Gristhorpe man - the reaction of victorians - John Rushton
Every one in 21st century Scarborough is well aware that the refurbished Rotunda Museum displays the Gristhorpe Man, who apparently walked this locality far more than 2100 years ago. He looks his age. He was discovered in 1834 along with an oak coffin and some small finds , when a burial mound was excavated. He was tall and had pretty good teeth. Experts from the University of Bradford have been studying
these remains with all the techniques available to modern science
It is less well known that our Victorian ancestors examined his head, from the viewpoint of a study known as phrenology. This claimed to determine personality traits on the basis of the shape of the skull. The subject enjoyed some popularity, as a parlour game, when you attempted to read the bumps on someone's head. Others took the subject very seriously indeed . The theory is not regarded as having stood the test of time.
A Dr. Elliotson concluded that Gristhorpe man had these characteristics:- He had a fully developed self-esteem. He rated "very large" for combatitiveness, destructiveness, approbativeness, and philoprogenitiveness. Our man was "large" in perseverance, causality, comparison, individuality and wit. He was "full" of the qualities of benevolence, veneration, firmness; "moderate" in secretiveness and acquisitiveness and "small " in constructiveness and imitation. We may never know the truth of all that.
OTHER ARTICLES
• Seabathing in scarborough - an article by John Rushton
• The port of Scarborough in the late 15th Century
• The national RNLI and the Scarborough lifeboat of 1861.
• The early years of the Scarborough Lifeboat
• The Borough of Scarborough formed in the 12th Century
• Scarborough ships in the baltic - an article by John Rushton
• Harwood Brierleys description of Scarborough harbour at the opening of the 20th century
• Coastal erosion in the 19th Century around the North Bay and Scarborough Castle area
• William Cammish - log book of the Aurora - a Scarborough merchant ship
• The 200 year history of scarboroughs RNLI
• Hinderwells account of the first launch of the Scarborough Lifeboat in 1802
• The need for canals in the scarborough area - discussions in the late 1700's
• When the Colliers came to Scarborough
• Thomas Crimlisk - First of the Crimlisks
• Strange customs amongst the Scarborough shipbuilders
• Tunny fishing in Scarborough in the 1930's
• John Parkin. The Scarborough sailmaker turned bailiff. - John Rushton
• The Yorkshire smuggler - the smuggling of contraband
• Log of the German U-Boat which sank eleven Scarborough trawlers in 1916
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