Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics
    18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics
    18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics
    Audiobook8 hours

    18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics

    Written by Bruce Goldfarb

    Narrated by Nan McNamara

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    The story of a woman whose ambition and accomplishments far exceeded the expectations of her time, 18 Tiny Deaths follows the transformation of a young, wealthy socialite into the mother of modern forensics...

    Frances Glessner Lee, born a socialite to a wealthy and influential Chicago family in the 1870s, was never meant to have a career, let alone one steeped in death and depravity.

    Yet she developed a fascination with the investigation of violent crimes, and made it her life's work. Best known for creating the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of dollhouses that appear charming?until you notice the macabre little details: an overturned chair, or a blood-spattered comforter. And then, of course, there are the bodies?splayed out on the floor, draped over chairs?clothed in garments that Lee lovingly knit with sewing pins.

    18 Tiny Deaths, by official biographer Bruce Goldfarb, delves into Lee's journey from grandmother without a college degree to leading the scientific investigation of unexpected death out of the dark confines of centuries-old techniques and into the light of the modern day.

    Lee developed a system that used the Nutshells dioramas to train law enforcement officers to investigate violent crimes, and her methods are still used today.

    18 Tiny Deaths transports the reader back in time and tells the story of how one woman, who should never have even been allowed into the classrooms she ended up teaching in, changed the face of science forever.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 4, 2020
    ISBN9781980014850
    Author

    Bruce Goldfarb

    A former EMT/paramedic and a nursing school dropout, Bruce Goldfarb has written for national and local newspapers, magazines, and web publications. He also wrote and edited several medical texts and reference books. This is his first book of popular nonfiction. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

    Related to 18 Tiny Deaths

    Related audiobooks

    Forensics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Disappeared

      May 1, 2020

      The Disappeared
      15 min read

    • Article

      'Most Prolific Serial Killer' In America Confesses To Murdering 5 More Women In Ohio

      Jun 7, 2019

      The new charges filed by prosecutors in Ohio are the latest decades-ago murders carried out by Samuel Little, who authorities say killed women in 19 states over nearly half a century.

      2 min read

    • Article

      'The Cadaver King And The Country Dentist' Will Shake Your Faith In The US Justice System

      Feb 28, 2018

      The authors focus on the wrongful convictions of two black men, Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, each charged in separate murders during the early 1990s in Mississippi.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Name That KILLER

      May 7, 2020

      When sex workers in Dallas, Texas, started showing up dead with their eyeballs missing, terror spread through the city. Many people are fascinated by eyes, but none as much as the Eyeball Killer. Charles Frederick Albright was born in Texas in 1933.

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Living Victims

      May 8, 2020

      The Living Victims
      7 min read

    • Article

      Samantha Irby On Oversharing And The Art Of Confessional Writing

      May 9, 2018

      Samantha Irby is not shy about her shortcomings. The blogger and author of the essay collections "We Are Never Meeting in Real Life" and "Meaty" writes both openly and hilariously about dealing with Crohn's disease, awkward dating experiences and bad

      4 min read

    • Article

      America’s Deadliest Serial Killer Preyed On The ‘Less Dead’ For Decades – A New Documentary Seeks Answers

      Apr 20, 2021

      In 2018, while serving a life sentence for three killings dating back to the 1980s, Samuel Little, then 77 and in poor health, began talking. Over hundreds of hours, he confessed to a total of 93 murders. At least 50 of these confessions have been ve

      5 min read

    • Article

      ‘Go Ahead, Kill Her’

      Aug 6, 2020

      ‘Go Ahead, Kill Her’
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Cardiologist’s 9/11 Story

      Sep 13, 2018

      The morgue was inside Brooks Brothers. I was standing at the corner of Church and Dey, right next to the rubble of the World Trade Center, when a policeman shouted that doctors were needed at the menswear emporium inside the building at One Liberty P

      14 min read

    • Article

      Secrets Of The Dead

      Aug 7, 2020

      Secrets Of The Dead
      7 min read

    • Article

      More Than ‘Just A Coincidence’

      Oct 6, 2022

      How and Why Synchronicity and Serendipity Happen Park Street Press 2022 Pb, £12.99, 224pp, ISBN 9781644115701 Two babies are born at 8.08am on 8/8/08, both weighing 8lb 8oz. A lost ring finds its way back to its owner inside a fish bought for supper.

