ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The Arts of Measurement in George Combe’s Correspondence

• In Event: Physiometry: Contesting the Arts of Bodily Measurement from Phrenology to Dermatoglyphics

English Abstract

A vast body of correspondence exists from the leading nineteenth-century phrenologist George Combe. Combe used this network to test and propagate his ideas across the British empire, and his network of correspondents includes European men of science, former slavers, female informants, medics, colonial officials, and many others, a cross-section of the empire's knowledge-making machine. This paper presents early results of a new project (with René Winkler) to digitise these letters, particularly focussing on the early years of the 1820s, when Combe used his global correspondence to legitimate his nascent Phrenological Society. The scholarship has recognised that the core of Combe’s enterprise was performing and sharing measurements, while focussing on other problems of credibility, media, and racialisation. This paper puts the lens on the actual practices, materials, and conceptual frameworks of measurement in Combe’s correspondence, embedding them within the broader landscape of bodily measurement in imperial Britain.

Author

• Richard Oosterhoff, University of Edinburgh