Popular phrenologists lecturing in the Tasman World from 1850 onwards performed head public readings, on stage or in the street. Although bump readers abounded across the Anglosphere, the region and its rapid population growth shaped a particular reception experience. The arrival of an exotic outsider provided a chance for townsfolk, often newly thrown together, to glean an objective – if chaotic – perspective on their community and neighbours. Across this patchwork of settlements, popular phrenology became a tactile lingua franca, with audiences scrutinising the lecturer to catch out humbug through the public ordeal of “trying the bumps”. Whatever the outcome, the town experienced the dual entertainment of theatre and public power-play. Here was a chance to jest about their town and pecking order under the veil of science. Inevitably, phrenologists altered the local climate. But the town always won, and a phrenologist with a crushed reputation could face disaster.

More than 140 phrenologists ascended the platform as popular lecturers in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand during the second half of the nineteenth century, seizing on scientific spectacle for their own physical and social mobility. These scientists – usually men – also often offered private consultations and blended phrenology with other forms of knowledge such as mesmerism or physiognomy. Joining waves of migration to and from new settlements, phrenologists faced harsh physical conditions, with women performers confronting the additional risks of gender-based violence. Phrenologists generally did not pursue respectability. Rather, in building up their personas, lecturers embraced the word ‘science’ as a signifier of progress and authority, policing the boundaries between the ‘valid’ science that they supposedly offered and that of their rivals. They lived in a state of tension between their public, fee-earning selves – founded on supposedly good reputations – and their private ordeals, struggling to make ends meet.