Observations on the phrenological development of Burke, Hare, and other atrocious murderers : measurements of the heads of the most notorious thieves confined in the Edinburgh Jail and Bridewell ... presenting and extensive series of facts subversive of phrenology / read before the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh by Thomas Stone.

  • Stone, Thomas, M.D.
Date:
1829
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the phrenological development of Burke, Hare, and other atrocious murderers : measurements of the heads of the most notorious thieves confined in the Edinburgh Jail and Bridewell ... presenting and extensive series of facts subversive of phrenology / read before the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh by Thomas Stone. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    and fiendish pleasure in multiplying the number of his atrocities. Throughout his guilty career, he ma- nifested, to a singular extent, all the attributes which are by Phrenologists referred to the supposed organ of Destructiveness, which, so far from possessing any characteristic development, is the very reverse of the condition it should have exhibited, in order to accord with one of the most fundamental propositions of the Phrenological theory. The organ of Benevolence next claims considera- tion ; and surely never did any individual more com- pletely divest himself of all the commonest sympathies of humanity than Burke ? He had indeed so familiar- ized his mind to scenes of murder, and his heart, hard- ened with excess of crime, had become so callous, that he not only viewed with disregard the anguish of the sufferers who were immolated on the infernal altar of his iniquity, but seems coolly, in the midst of his atro- cities, to have reconciled himself to the ignominious fate which he knew awaited him. So frequently had he grappled with the dying—so often had he hurried his victims into the arms of Death,—that he seems for a time to have viewed with indifference the terrors of his countenance. The day before his execution, he stated that, in his soberest moments, he frequently used to reflect that he should one day be hanged, and often accustomed himself to consider how, when the time arrived, he should conduct himself on the scaf- fold. His savage disposition frequently manifested itself, and more than once he beat the woman with whom he cohabited, in so barbarous a manner, that