The Nutshells: Frances Glessner Lee’s Crime Scenes in Miniature at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore.
Frances Glessner Lee is considered the mother of forensic science. Born in Chicago in 1878, Glessner Lee created the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, twenty true crime scene dioramas recreated in minute detail at dollhouse scale, in the 1940s to train homicide investigators.
Glessner Lee was fond of the stories of Sherlock Holmes, whose plot twists were often the result of overlooked details. While she wanted to become an investigator, as a woman she wasn’t allowed. Instead she used her money and interest in miniatures to create The Nutshells. The models she created are based on composites of actual cases and are designed to test the abilities of students to collect all relevant evidence. The models depict multiple causes of death and are based on autopsies and crime scenes that Glessner Lee visited.Glessner Lee paid close attention to detail in creating the models. The rooms were filled with working mousetraps and rocking chairs, food in the kitchens, and more, and the corpses accurately represented discoloration or bloating that would be present at the crime scene.
Currently, they are housed at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) for the State of Maryland in Baltimore (1 North Poppleton Street, Baltimore, MD 21223) and we have the opportunity to visit them.
On Tuesday, June 9th, have been allocated two time slots – noon and 1:00pm, each for an hour. We are allowed only 8 people per hour-long time slot to visit the dioramas due to room size and the fragility of The Nutshells.
As this is a secure facility with restricted access we require pre-registration. Please sign up using the link in your member newsletter. One registration per person (i.e. there are no plus ones for this).
More information about The Nutshells can be found in this article the Smithsonian published when the dioramas were displayed at the Renwick.
Carpools will be arranged.