Victorian Manchester’s Strangest Museum Rediscovered

What happened to William Bally's collection of 1,000 heads from his secretive phrenology museum in Manchester's King Street

A collection of 60 of William Bally’s miniature heads which have survived since the 1830s. (Photo courtesy The Science Museum.)

Saturday’s Manchester History Club newsletter explored the strange story of William Bally’s collection of 1,000 heads.

His secretive phrenology museum contained copies of the heads of Shakespeare, Napoleon and a number of Mancunian murderers.

If you like a gruesome tale, you can read that story again here:

Mr Bally's Heads

Since writing it, I’ve been doing some more digging into the mysterious Mr Bally to find the location of his museum — and have uncovered an even stranger story about what he did with the head of one of Manchester’s most prominent scientists, John Dalton.