The Nutshell Studies Of Unexplained Death

Back in 2011, I blogged about (entry here) a book featuring the beautiful photos of Corinne May Botz - The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.  This book featured the incredible works of Frances Glessner Lee.

Frances Glessner Lee (1878−1962) crafted her extraordinary ​“Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death” — exquisitely detailed miniature crime scenes — to train homicide investigators to ​“convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell.” These dollhouse-sized dioramas of true crimes, created in the first half of the 20th century and still used in forensic training today, helped to revolutionize the emerging field of homicide investigation.

Text source.

Yesterday, we took a trip to see the Nutshell Studies at its home in Baltimore, Maryland, at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.  On our drive down, we listened to a terrific podcast about these incredible dioramas and the woman who built them.  If you're curious, here's the LINK.

The exhibit was fascinating.  The detail was staggering.  The notion that each tiny scene represented actual human deaths was chilling.  I am very familiar with the gorgeous photographs in Botz's book but seeing the display in person was an entirely different experience.  There was a strong sense that you were looking into someone's hurt, a tragic moment frozen in time.  It was very comforting to know that these miniatures have been used for decades and decades to train investigators, and we wondered how many eyes have studied the tiny blood stains and splatters, the discolored corpses, and the miniscule bullet holes.  

It's hard to imagine a time when a crime scene wasn't scrutinized for clues.  I'm feeling really thankful we had the opportunity to see where this started to change.  Frances Glessner Lee's contributions to this cause have earned her the title of 'Mother of Forensic Science.'  

Below are some photos we took of the exhibit.