      10 min read

    • Article

      The Original Natural Born Killers: In the 1920s, two murderers were defended by science. The infamous case still echoes.

      Dec 3, 2015

      In May of 1924, the city of Chicago was shocked by a brutal murder. Two precocious University of Chicago graduate students, Nathan Leopold, 19, and Richard Loeb, 18,1 lured, abducted, and murdered Loeb’s 14-year-old cousin Bobby Franks by clubbing an

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Original Natural Born Killers: In the 1920s, two murderers were defended by science. The infamous case still echoes.

      Sep 11, 2014

      In May of 1924, the city of Chicago was shocked by a brutal murder. Two precocious University of Chicago graduate students, Nathan Leopold, 19, and Richard Loeb, 18,1 lured, abducted, and murdered Loeb’s 14-year-old cousin Bobby Franks by clubbing an

      5 min read

    • Article

      If You Think You’re a Genius, You’re Crazy

      Mar 9, 2017

      When John Forbes Nash, the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician, schizophrenic, and paranoid delusional, was asked how he could believe that space aliens had recruited him to save the world, he gave a simple response. “Because the ideas I had about supe

      4 min read

    • Article

      If You Think You’re a Genius, You’re Crazy: Both geniuses and madmen pay attention to what others ignore.

      Oct 30, 2014

      When John Forbes Nash, the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician, schizophrenic, and paranoid delusional, was asked how he could believe that space aliens had recruited him to save the world, he gave a simple response. “Because the ideas I had about supe

      4 min read

    • Article

      Body Of Evidence

      Mar 27, 2022

      Body Of Evidence
      2 min read

    • Article

      What Is It Like To Die?

      Apr 12, 2024

      PATIENT ONE WAS 24 YEARS OLD and pregnant with her third child when she was taken off life support. It was 2014. A couple of years earlier, she had been diagnosed with a disorder that caused an irregular heartbeat, and during her two previous pregnan

