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The Guardian
16 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Tuesday briefing: The story behind the Edinburgh University ‘skull room' – and a reckoning over its history
Good morning. I'm Phoebe Weston, and I'll be bringing you First Edition alongside Aamna this summer. If there is anything you would like to see covered over the coming weeks, please hit reply and send us your suggestions. Today's newsletter takes you behind a series of locked doors at the University of Edinburgh's Anatomical museum. The 'skull room' is at the end of a long corridor, rarely visited by anyone outside the university – and inside it are mahogany-framed glass cabinets containing appropriately 1,500 human skulls, some with peeling labels and catalogue numbers, others bare. Hundreds of these were shipped to Scotland by supporters of 'phrenology', the belief that you can calculate someone's intelligence and character by looking at the shape of their skull. Spoiler alert: it was all nonsense. But back in the 18th century it carried weight. Generations of Edinburgh alumni dispersed across the British empire with beliefs about racial superiority encapsulated by the collections in this room. These skulls tell a story about the role played by one of the UK's oldest and most respected universities in creating and perpetuating ideas about white superiority from the late 1700s on. That is what prompted the university to commission the most extensive review by any UK university into its connections with transatlantic slavery and empire. For today's newsletter, I spoke to the Guardian's Scotland editor, Severin Carrell, on what has been found in this landmark inquiry and what the university is going to do about it. That's after the headlines. Israel | Two leading human rights organisations based in Israel, B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, say Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and Israel's western allies have a legal and moral duty to stop it. Donald Trump has told Israel to allow 'every ounce of food' into Gaza as he acknowledged for the first time that there is 'real starvation' in the region. Politics | The US president heaped praise on Keir Starmer as the two met in Scotland, but in a domestic intervention that will not have been appreciated by the British PM, Trump urged him to cut taxes and tackle illegal immigration to win the next election. Economy | The French prime minister, François Bayrou, said the EU had capitulated to Donald Trump's threats of ever-increasing tariffs, as he labelled the framework deal struck in Scotland on Sunday as a 'dark day, when an alliance of free peoples, brought together to affirm their common values and to defend their common interests, resigns itself to submission'. Labour | Angela Rayner has hit back at anonymous No 10 officials who have briefed against senior cabinet ministers in recent months, warning them they are committing 'self-harm'. Cost of living | Food prices rose by 4% in July from a year earlier, up from 3.7% in June and above the three-month average of 3.5% according to the latest snapshot from the British Retail Consortium (BRC). The rising cost of staples like meat and butter – which have both increased by over 15% – has been blamed for large retailers struggling to entice shoppers back to the high street. In recent years there had been debate from within the university about its role in slavery. 'Working in Scotland for the Guardian for the past 19 years, I have been watching and following stories about Scotland's entanglements with transatlantic slavery and empire,' says Severin. In 2018 the University of Glasgow became the first UK institution to critically examine its role with transatlantic enslavement. That triggered other institutions – including the Church of England and the National Trust – to look into this issue. The Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 turbocharged these conversations. The Guardian has also done its own investigations into its founders' complicity with the slave trade in the Cotton Capital series. The Edinburgh review, though, is the most extensive investigation of its kind carried out by any university in the UK. The inquiry examined its own academics' conduct at the time, and also did investigations into the university's current demographics and its underrepresentation of Black professors and students. This included having two research fellows spend months going through archives, reading reams of lecture notes from the 1700s. 'Now that is a substantial advance on what other UK universities have done so far,' says Severin. It's likely that other universities might find similar material in their archives, says Severin. 'One of the interesting arguments that's levelled about Edinburgh is that, in its day – in the late 1700s early 1800s – it was one of the most significant and important academic institutions in Europe and possibly the world. The Edinburgh medical school was one of the world's first, so it had a disproportionate impact on the teaching of medicine, and also what the doctors it then taught were doing when they went out to work in the British colonies or immersed themselves in the plantation economies of the Americas.' What do we know about the skulls? The University of Edinburgh skull room was part of the former anatomy museum built in the 1880s (the museum is still there, just smaller). It was open to the public and was where the university could showcase its research. The skulls were obtained through networks linked to the British empire and the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. Many heads