A WOMAN'S BRIDGE

Frances Glessner Lee (1878~1962): Mother of Modern Forensic Science

6/27/2010

 
Picture
by Yoon Joung Lee

A New England Socialite and Heiress

Frances Glessner Lee, who was known as “fanny” to her family, was born in March 25, 1878, in Chicago as a daughter of a wealthy family whose fortune later came from International Harvester.   Her father, John Jacob Glessner, was an industrialist and a founder of the International Harvester Co.  Her mother, Frances M. Glessner, was a supportive woman for the family who always considered the family’s well-being as her priority.  

Their house was built in 1886 on Prairie Avenue, the wealthiest area of a booming city, Chicago. The house was designed by the era’s well-known architect, H.H. Richardson and it has now become “The Glessner House Museum.”  Since both of her parents obsessed with furnishing and decorating their home, she was raised in this castle-like home surrounded by various handcrafted furnishings and servants.  As her parents were somewhat overly protective, she was tutored in private at home.  As a result of this extreme attention and care, she was able to develop an eye for details and be exposed to great minds and thoughts, even though she did not attend schools like other kids.  She was not allowed to pursue higher education while her brother went on to university.  Even though she had an interest in forensic pathology, she could not take her first step toward her career until her age of 52, a year after her brother died in 1930.

When she was 20, she married Blewett Lee who was a young attorney and law professor at Northwestern University.   They were married for eight years and had three children.  Their marriage seemed to start happily at the beginning.  However, they eventually divorced after the 8 years of marriage.  Failure of marriage led her life into a whole new direction.

Meeting “George Burgess Magrath”

Her interest in legal medicine began when she first met her brother's classmate, George Burgess Magrath, who spent his summer vacation with the Glessner family at their thousand-acre summerhouse at the White Mountains, New Hampshire.  He was then a medical student at Harvard University and later became a professor in pathology at Harvard Medical School and the chief medical examiner at Suffolk County in Boston.  Sharing his interest in medicine, investigation and death fired Frances’ ambition on her future career.  Meeting Magrath became the seeds of her interest in legal medicine, especially in death investigation.

Since that time, their friendship had remained until Magrath died in 1938.  Frances, in fact, followed Magrath’s career path and her interest in legal medicine apparently benefited Magrath’s career as well.  In 1931, she donated $250,000 in support of establishing a department of legal medicine at Harvard with Magrath as first chair and she even paid for the salary of its first professor.  She later built the George Burgess Magrath Library and made a donation of more than 1000 books and manuscripts to the Library.  Her supports enabled Harvard to hold various seminars, which have trained their students to become medical examiners.  However, Magrath could not enjoy this long enough and died in 1938. 


"The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death’

She presided the grand-fashion seminars at Harvard twice a year and she was the only woman among about 40 men.  She invited police officers and other professionals involved in law enforcement from all over the nation. The seminars were held through crafting dystopian dollhouses, which were eighteen dioramas she constructed, named the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, as convinced by the theory of criminology that crimes could be analyzed and solved by scientific analysis of visual and material clue.

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death contains every detail needed to investigate and recreate the crime scenes by using photos and witness accounts.  She made the dolls, painted faces and stitched clothes by hand.  She also placed tiny magazines or newspapers stuffed into drafty cracks in the wall, tiny crushed cigarettes, and even prescription bottles with labels she printed by hand.  From broken glass to a pile of letters, all these items in the Nutshells were her invention and important clues for the manner of unexplained death. 

She spent a great amount of time on each Nutshell.  She hired the carpenter Ralph Mosher, to be able to make what she wanted and he worked for her for eight years until he died.  Later, his son took over his father’s job and worked for Frances.    She sometime purchased already-made miniature furniture on her trips over the world.  She made about three Nutshells per year in the 1930s to ‘40s, and each of them were as expensive as an average house in those days.

Honors

In 1942 Frances became a volunteer police officer with an honorary captain’s rank in the New Hampshire State Police.  She was the first female to become a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

When she got old and lost her vision, a doctor recommended her to stop working.  However, her ambition could not easily stop her.  She had listened to the police reports everyday in her room through radio, until she died in 1962 and many mourned the death of her.

The dioramas were donated to Harvard in 1945.  However, they have been placed at the office of the Maryland Medical Examiner in Baltimore since 1966 when the department of legal medicine was dissolved.   A former professor in the department of legal medicine at Harvard, Dr. Russell Fisher, brought them with him, as he became a chief of the Maryland’s medical examiner.  They still use them in various seminars, miniaturists, and for artists and academics.

Many people admire her efforts and prominent achievements in the male-dominated field.   Many people might not be familiar of her name in the field of forensic science.  However, her life's legacy is remembered and her pioneer work, The Nutshell Studies, greatly contributed to the field.

