Deville, the Phrenologist
In 1817 a Mr. Deville, a lamp-manufacturer of London, was a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He had been originally a pot-boy, then a journeyman plasterer, and afterwards kept a shop for the sale of plaster figures, which he cast. He had risen to a respectable position simply by the force of his natural powers. Mr. Bryan Donkin, a civil engineer, was an early auditor of Gall at Vienna, and subsequently a friend of Spurzheim. He was also, like Mr. Deville, a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers; and when, in 1817, he with others determined to make a collection of casts as records of phrenological facts, Mr. Deville was applied to for his assistance, which he rendered as a matter of business for three or four years. In 1821 he became interested in phrenology, and began to form a collection of casts on his own account. Already, in 1826, Spurzheim said it was finer than any he had seen elsewhere. At Mr. Deville’s death, in 1846, this collection consisted of about 5450 pieces; of these 3000 were crania of animals, and the remainder (2450) illustrations of human phrenology. There were 200 human crania, and 300 casts of crania; amongst the latter, those which Baron Cuvier permitted Mr. Deville to take from all the authenticated human skulls in the Museum of Comparative Anatomy of Paris. Mr. Deville was a practical observer, and possessed the large number of 1500 casts of heads taken by himself from persons while living. Amongst these were 50 casts of persons remarkably devoted to religion: 40 of distinguished painters, sculptors, architects, &c.; 30 of eminent navigators and travellers; 80 of poets, authors, and writers; 70 of musicians, amateurs, and composers of music; 25 of pugilists; 150 of criminals; 120 pathological casts illustrative of insanity, &c. Perhaps the most interesting of all are 170 casts which illustrate the changes caused in the cranial conformation of from 60 to 70 individuals by age, special devotion to one pursuit, and the like. Mr. Deville’s account of some of these has been published.