were taken without consent from prisons, asylums, hospitals, archaeological sites and battlefields. In the 19th century scientists were intent on classifying the natural world into taxonomic categories. Typically, non-white populations were depicted as inherently inferior (a convenient truth for those promoting colonialism). Some of Edinburgh's most celebrated intellectuals argued that different human races were so distinct that they ought to be considered separate species. Despite the fact that phrenology was never formally taught at Edinburgh (it was criticised by some for its unscientific approach) the skull room was built to house these collections. Modern genetics has since shattered the idea that there are biologically distinct racialised groups – although this piece by Hannah Devlin shows there is a resurgence in interest about theories of racial exceptionalism. Once a source of pride, these heads are now a source of shame to the university. The skull room has been preserved in situ, but 'it's not accessible to the public and is rarely visited by anybody outside the university', explains Severin, who described coming face-to-face with the skulls as 'quite unsettling and sobering'. More than 100 of these skulls have already been repatriated, with plans for many more to be returned. In 2023 the remains of four tribal warriors were returned to Taiwan. Many of the skulls will never be identified and their provenance is likely to remain unknown. 'The university now regards this as a place which needs to be protected and looked after with respect and decorum. It's not a place they want people ogling,' says Severin. What has the inquiry found? The inquiry found that Edinburgh became a 'haven' for professors who developed theories of white supremacy in the 18th and 19th centuries. These individuals played an important role in the creation of discredited 'racial pseudo-sciences' that placed Africans and their descendants at the bottom of a racial hierarchy. Hundreds of graduates went on to make fortunes from the transatlantic slave trade or generally profiting from the empire. They served as doctors on slave ships, administrators, lawyers to enslavers, merchants, plantation owners, or were slavers themselves. The university raised the equivalent of at least £30m today from former students and donors with links to slavery or colonial wealth building, the report found. That £30m can, however, be interpreted in different ways: it can be argued it should be seen as the higher figure of £202m based on the growth of wages since they were received, and as much as £845m based on economic growth since then. The report's authors have said their findings show a darker side to the Scottish Enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries during which time the university became famous for the work of celebrated individuals such as the economist Adam Smith and the philosopher David Hume. Sir Peter Mathieson, the university's principal, who commissioned the investigation, said Edinburgh could not have a 'selective memory'. Severin says: 'It's crucial that we understand our history accurately and are candid about what our country's societies, economies, history has involved in the past, and denying the bad things is not an intelligent way of grappling with our inheritance.' Demands to decolonise the curriculum One of the academics leading the university's inquiry is Tommy J Curry, who is the first Black philosophy professor in the university's 442-year history. The point is not to simply produce a report but to act, he said. Fewer than 1% of its staff and just over 2% of its students are Black, well below the 4% of the UK population, and despite Edinburgh's status as a global institution. The university will set up a new race review implementation group, which will actively support the review's call for Edinburgh to establish a centre for the study of racism, colonialism and anti-Black violence. Reparations are a key part of recommendations. 'Academics argue it's not about cutting a cheque, it's about making substantive change which addresses all of the damage and violations from our past, and making sure that we repair the harms,' says Severin. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion She'd be too modest to recommend it herself, but just before joining First Edition, in her day job as a biodiversity reporter Phoebe Weston put together this stunning feature explaining in excruciating detail what microplastics do to our world, our wildlife … and our bodies. Charlie Lindlar, newsletters deputy editor Nesrine Malik wrote powerfully about children starving in Gaza (illustrated above). 'Every single one of these deaths, and those that will come, is preventable,' she writes. An aid worker overheard children telling their parents that they want to die and go to heaven, because 'at least heaven has food'. Phoebe The EU has 'capitulated' to Trump with its new trade deal, writes academic Paul Taylor in his breakdown. Worse? The 'humiliation' Ursula Von der Leyen and company have put the continent through doesn't even put a permanent end to its economic problems with the US. Charlie Sympathies to Samuel Rowe who returned home from his allotment in Manchester with a trug of vegetables only to be arrested by armed police. Within a canvas sheath he had a Niwaki Hori Hori gardening trowel that aroused particular suspicion. 