      16 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for 18 Tiny Deaths

    4/5

    60 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensicsby Bruce GoldfarbI had heard of the the fantastic little drama reenactments staged for police and forensic science but never got around to getting the full scoop on it. Well this sure does! If you don't like science or history then this is not the book for you! This book travels back in time to tell the reader how a coroner came about! Wow, what craziness! Then it gives examples. We continue forward and learn how they change. The change came slowly and not a whole lot improved. Each with examples.Now I love history and science so I loved the book. It showed why the need for a Modern Forensic world. Then comes Frances. We get a history about her and her family which I found interesting. When you learn about a person from a different era we learn about that time period too. Then we come to the boxes! OMG!!! Unbelievable!!! So detailed. She was very rich and each box cost a fortune to make! I was totally fascinated at the precise details. But these weren't her first!She made a whole symphony orchestra for her mother when she became too ill to go herself. Each detailed perfectly.Amazing book! Loved it. She was an amazing woman!
    • 4/5
      A biography of Frances Lee who in an era when women of wealth were expected to live sheltered lives, she spent her life learning about forensic law and creating techniques and policies to ensure police became educated in how to examine crime scenes. Although she was unable to study at Harvard - due to their no-women policy, she spent millions of dollars setting up a forensic science studies section at Harvard including a library of rare books she collected from around the world. Lee also enjoyed making dolls houses and dolls house sized miniatures 1/12th scale. In order to teach the importance of ensuring the crime scene is untouched until a forensic team takes over Lee made a series of miniature murder/death scenes which she called Nutshells. 18 of these nutshells remain over 70 years after they were made, hence the title 18 tiny deaths. Fascinating book, especially if you like stubborn women, and/or the development of forensic science.
    • 3/5
      I was interested how this society woman came to have such an interest in forensic science and how she of all people came to revolutionise it.For starters this is an "... extremely detailed and thoroughly researched biography ...", so much so that I think it detracts from the object at hand - how and why forensics. I get that we know to know something of her background, but felt that this could quite easily have been condensed into one chapter. Another chapter could have been devoted to the history and current standing of forensics in the US before we then embark of Frances' sourjon into crime.Alternately, this could have been a compelling look into the study and emergence of forensics in America, with a feature of Frances, as this tome does tend to veer off course with the introduction of a number of other influential characters.Look, all in all, an interesting topic - and further reading up on the "Nutshell Studies" is highly warranted.
    • 4/5
      I first read about this amazing woman in the book, "Savage Delights." She is another vital woman rescued from the obscurity if history. Her father was a self made Irish man who founded the company that was later called, International Harvester. It was the Gilded Age and Frances was aised in Chicago with great privilege. She was only expected to marry well and do the things that wealthy women did back then. This, however, was not enough for Frances, and luckily for those who got away with murder and those who needs wrongfully convicted, she started classes that trained the police. Police Science taught the art of crime detection and the science that could be used in the solving if crimes.Such an interesting book, about s very unusual woman. To aid in her classes she built miniature boxes, that depicted crime scenes. True down to the smallest detail, these are still used today in Boston. The book also goes into the coroner versus medical examiner crisis that many cities were exoeriencing. Coroner's were often untrained, and corrupt. So it was a mix of biography and history. Police detectives and the public owe much to this amazing woman.
    • 3/5
      Thank you to NetGalley and SourceBooks for providing me with an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.————I went into this book expecting the professional biography of a scientist, doctor, or investigator who was instrumental in the creation of the field of modern forensics--a story of a woman whose trailblazing work had been forgotten in the wake of her own success. I learned a lot reading this book--about the establishment of forensic science/legal medicine, about Harvard's Medical School, about the coroner and medical examiner systems, and about police death investigations. This is, however, a biography of Lee's entire life--including her childhood. There is little about the actual "invention" of modern forensics. This is a history of science, not the science itself.It turns out that Frances Glessner Lee was completely untrained in pathology or policework and did not participate in either field itself--she was a essentially checkbook and a PR expert, with her immense inherited wealth and connections, and her willingness to devote her time and talents to her cause. Her cause being the creation of a Legal Medicine Department in Harvard's Medical School, and statewide Medical Examiners offices to coordinate death investigations. If you watch crime shows on TV, you know what she was working to establish--medicine and science as the basis for crime investigation, and not the coroner system that so often contaminated crime scenes and focused on what was visible and obvious. Lee even had her fingers in the first modern crime movie--Mystery Street withe Ricardo Montalban. This book is a biography of her entire life, not just her work on legal medicine.Goldfarb works as the Public Information Officer at Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Maryland. He has incredible access to materials as this facility, more than any other, carries on the work of Lee. While she worked so hard to establish the legal medicine department at Harvard, it was rolled into another after her death. It is really in the police and investigative communities (not in academic communities or medical schools) that her contributions are most appreciated. OCME continues to use models she built to conduct police seminars like those she hosted at Harvard. Lee received several honorary degrees (not from Harvard), and honorary captaincies from several police departments, and was an honorary captain in the navy.This book is certainly interesting and very thoroughly researched, but I also found it frustrating to learn about this very wealthy woman who used that wealth toward a field she decided she was an expert in without any real-world experience. She also constantly threatened to revoke money and donations to get her way (and she would follow through). So while she did accomplish a lot, in the end it is certainly not what she envisioned, and in many ways her dreams have not come to pass, as many counties still use elected or appointed coroners, and fewer than half of the states have a statewide ME.
    • 5/5
      18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics by Bruce Goldfarb is an extremely well-researched biography and introduction to the birth and early days of modern forensics.First, potential readers need to be aware this is a biography of Lee, the vast majority of which concerns forensics. This is not a book about forensics with some biographical information about Lee. The distinction between the two is important for readers to be aware of.Lee led a privileged but fascinating life. She was aware of her advantages and that played a role in her desire to do good for others. Coupled with her early interest in medicine and her friendship with her brother's friend (a doctor and also early forensics advocate) this led to her association with Harvard and the birth of modern forensics.While the portion of the biography leading up to her association with Harvard might not be what some readers are looking for, it does show how the seeds were planted both for her interest in medicine and unexplained death and her desire to give back.I highly recommend this to readers of biography and those interested in forensic science. The sad part is that about half of the US population is served by coroners, many of which require no medical or even science background. In other words, still political in nature.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.