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