“The lecture room has been filled every evening”

In April 1840, Walton Felch brought his phrenological lectures to Concord.

As quoted back here, on 1 April twelve-year-old Edmund Quincy Sewall, Jr., went to the town’s Lyceum Hall expecting to hear Felch speak on phrenology. He saw a collection of skulls laid out on the lectern, including at least one skull of a British soldier killed in 1775.

But then those teaching aids were taken away, and Edmund heard another speaker instead. Two days later, he corrected what he’d written in his diary about Felch:

I said he had not come up from Boston. He had been engaged on the supposition that Mr Haskins would not come but as Mr H. did come he had to give place.

On that evening, 3 April, Edmund finally heard Felch deliver his talk on phrenology. The twelve-year-old judged it to be “pretty interesting.”

It looks like that lecture wasn’t officially part of the Concord Lyceum program, according to records kept by Edmund’s teacher Henry David Thoreau. Instead, those weekly lectures were on such topics as Roger Williams of Rhode Island and the Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson on “The Present Age.” But Felch did apparently speak in Lyceum Hall.

On 18 April, the Yeoman’s Gazette of Concord took notice of Felch’s “course of lectures”:

The lecture room has been filled every evening, and we understand that his audience have generally expressed much gratification at the manner in which the subject has been treated. . . . We understand that the popular favor has been attested by numerous and increasing audiences.

The newspaper also praised the phrenologist for allowing anyone to attend, asking only “voluntary contribution.”

Of course, those lectures were marketing for Felch’s services. He quoted from his good reviews in a long advertisement in the 12 June Barre Gazette, closing with:

Mr. Felch will wait on individuals and families who may wish to avail themselves of his skill as an Experimental Phrenologist.

Weeks later, on 24 July, that local newspaper published a long article of “Mr. Felch’s Lectures on Phrenology.” The topic was no longer novel, it said, and, “The country has been deluged with lecturers, who…palm off the most miserable quackery and ignorance.” But Felch was different!

That his design is the collection of money, no one believes who knows him. He is imbued with a strong love of the subject, a full conviction of its truth and of its capacity to promote the welfare of mankind. He has studied well and deeply, and we doubt if even a few can be found in the country who are more intimately versed in the theory and details of the science.

However, this reviewer did have two criticisms. First, Felch went on for too long: “The shortness of the evenings at least should have cut short some of the reasonings and illustrations.” And while speaking of phrenology Felch indulged another of his hobby-horses:

Nor can we pass over what seems to us a faulty digression upon the subject of grammar. Mr. Felch is an enthusiast on this subject and is the author of a work touching it. . . . But we are unable to discover the connection which the lecturer supposes to exist between the two subjects, and could only feel a breakage when he passed on Monday evening from one to the other. Perhaps the lateness of the hour was an incentive to the feeling—but we trust yet that they will not be again chained fist and fist together.

Notably, I haven’t found any reviews from this period that criticized Felch for displaying human skulls, or for having British soldiers’ bodies dug up. Apparently people accepted those acts as necessary for science.

TOMORROW: The peregrinations of Walton Felch.