Phrenology Research Environment


COMBE, George (1788-1858)

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Metadata

Born: 1788

Died: 1858


Editorial Description

leading popularizer of phrenology in Britain; author of the controversial and best selling Constitution of Man; born in Edin, brother of Andrew COMBE and Abram Combe (an advocate of Owenite socialism); qualified as a Writer to the Signet (lawyer), but increasingly devoted himself to writing; involved with the Br Assn, but opposed its exclusiveness and its exclusion of phrenology; attracted to phrenology after hearing SPURZHEIM lecture in Edin; promoter, leading contributor to, and sometime proprietor of the PHREN J; founding member of the EDIN PHREN SOC, 1820; between 1822 and 1840 lectured in Edin, Glasgow, Birmingham, Bath, Newcastle, Aberdeen, and in US and Germany; first began teaching and lecturing on phrenology in Edin in May 1822; first lectured to working-class audiences in 1832; left money for a George Combe Trust, a part of which was used to fund the George Combe labs in Edin in 1907. (DNB; Gibbon, Life, 1878. For other biographical and obituary notices,


Works as Listed by Roger Cooter (1989)


Editorial Information

Identifier 238.
Type Person
Source Roger Cooter, Phrenology in the British Isles (1989)
PDF page 73
Printed page 68
Database ID 664

Original Transcription
238. COMBE, George (1788-1858), leading popularizer of phrenology
in Britain; author of the controversial and best selling Constitution
of Man; born in Edin, brother of Andrew COMBE and Abram Combe
(an advocate of Owenite socialism); qualified as a Writer to the Signet (lawyer), but increasingly devoted himself to writing; involved
with the Br Assn, but opposed its exclusiveness and its exclusion
of phrenology; attracted to phrenology after hearing SPURZHEIM
lecture in Edin; promoter, leading contributor to, and sometime proprietor of the PHREN J; founding member of the EDIN PHREN SOC,
1820; between 1822 and 1840 lectured in Edin, Glasgow, Birmingham,
Bath, Newcastle, Aberdeen, and in US and Germany; first began
teaching and lecturing on phrenology in Edin in May 1822; first lectured to working-class audiences in 1832; left money for a George
Combe Trust, a part of which was used to fund the George Combe
labs in Edin in 1907. (DNB; Gibbon, Life, 1878. For other biographical and obituary notices,