1 - Bumps on the Road: Phrenological Touts and Travellers

Summary

More than 140 phrenologists ascended the platform as popular lecturers in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand during the second half of the nineteenth century, seizing on scientific spectacle for their own physical and social mobility. These scientists – usually men – also often offered private consultations and blended phrenology with other forms of knowledge such as mesmerism or physiognomy. Joining waves of migration to and from new settlements, phrenologists faced harsh physical conditions, with women performers confronting the additional risks of gender-based violence. Phrenologists generally did not pursue respectability. Rather, in building up their personas, lecturers embraced the word ‘science’ as a signifier of progress and authority, policing the boundaries between the ‘valid’ science that they supposedly offered and that of their rivals. They lived in a state of tension between their public, fee-earning selves – founded on supposedly good reputations – and their private ordeals, struggling to make ends meet.