AustLit

'Phrenology is going through a resurgence, in interest, if not (thankfully) in practice. The supposed ability to assess character and propensity towards deviance though the physical qualities of the skull was a nineteenth-century phenomenon; one of a variety of pseudo-scientific practices that emerged, flourished briefly and disappeared. Unlike many of these experimental knowledge systems, however, its adherents left behind a range of material culture objects including plaster death masks, porcelain heads and human skulls. Having sat on the back shelves of museum collections for over a century, phrenology objects are returning to display across a host of institutions. In the past 12 months alone, phrenological death masks appeared in “Sideshow Alley” at the National Portrait Gallery (Australia), cases at the Old Melbourne Gaol, “My Learned Object” at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, “The Crime Museum Uncovered” at the Museum of London, and a case on phrenology at the Science Museum (UK). Frederick Bailey Deeming had the dubious honour earlier this year of having copies of his death mask on display in both Canberra and London concurrently. Given this current museological interest, Alexandra Roginski's book, The Hanged Man and the Body Thief, is timely. Using the collections of Museum Victoria as both a starting and end point, Roginski relates the intersection of the lives of Scottish phrenologist A.S. Hamilton and executed Aboriginal Australian Jim Crow, whose skull Hamilton illegally exhumed.' (Introduction)