'That's not a garden tool,' the officer said as he pulled it out. Phoebe Our film team's series on feelgood movies by design yields all sorts of surprising picks, but perhaps few quite so terrifying yet touching as James Cameron's genre-defining Aliens. Emily Steer writes thoughtfully on how the film's body horror and take on motherhood provided a release during 'an IVF crisis'. Charlie Football | Chloe Kelly and Hannah Hampton (pictured above) are expected to be awarded MBEs with England's Lionesses set to be lavished with nominations in the new year honours list after their historic European Championship victory. Cycling | Demi Vollering's hopes of continuing in the Tour de France Femmes were uncertain after she crashed at speed on the approach to the finish of stage three in Angers. Vollering landed on her back and left side, and hit her head, but was able to remount and finish the stage, which was won by Lorena Wiebes of Team SD Worx-ProTime. Cricket | Jamie Overton has returned to England's squad for the final Test against India, which starts at the Oval on Thursday, to provide cover should the seamers who toiled through the drawn fourth fixture fail to recover in time. 'Trump urges Israel to let food aid into Gaza to tackle 'real starvation'' says the Guardian while the i paper has 'You can't fake that starvation: Trump and UK send new Gaza warning to Israel'. The Financial Times leads with 'EU markets reel as bloc's big nation cast doubt on Washington trade deal'. The Mail says 'Trump tells Starmer how to see off Farage' and the Express splashes on 'Trump's 'pretty simple' advice for PM' – that advice being 'Cut tax to beat Farage', the Times shares. Similarly the Telegraph says 'Trump: Cut taxes and stop the boats'. 'It's come home again!' – the Metro continues to celebrate the Euros win. 'For my brother' – the Mirror reports on the posthumous graduation ceremony that awarded honorary degrees to Nottingham stabbing victims Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar. Protests against Zelenskyy as drones torment Ukraine Luke Harding talks to people in Kyiv protesting against the Ukrainian president's recent changes to the country's anti-corruption bodies, and analyses where the war against Russia is heading next A bit of good news to remind you that the world's not all bad Three months ago, the Guardian's Arifa Akbar set out to kick that most modern of vices: her coffee habit. For our series The one change that worked, she writes about how she finally got off it … sort of. 'Three months ago, I decided, emphatically, not to kick the habit but to enjoy a single daily dose,' she writes. 'This was initially born out of necessity: I went to a retreat where we were limited to a single cup of freshly ground coffee a day, at a time of our choosing, and I took great pains over deciding when I'd have mine, and where. Then I savoured it, desperate to make its effects last. 'Strangely, when I got back home, I stuck to that single cup.' Why? Read on for more. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday And finally, the Guardian's puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply
The Guardian
a day ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Edinburgh University's ‘skull room' highlights its complicated history with racist science
Hundreds of skulls are neatly and closely placed, cheekbone to cheekbone, in tall, mahogany-framed glass cabinets. Most carry faded, peeling labels, some bear painted catalogue numbers; one has gold teeth; and the occasional one still carries its skin tissue. This is the University of Edinburgh's 'skull room'. Many were voluntarily donated to the university; others came from executed Scottish murderers; some Indigenous people's skulls were brought to Scotland by military officers on expeditions or conquest missions. Several hundred were collected by supporters of the racist science of phrenology – the discredited belief that skull shape denoted intelligence and character. Among them are the skulls of two brothers who died while studying at Edinburgh. Their names are not recorded in the skull room catalogue, but cross-referencing of matriculation and death records suggests they were George Richards, a 21-year-old medic who died of smallpox in 1832, and his younger brother, Robert Bruce, 18, a divinity scholar who died of typhoid fever in 1833. Exactly how the Richards brothers' skulls came to be separated from their bodies, recorded as interred in the South Leith parish church cemetery, is unknown. But they were almost certainly acquired by the Edinburgh Phrenological Society to study supposed racial difference. Researchers believe their case exemplifies the challenging questions facing the university, which, it has now emerged, played a pivotal role in the creation and perpetuation of racist ideas about white superiority and racial difference from the late 1700s onwards – ideas taught to thousands of Edinburgh students who dispersed across the British empire. University records studied by Dr Simon Buck suggest the brothers were of mixed African and European descent, born in Barbados to George Richards, an Edinburgh-educated doctor who practised medicine on sugar plantations and who owned enslaved people – possibly including George and Robert Bruce's mother. Edinburgh Phrenological Society's 1858 catalogue records the skulls (listed as No 1 and No 2) as having belonged to 'mulatto' students of divinity and medicine. 'It can be assumed that the racialisation of these two individuals as 'mulatto' – a hybrid racial category that both fascinated and bewildered phrenologists – is what aroused interest among members of the society in the skulls of these two students,' Edinburgh's decolonisation report concludes. The brothers' skulls are among the roughly 400 amassed by the society and later absorbed into the anatomical museum's collection, which now contains about 1,500 skulls. These are held in the Skull Room, to which The Guardian was granted rare access. Many of these ancestral remains, the report states, 'were taken, without consent, from prisons, asylums, hospitals, archaeological sites and battlefields', with others 'having been stolen and exported from the British empire's colonies', often gifted by a global network of Edinburgh alumni. 