Wellcome Library: Item of the Month: 'Business Head of the Future'

Recently re-discovered in a corner of the storage rooms was a modest, thin volume that revealed the economic hope of the future in earlier times, when faith was placed in one man. It was none other than David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer who became Prime Minister. But on what basis did the author have such confidence in him? It was quite simply that he had a large head which bulged in the right places. If I tell you that it was written by Brighton's brightest Phrenologist, J Millott Severn, this might help explain why it came to be and why the shape of the Chancellor's skull was significant. The enterprising 'bump reader' had measured Lloyd George's head some ten years earlier and concluded that the it had physically grown, reflecting the internal growth of his remarkable mental powers. Shrewdly, Severn was making the most of his celebrity clients to bolster his own reputation