8 - Gardening a European Island: Phrenologists, Whiteness and Reform for Nationhood

Summary

Phrenology’s enduring interest in defining national types coincided with a growing nineteenth century preoccupation with nationhood, with Australia’s Federation in 1901 seen as a move towards membership of a white imperial community. In line with debates about nationhood, some phrenologists with political or reformist leanings considered both the white Australian type and social organisation. During the mid nineteenth century, William David Cavanough offered massed nationalist head readings. In the 1880s and 1890s, phrenology appeared alongside lessons about physical fitness and therapies such as the water cure, aligning with medical interest in hygiene and population health. Phrenologist Joseph Fraser outlined utopian visions in a science-fiction novel, and American celebrity Jessie Fowler visited to offer insights about health and national type. And at the Phrenological and Health Institute of Australasia, established in early twentieth-century Melbourne, reformers shared ideas for cultivating the white Australian race in a magazine rich with metaphors of buds and seeds.