Mr Bally's Heads
Mr Bally's Heads
One of the most secretive attractions in mid-nineteenth century Manchester was a collection of up to 1,000 casts made from people's heads
Take a walk down King Street on a Monday night in 1840 and you would see a group of men loitering outside a door.
Sheepish in the cold evening light and hoping not be seen, they were waiting for that door to spring open so they could step inside to perform a strange ritual.
They were members of Victorian Manchester’s strangest club — the men who liked to measure the bumps on people’s heads.
The building where they met housed the secretive museum and library of the Manchester Phrenological Society.
And it contained the casts of up to 1,000 heads and faces.
Phrenology was a pseudo-science whose followers believed that the shape of someone’s head could be used to predict their mental traits.
Developed by a German physician named Franz Joseph Gall, practitioners would run their fingertips or palms over a patient’s head looking for lumps and bumps.
They’d also take measurements using a tape measure or a tool called a craniometer — a special type of calliper.
Phrenology would come have horrific implications for the study of race, and also criminality, with phrenologists believing they had the power to predict people’s future behaviour.
But when the Manchester Phrenological Society first opened its doors in King Street in 1829, the mood was more macabre than pseudo-scientific.
Its first members bought up an entire collection of heads from Edinburgh’s internationally famous phrenology club.
The collection, considered one of the best in the world, contained no less than 200 heads, masks and and even some real skulls.
In the years that followed, the Mancunian bump feelers added at least 100 more casts using money donated from friends and supporters.
“Several real skulls have also been obtained and some excellent mouldings of the brain,” a Manchester guidebook writer named Benjamin Love wrote.
The keenest practitioner in Manchester was a Swiss-born artist named William Bally, who began to house all the heads in his King Street gallery.
Bally was a strange man.
As a boy he had collected dead animals and kept them in the sun until they rotted away — turning his bedroom into a skeleton museum.
Later in London he became an apprentice to an Italian plaster figure maker before turning to making casts of heads after hearing a talk by an eminent phrenologist named Dr Spurzheim.
He eventually moved to Manchester, where he started making even more casts including sets of miniature heads, which he put on display at his new gallery.
Eventually, his gallery in King Street had up to 1,000 heads, skulls and masks, with some being brought to Manchester by Bally on frequent trips to Europe.
Among them were claimed to be the heads of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Cicero, Voltaire, George III and even Napoleon after a cast of his head was made following his death on St Helena.
The collection in Manchester included heads of an Egyptian mummy, an ancient Briton and Peruvian Incas. Then there were the heads of supposed idiots.
“There are various idiots — five from one family,” Benjamin Love wrote. “But the most singular part of the collection is that of the heads of criminals, principally murderers, most of whom have been executed for their crimes.”
They included the heads of the Scottish body snatchers Burke and Hare, and three Irish highwaymen named Lawrence Curtis and Patrick and Edward Donnelly.
But members of the public could only see them if their visits were approved by members of the society.
Visitors who did get through the doors could examine though, if they wanted, the head of Margaretha Gottfried, who was executed in Germany in 1828 for having poisoned her parents, her first and second husbands and up to eight other people.
“The collection of the skulls of birds, the smaller quadrupeds, reptiles and fishes is very good,” Benjamin Love added about the gallery’s displays.
“And there is also a neat collection of miniature busts.”
Bally spent 15 years living in Manchester and carried out more and more studies on people’s heads.
“He especially directed his attention to the heads of criminals executed for murder or other heinous crimes,” according to the Manchester Courier.
In his old age, Bally offered consultations to people who came to him for advice, which worryingly led to him influencing the path they later took in life.
“His warnings have induced some to abstain from occupying positions they were unequal to, or where temptations were too strong for them,” the Courier said, “while others owe their elevation to the assurances they received from him.”
The Manchester Phrenological Society’s big day came on 3 October 1849.
When a murderer named Gleeson Wilson was executed, their phrenological guru William Bally was the only person allowed to make a cast of his head.
The sheepish queues outside the meeting room in King Street were even longer than usual that night.
To approving gasps, Bally put the murderer’s head on show for the delection of the society’s members. Then he made his assessment of Wilson’s character.
The parts of the killer’s brain that governed combativeness, destructiveness and secretiveness were very large, Bally said.
But other parts indicated that Wilson shared the characteristics of an idiot.
“The result upon the whole is to combine in this person the cunningness of a fox and the violent, savage and ruthless passion of the hyena,” Bally said.
“We cannot help but remark that this case furnishes a striking illustration of the advantages of even the most elementary phrenological society,” one London newspaper reported of this event.
But, thankfully, few people apart from the men behind the door in King Street agreed.
What do you think of this week’s story? It’s a strange one to say the least. I’m going to do a bit more digging into the background of William Bally in the coming week. Please to let me know if you have any thoughts on it in the comments or, if you’re a paid subscriber, in the Manchester History Club chat group.
The History Hotlist
Welcome to your new round up of history-related events taking place around Greater Manchester. I’ll be posting a few events here as they come up.
⚔ Join ex-Horrible Histories historian and chart-topping You’re Dead to Me podcaster Greg Jenner, as he goes back in time to explore Roman Britain at the Lowry on 3 November. Tickets £10/£7.
🚶🏽♂️ Learn about the history of migration to and from the North West in a new exhibition at Manchester Centre Library from 3 October. The Migration Stories Exhibition is taking place during Black History Month and includes an event on 16 October exploring the nature of migrant identity throughout British history.
🌍 An exhibition is opening at the People’s History Museum on 5 October called Exploring the Legacies of Empire: Some Perspectives from the Global South. It’s by Southern Voices, a Manchester based voluntary organisation that was set up because perspectives from the Global South were missing from the UK debate on a range of current and historical issues.
There are lots of other events taking place around the country for October’s Black History Month. More details here.
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What an incredible story!
A fascinating subject Dean. Not one I know much about . The Victorians were a strange lot indeed. I'm sure they'd say the same about us if they could.