Women, Culture, and History

6/14/2010

 
The Shriver Report: The Changing Role of Women in the U.S. History
by Yoon Joung Lee

 For the first time in our nation’s history, one-half of the U.S. workforce consists of women.  This change has affected many parts of American life.  Considering all of the implications, questions like the following arise: How does the changing role of women affect American culture?

In the study, “The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything,” the Center for American Progress and Maria Shriver respond to these questions by examining this significant social transformation.


“The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything” is a 454-page study that includes a comprehensive national poll of the changing face and attitudes of the American men and women, and 24 essays from economists, sociologists and other academic experts examining this seismic workforce shift and how this transformation will influence our society in areas like media, government, business, and education.


According to the report, in 2008, 50% of employees in the U.S. work force are women and the women in 63.3% of the American households are either the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners for the first time. Compared to a report conducted in 1967 showing that one third of American workforces were women, the recent percentage of women in the U.S. workplace shows a dramatic surge. 

The report notes that this social transformation is not just about change in the American woman’s story, but it signifies a change for men, women, and their families as well as women’s day to day responsibilities with spouses, family members, bosses, colleagues, and employees.  Four-fifths of American families do not limit their lifestyles to the traditional family paradigm- men works outside the home and women are stay-at-home housewives. 

Rather, many women are leading their families as primary income earners.   The report found that the Great Recession, which began in December 2007, was the springboard of this phenomenal transformation. Many housewives started to work outside the home to support their families, as 3 out of 4 workers to lose their job were male.

The findings of The Shriver Report include:


Men, Women, Family and Work in a Seismic Transformation
  • Half of all people on payrolls are women. 
  • Many women, especially professional women, are investing more time than before on their careers and delaying motherhood to their 30s or 40s.  Thus, the number of single women has been dramatically increased. 40% of women over age 25 are now unmarried and 40% of children born in 2007 had an unmarried mother.
  • Millions of workers now have a female boss and their collaborative management styles bring various improvements and advantages to the workplace.  As many businesses recognize the importance of some kind of family care responsibility, which women used to do for free in the home, the role of women as a workforce become greater than ever before and women are fulfilling those demands.
  • Nearly 39.7% of mothers in the U.S. are primary breadwinners and 62.8% are primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners.   However, women continue to be paid 77 cents for every dollar men earn in the workplaces.
  • Many workingwomen today are providing for their family by working out of the home while also taking the lead in care-giving responsibilities inside the home.
  • As women delay marriage decisions, the marriage rate is currently at the lowest point in its recorded history.  Even though the divorce rate is down, it is still significant.  According to the report, more than one in three families with children is headed by a single parent.
  • More than a quarter of a million children are being raised by gay or lesbian parents who have no legal right to marry under the law of the federal government.
  • Women have successfully entered every arena of American life meaning that the man’s world of the past has become more accepting and reliant on women.  Many women today are working in various fields and roles, such as: heads of corporate boardrooms, the athletic playing field, the legal and medical professions and even in the theater of military operations.    Women feel as comfortable in these fields as they would in more traditional roles.
  • The transformation of American public life as a result of women’s changing roleshas significantly influenced the core of American manhood as well as the lives of American men.
    • For some, the changes have gradually taken hold in American families without much struggle or fanfare because men have recognized the contributions women make to their households and to lives of their children and loved ones. The traditional family paradigm has drifted into a more egalitarian relationship and it began in the American home.
    • The transformation of the workforce and women’s emergence as primary breadwinners has also shaken some men’s identity to its foundation.   Some men see women’s entry into their workplace not just as “entry” but as “invasion,” while other men see that women’s increased empowerment only contributes to the loss of masculine vigor in American men.
    • Men’s share of housework, especially childcare, has significantly increased in the past few decades.   They are also more likely to do more housework than in the past and to be expressive of their love toward their children than in previous decades.
    • Men’s increased participation in childcare has its challenges and they report significantly higher levels of work-family conflict compared to 30 years ago (3 out of 5 fathers in dual-earner households experience significant work-family conflict).
    • The spouses of egalitarian husbands report the highest levels of marital satisfaction, and the lowest rates of depression.  As for the benefits men enjoy, the men who do more housework are physically healthier and more likely to stay in shape because they smoke less, drink less, and take recreational drugs less often.
    • According to the research by psychologist John Gottman at the University of Washington, couples engage in intercourse at higher rates where men do more housework and child care.
  • As womens' education levels increase, they are more capable of making their own ways in the world and can be more selective in choosing a marriage partner.  This independence gives women the ability to enter into fairer marriages with improved marital quality and stability.  As a result, educated couples with egalitarian gender views have the highest marital quality of all.
  • Men and women both agree on most life goals and how they value their roles in marriage, as partners, parents and in their jobs. Interestingly, 63% of men today are less interested in playing the "macho" role at home.
How does this movement change Americans’ personal and professional lives? How does it change the way we raise our children and interact with our spouses? 

