychologist volunteer at
Speaker 1: the v A in the PTSD clinic. In listening to
Speaker 1: his life after the Civil War, it really sounded like
Speaker 1: he had PTSD. The behaviors you describe sound a lot
Speaker 1: like those of people suffering from PTSD, as did the
Speaker 1: experiences he had in the service, including the loss of
Speaker 1: his close friend UH. And Alan goes on to recommend
Speaker 1: the book uh Achilles and Vietnam by Jonathan Shay m d,
Speaker 1: pH d, as a really good book on the subject
Speaker 1: if people are interested in it. That occurred to me
Speaker 1: as well. But as someone who is not clinically versed
Speaker 1: in PTSD, I'm I'm always reluctant to make those jumps,
Speaker 1: even if it it seems like if it's some old
Speaker 1: So it's just good to have somebody who is a
Speaker 1: pro UH kind of back up what I think probably
Speaker 1: many of us were thinking in listening to the Amber's
Speaker 1: beer story. So my second note is from our listener Kate,
Speaker 1: and she wrote us on Facebook and she says, I
Speaker 1: recently discovered your podcast and I'm really enjoying it. I
Speaker 1: just listened to the two Everest podcasts and was left
Speaker 1: wondering about the first woman to summit the mountain? Do
Speaker 1: you know anything about her or the history of women climbing?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, do I love this topic. I love,
Speaker 1: love love this topic. So I was really glad Kate
Speaker 1: asked about it. It's a little too modern really for
Speaker 1: us to cover on the show. Yeah, we have kind
Speaker 1: of a We get some suggestions sometimes for things that
Speaker 1: are a little more modern than we usually talk about,
Speaker 1: and our our cutoff is kind of the late sixties,
Speaker 1: early seventies. Yeah, and so, but I will answer this
Speaker 1: as listener mail. It gives me a good opportunity to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about Everest and a woman
Speaker 1: who is really amazing. Her name is Junko Tabei and
Speaker 1: she was the first woman to summit Everest. She is
Speaker 1: a native of Fukushima and she made her historic ascent
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five, and she's really incredible in many ways.
Speaker 1: Her life story is fabulous because she fought very hard
Speaker 1: for women's equality in Japan. She actually founded the Ladies
Speaker 1: Climbing Club of Japan in nineteen sixty nine. And she
Speaker 1: really broke cultural tradition on her ascent because she left
Speaker 1: her three year old daughter at home with her husband.
Speaker 1: Just unheard of culturally at that point to just go
Speaker 1: off and climb a mountain. And her husband is also
Speaker 1: a mountaineer, so presumably he really had some understanding of,
Speaker 1: you know, the drive that made her want to do this.
Speaker 1: Her expedition was incredible because it consisted of a fifteen
Speaker 1: woman team, which was the first. Uh. It was mocked
Speaker 1: at the time by a lot of male mountaineers. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the events surrounding her summit were already pretty extraordinary.
Speaker 1: And uh she has since become an advocate of sustainable
Speaker 1: mountaineering in the hopes that she can stop some of
Speaker 1: the destruction that's happening as more and more climbers take
Speaker 1: on Everesty each year. Uh. And we'll link to a
Speaker 1: couple of really great articles about her in the show
Speaker 1: notes if you want to read more about her. I
Speaker 1: have immense respect for her. She's an amazing woman. She's
Speaker 1: still alive. Uh, She's just she has the most beautiful smile.
Speaker 1: I love everything about her. I have a little bit
Speaker 1: of everest ravies for someone that doesn't want to climbate,
Speaker 1: but but I highly recommend reading up on her because
Speaker 1: she's really incredible. She only was the she only got
Speaker 1: to be the only woman that had ever summitted for
Speaker 1: like less than two weeks. I think eleven days later,
Speaker 1: some another woman summited, but she um She continues her
Speaker 1: work in trying to really maintain the mountain and I
Speaker 1: love her sustainable mountaineering UH work that she's been doing.
Speaker 1: So if you would like to write to us, you
Speaker 1: should do that. You can do it in a number
Speaker 1: of ways. You can write to as via email at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can check in
Speaker 1: with us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash history
Speaker 1: class stuff. We're on Twitter at missed in History UH.
Speaker 1: We are also on missed in History dot tumbler dot com,
Speaker 1: and we're on Pinterest pinning like mad women. UH. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to learn a little bit more about what
Speaker 1: we talked about today, you can go to our UH
Speaker 1: parent site House to Works and type in crime scene
Speaker 1: investigation in the search bar and you will get an
Speaker 1: article called how crime scene investigation works. One of the
Speaker 1: really cool things in that article is a series of
Speaker 1: diagrams about the UH the investigation patterns that were developed
Speaker 1: as a consequence of the work with Francis Clessner Lee,
Speaker 1: like the spiral that I talked about and the sort
Speaker 1: of zone investigation approach to crime scenes UH. And you
Speaker 1: can learn about that and almost anything you would like
Speaker 1: at our parents site, which is house to Works. And
Speaker 1: you can also visit us on our own magical exciting
Speaker 1: history site, which is missed in history dot com. We
Speaker 1: hope you do both of those things for more on
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics because it houstoff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: M