HENRY MAYHEW (1812-1887) AND

pyramidal slrulls." lZ
Although phre~l~logy is remembaed Goday only as an antiquated
methai of reading people's characters from the contau of their slrulls, Nancy Stepan, an
historian of science, reminded scholars that its theaetical foundation asserted that
anatomical and physiological characteristics were directly 1i.W to xxmW behavia.
The Victorians's obsession with phrenology IinLevi tog-
a theay of pimitive
behaviouristic psychology with locajized brain functions. Accading to Stepan. the
Victorians divided the human race into four basic psychological types: "The "nervous"
was distqushd by a large brain, deiicate health, and emacia; the "bilious" was w ked
by harsh features sad firm muscles; the "sanguiae" was charactaized by large lung
capacity and mothate plumpness; and the 'lymphatic" had rcuaded f m and heavy
countenance." '" Fwtkmxe, Stepan argued that British scim supportad Ritchard's
approach, which included comparative philology and ehnography. Until the 1850s.
comparative studies of languages and customs as well as travellers's accounts gave
scientists and writers tods to suppt their argumnt that physically and psychologically
the world's races were united into om human species. '" Mayhew's wanderiag tribes
were culnrrally as well as physiologically varied:
. . . from the habitual vagrant - half-beggar, half- thief - sleeping in barns,
tents, and casual wards - to the mechanic on tramp, obtaining his bed and
supper fiom the track societies in the different towns. On the way to seek
'73 Stepan, 7. Stepan focused on the majar stages in the development of a scientific discoufse on
race by exploring images of race in western science.
Stepan, 45. Stepan wrote: uNonetheless, by the 185k the shifl6rom the earlier ethnographic,
monogeoist, historical and philosophical traditim to a more amsavative, anthropological, and
polygenist apprOBCh to human racial diversity and human history had advanced quite tar in
Britain." See W ge W. Stocking, Jr., in Race ,Culture and Evolution: Essays in the Hisrory of
Anrhropology, 1968, 14, who called race "a cbxteristically ninemmth-century phenomenm".