PHRENOLOGY

“Men’s brains consist originally of a sheet of thin towel of integuments, and the characteristics of an individual are wholly determined by the manner in which mother nature folds or collapses it up in the cavity of the skull, exactly as a washerwoman, after scrubbing a shirt perfectly clean, huddles or crams it in the corner of the tub to take the blue. Now reader listen with attention, for the advice I am about to give the world, is of more consequence to posterity than all the discoveries made since the creation. Let a set of moulds be made with cavities to receive the bumps of the various cardinal virtues, filling up and defacing entirely those of the vicious propensities. When a child is born let one of these moulds be at hand, prepared according to the wish of the parent, and let it be clapped on its head while yet in a plastic state, and we shall speedily have the man or the philosopher of the kind we want. The mother who desired the schoolmaster to buy her child a capacity, may then be gratified, and men of genius, inconceivable in past times, may then be created at will.

“The truth of phrenology being now ascertained, I cannot but pity my old friends, whose blindness or bigotry prevents them from enjoying its advantages. I was musing, as I sat on the top of the weathercock of St. David’s the other day, when I looked down upon the Court house, and saw (in my present state of existence I can look through wooden shingled roofs, with the same ease as stone walls.) His Honour the Chief Justice, His Majesty’s Attorney General, seven gentlemen of the jury, with a host of witnesses and constables to boot, all busily engaged in trying a man on a charge of cattle stealing. Now all that was necessary in this case was, for the prisoner to lay his head on the bench, and for the jury to examine it, which they might do in two minutes. The Attorney General, instead, of a long circumstantial detail of the case, might simply confine himself to these words:-Gentlemen of the jury, the prisoner whose head is now before you, is charged with cattle stealing, if you find the bump of that offence on his temples, he is of course guilty, but if in place of it you find a deficiency, yon will give him the benefit of that deficiency.

“The late stupendous discoveries in prison discipline will never be completed without the aid of this wonderful science. Thus the Superintendent at the Prisoner’s barracks, has no more to do than to place his hand on the head of each, and order him to the class to which he belongs–those with plough bumps among the ploughmen, with shepherds’ bumps among the shepherds, with bullock driving bumps among the bullock drivers, and so forth ; so that when a settler applies he will find them at hand classed according to his particular wants. It is true that in handling the different craniums, a few with the thief bump, and others perhaps with the rum or drinking bump, may be found, but the advantage of classing these by themselves is self evident. And now that the Female house of correction is so admirably planned, if a lady wants a servant, she has only to add at the bottom of the Principal Superintendent’s order, as the case may be–‘ Please to send me a housemaid’s bump, with a little of the scrubbing bump attached.'”
(Hobart Town Courier, 2 May 1829)