Death Mask of
John Pallet
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Plaster Phrenological Head of John Pallet, Murderer — O’Neill, Edinburgh, c.1824
I first stumbled upon a curious article back in 2022 — a brief but haunting piece written around 1830, detailing the phrenological cast of a murderer named John Pallet. The idea of capturing a killer’s character in plaster, guided by the now-discredited science of phrenology, intrigued me.
Now, in 2024, after years of searching, I’ve finally tracked down a copy of the actual death mask. Cold, pale, and disturbingly lifelike, it offers a ghostly window into the Victorian obsession with reading morality — or madness — in the contours of the human skull.
Phrenology, popular in the early 19th century, claimed that a person's character and mental faculties could be "read" through the bumps and shape of their skull. Though widely dismissed today as pseudoscience, it captivated Victorian minds and was even used in criminal investigations, often to justify theories about innate criminality.
John Pallet was executed in the 1820s for murder — one of many whose remains were cast in plaster for study by phrenologists like O’Neill of Edinburgh. These morbid relics were meant to offer insight into the "criminal mind," turning killers into specimens and their skulls into scientific curiosities. Whether Pallet's cast reveals anything of his true nature is up for debate — but as an object, it is a stark reminder of the era’s grim fascination with death, science, and the human psyche.
Apparently
the earliest record of a phrenological bust being published in Britain is a work by Luke O'Neil for the Phrenological Society in Edinburgh in 1821 (Kaufman and Basden, p.143, see Sources below). O'Neil was made figure caster to the Society the following year, subject to certain conditions (Matthew Kaufman, Edinburgh Phrenological Society: A History, 2005, p.48). As Luke O'Neil & Son, statuaries at 125 Canongate, artists to the Phrenological Society, Edinburgh, the business produced an 8-page catalogue in 1823 of their collection of casts (National Library of Scotland, Combe 5(3)). In this catalogue they offered to take life and death masks and to model busts. 'Casts of Heads from Nature' include those of various criminals but also of Thomson the poet, the Scottish radical MP Joseph Hume, the juvenile actress Clara Fisher, and William Pitt from a Flaxman bust. Casts of face masks include Brunel, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Oliver Cromwell, Edwards 'an engraver', Benjamin Franklin after Houdon, George III, George IV, Benjamin Robert Haydon, William Herschel, John Hunter, Samuel Johnson, Isaac Newton, William Pitt after death, Alexander Pope, Joshua Reynolds, William Roscoe, William Shakespeare, Laurence Sterne, John Horne Tooke, Toussaint, Voltaire, John Wilkes, David Wilkie and William Wordsworth. Casts of skulls are mainly of criminals and of ethnic types but include King Robert the Bruce and Raphael of Urbino.
The business produced an 8-page catalogue in 1823 of their collection of casts. In this catalogue they offered to take life and death masks and to model busts.
In 1825 the business advertised that it had ‘just published a complete set of Phrenological Busts, Five in number, consisting of the busts of a Gentleman and a Lady, a Boy and a Girl, both about 10 or 12 years of age, and a bust of John Pallet, executed for the murder of James Mumford’. Sets were available at £1, or in a case with a lock and key, for an additional 7s.6d; busts could be obtained separately at 5s each. Again, this set appears in the 1858 catalogue for the Phrenological Museum however it seems to have been lost or damaged.
The Death mask of 21 year old John Pallet, murderer, c.1824
You can still See the marks left by the rope on his neck
A 1835, Catalogue of phrenologyical specimens
A complete set of Phrenological Busts, Five in number, consisting of the busts of a Gentleman and a Lady, a Boy and a Girl, both about 10 or 12 years of age, and a bust of John Pallet, executed for the murder of James Mumford’. this set was available at £1,
Phrenological Journal and Miscellany Vol I December 1823 August 1824#
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