3-056-248 - The London Archives (City of London)/Heritage Images

Before leaving Skegness, visit Professor J. A. Stephenson, Practical Phrenologist, late 19th century. 'Frivolous, changeable, excitable, gay, ambitious, vain, thriftless, unsympathetic; lacks imagination and refinement. Unsociable, old maidish, unmotherly, reserved, cold and distant, ill-tempered, conscientious, orderly, lacks the qualities to make a companion, wife and mother'. Advertisement, with prices, and illustrations of two women subjects of phrenological examination, listing negative (and sexist) personality traits. Phrenology, considered a pseudoscience today, was the practice of measuring skull size and shape to determine a person's character traits and behavioural patterns. The practice was deeply rooted in racial pseudoscientific theories. The advert is possibly from the papers of George Combe (1788-1858) and his brother Andrew Combe, who founded the Edinburgh Phrenological Society in 1920.