The Shriver Report emphasizes that what we may have considered as “womens' issues” are no longer only womens’ fare, but are “family issues.”   While Ms. Shriver was meeting and talking to men and women around kitchen tables and at The Women’s Conference across the nation, she was able to understand how stressed today’s Americans feel, especially when they are grappling with financial insecurity.  Society still believes that childcare and eldercare are womens’ responsibilities even though the responsibilities of women at workplaces have increased.  What makes the situation more difficult is that while most workplaces have ignored or chosen to not respond to this transformation, many women are afraid to ask for work schedules with more flexibility to allow them to meet the demands of their domestic lives.  The situation has had the effect of forcing many women to start their own businesses.  Today, women make up 35% of all self-employed people in the nation and this percentage has doubled since 1979.


How does it change the views of the society regarding the value of womens' contributions?
 

Another interesting finding according to the study is that the battle of the sexes is over.  This battle has been replaced by negotiations.  Men and women both agree on a need of negotiations about their domestic responsibilities, childcare, eldercare, work and family.   Men also agree with women that our society must pay attention to what today’s American family needs in this period of transformation and respond to those needs with adequate policies and laws.  The future of our country may be greatly dependent on women who have achieved high level status and power and made significant changes in every part of our lives, including business, education and home.  Therefore, womens’ problems are Americans’ problems that men and women must solve together.


Maria Shriver, the main author of this report, is an award-winning journalist.  She has won a Peabody Award and two Emmy Awards.  She is also the First Lady of California who married to actor and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and a niece of former President John F. Kennedy.  Her study was modeled on the study called “American Women” in 1963 undertaken almost 50 years ago during the administration of John F. Kennedy and later led by Eleanor Roosevelt.


The Shriver Report is available at http://www.awomansnation.com.
 

.

Women, Culture, and History

6/14/2010

5 Comments

 
Women, Culture, and History shares dialogue on books and articles about the changing influence of women in various cultures throughout history. We will also be posting independently researched biographical information on various women who've paved the way in making the world a different and hopefully better place. We begin with a review by Yoon Joung Lee on The Shriver Report.
5 Comments

    Archives

    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    September 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010

    Categories

    All
    Amelia Earhart
    American South
    Amy Beach
    Anna Nzinga
    Anna Sewell
    Anna Wintour
    Anne Bronte
    Barbra Steisand
    Baroness Blixen
    Benazir Bhutto
    Billie Jean King
    Blackfeet Nation
    Brigitte Bardot
    Bronte Sisters
    Catherine The Great
    Charlotte Bronte
    Cheng I Sao
    Civil Rights Movement
    Clara Barton
    Cleopatra
    Cristina Fernandes De Kirchner
    Dagmar Wilson
    Dido Belle
    Dilma Rousseff
    Dorothy Kamenshek
    Edith Wharton
    Eleanor Of Aquitaine
    Elouise Cobell
    Emily Bronte
    Fannie Flagg
    Frances Glessner Lee
    Frida Kahlo
    Gabby Douglas
    Geun Hye Park
    Gone With The Wind
    Hannah Snell
    Harper Lee
    Harriet Tubman
    Hatshepsut
    Heian Period
    Helen Keller
    Hillary Rodham Clinton
    Ho Ching
    Hypatia Of Alexandria
    Intro
    Irena Sendler
    Isabelle Scott
    Jamestown
    Jane Eyre
    Jane Goodall
    Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis
    Jody Williams
    Josephine Baker
    Journalism
    Joy Ogwu
    Julia Ward Howe
    Laurie Marker
    Madeleine Korbel Albright
    Margaret Bourke-White
    Margaret Mitchell
    Margaret Thatcher
    Margot Wallstrom
    Maria Otero
    Marilyn Monroe
    Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
    Mary Poppins
    Maya Angelou
    Meip Gies
    Meryl Streep
    Mother Theresa
    Murasaki Shikibu
    Nellie Bly
    Patricia Cloherty
    Pl Travers
    Pocahontas
    Rachel Carson
    Rosalind Franklin
    Rosa Parks
    Rosemary Kennedy
    Ruth Harkness
    Sally Ride
    Sheila Johnson
    Song Qingling
    Sophie Scholl
    Sylvia Plath
    The Shriver Report
    To Kill A Mockingbird
    Trudy Harsh
    Vera Wang
    Victorian Era
    Women Journalists In Pakistan
    WWII
    Yearling

    RSS Feed