Phrenology & Crime in 19th Century America

In Nineteenth Century America there was a strong reformist push to know and improve the self. One key tactic Americans used to learn more about themselves was phrenological readings. They would pay practical phrenologists, like Orson Squire Fowler and his younger brother, Lorenzo Niles Fowler for readings of their skulls or their children’s skulls.

In Lorenzo Fowler’s reading of Emily Sawyer, he concluded a thirteen-page analysis by saying: “Cultivate as much as you can the organs marked smallest in your Chart + properly guide and exercise the stronger ones + thus produce a harmony of mental and physical action.” By using the phrenological readings of themselves or their children, Nineteenth Century Americans could apply the advice to become the best version of themselves.

Practical phrenologists weren’t interested only in reform of the self, but in larger societal reform as well. For practical phrenologists, prisons were the site of both research and reform; they argued for the elimination of capital punishment and the reform of prisons to include re-education instead of punishment.

Despite the reform impulse of phrenologists, phrenology was also used as a scientific reason to justify racism and gender stereotyping. American phrenologists were sympathetic to liberal causes including the antislavery movement, even while claiming the superiority of the European brain.

By the early 20th century phrenology had been largely discredited in the public, but some of the concepts of phrenology, including propensities and physical localization in the brain of different characteristics have persisted.

In this episode, Kelly briefly tells the story of phrenology in 19th Century America and interviews Courtney Thompson, Assistant Professor of History at Mississippi State University, and author of the February 2021 book, An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Episode image: “A head marked with images representing the phrenological faculties, with a key below. Coloured wood engraving, ca. 1845, after H. Bushea and O.S. Fowler.” Wellcome Collection. Public Domain.

Sources:

• An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America by Courtney E. Thompson
• "Facing a Bumpy History: The much-maligned theory of phrenology gets a tip of the hat from modern neuroscience," by Minna Scherlinder Morse, Smithsonian Magazine, October 1997.
• "Mesmerism and Phrenology in Antebellum Charleston: 'Enough of the Marvellous'" by Peter McCandless. The Journal of Southern History, 58(2), 199-230. doi:10.2307/2210860.
• The History of Phrenology on the Web by John van Wyhe
• Encyclopedia of medical history by Roderick E. McGrew and Margaret P. McGrew, 1985.

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