Murder in a Dollhouse: How the Investigation of Unexplained Deaths Became the Science of Forensics

An astonishing story of Frances Glessner Lee— the mother of modern forensic science—and an engrossing account of how forensic medicine was born.

For most of human history, suspicious deaths were practically never investigated. In the overwhelming majority of cases, criminals got away with murder.

Frances Glessner Lee, a socialite from a wealthy and influential Chicago family, had no intention of pursuing a career of any kind—let alone getting tangled up in criminal investigations. Her years and decades weren’t particularly remarkable until, quite unexpectedly, Frances developed an unusual hobby. She met forensic expert George Magrath, who told her about cases from his practice—and over time he began letting her into the dissection room so she could observe the process. There was time to talk about poisons, injuries, and the character of damages. Frances became an insatiable reader, studied books about crimes, and ultimately created the most extensive legal-medical library in the country.

All of this led her to develop a method for studying crimes: through a series of dollhouse-sized dioramas that depict real crime scenes in detail—“Studies on the Theme of Unexplained Death.” They were first used as teaching materials in murder seminars as part of the first forensic medicine program at Harvard Medical School in the 1930s, and then, starting in 1945, they were used in murder seminars for police detectives. Frances’s dollhouses are still studied today and considered classics of forensic science. Lee also became a source of inspiration for a documentary film, a photo book, at least two collections of poems, and even the plot of a popular TV series about forensic medicine.

In this book, Bruce Goldfarb tells the unusual story of Frances Glessner Lee, weaving it into the history of modern forensic science.