'We can't escape the fact that some of [the skulls] will have been collected with the absolute express purpose of saying, 'This is a person from a specific race, and aren't they inferior to the white man',' said Prof Tom Gillingwater, the chair of anatomy at the University of Edinburgh, who now oversees the anatomical collection. 'We can't get away from that.' The Edinburgh Phrenological Society was founded by George Combe, a lawyer, and his younger brother, Andrew, a doctor, with roughly a third of its early members being physicians. Both were students at the university, and some Edinburgh professors were active members. Through its acquisition of skulls from across the globe, the society played a central role in turning the 'science' of phrenology, which claimed to decode an individual's intellect and moral character from bumps and grooves on the skull, into a tool of racial categorisation that placed the white European man at the top of a supposed hierarchy. George Combe's book, The Constitution of Man, was a 19th-century international bestseller and the Combe Trust (founded with money made from books and lecture tours promoting phrenology) endowed Edinburgh's first professorship in psychology in 1906 and continues to fund annual Combe Trust fellowships in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Phrenology was criticised by some of Edinburgh's medical elite for its unscientific approach. But some of its most vocal critics were nonetheless persuaded that immutable biological differences in intelligence and temperament existed between populations, a study by Dr Ian Stewart for the university's decolonisation report reveals. These included Alexander Monro III, an anatomy professor at the University of Edinburgh medical school, who lectured 'that the Negro skull, and consequently the brain, is smaller than that of the European', and Robert Jameson, a regius professor of natural history, whose lectures at the university in the 1810s included a hierarchical racial diagram of brain size and intelligence. Despite the fact that phrenology was never formally taught at Edinburgh, and its accuracy was heavily contested by Edinburgh academics, the skull room, which is closed to the public, was built partly to house its collection by the then professor of anatomy Sir William Turner, when he helped oversee the construction of its new medical school in the 1880s. Among its reparatory justice recommendations of Edinburgh's investigation is that the university provide more support for the repatriation of ancestral remains to their original communities. This, Gillingwater suggested, possibly underplays the complexities involved – even for cases such as the Richards brothers. He regards the circumstantial evidence in their case as 'strong' but says it does not meet the forensic threshold required for conclusive identification. 'From a legal perspective, it wouldn't be watertight,' said Gillingwater. 'I would never dream of returning remains to a family when I didn't know who they definitely were.' Active engagement surrounding repatriation is taking place in relation to several of the skulls from the phrenology collection; more than 100 have already been repatriated to their places of origin. But each case takes time building trust with communities and in some cases navigating geopolitical tensions over which descendent community has the strongest claim to the remains. 'To look at perhaps repatriation, burials, or whatever, it's literally years of work almost for each individual case,' said Gillingwater. 'And what I found is that every individual culture you deal with wants things done completely differently.' Many of the skulls will never be identified and their provenance is likely to remain unknown. 'That is something that keeps me awake at night,' said Gillingwater. 'For some of our skulls, I know that whatever we do, we're never going to end up with an answer.' 'All I can offer at the minute is that we just continue to care for them,' he added. 'They've been with us, many of them, for a couple of hundred years. So we can look after them. We can care for them. We can treat them with that dignity and respect they all deserve individually.'
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Edinburgh University's ‘skull room' highlights its complicated history with racist science
Hundreds of skulls are neatly and closely placed, cheekbone to cheekbone, in tall, mahogany-framed glass cabinets. Most carry faded, peeling labels, some bear painted catalogue numbers; one has gold teeth; and the occasional one still carries its skin tissue. This is the University of Edinburgh's 'skull room'. Many were voluntarily donated to the university; others came from executed Scottish murderers; some Indigenous people's skulls were brought to Scotland by military officers on expeditions or conquest missions. Several hundred were collected by supporters of the racist science of phrenology – the discredited belief that skull shape denoted intelligence and character. Among them are the skulls of two brothers who died while studying at Edinburgh. Their names are not recorded in the skull room catalogue, but cross-referencing of matriculation and death records suggests they were George Richards, a 21-year-old medic who died of smallpox in 1832, and his younger brother, Robert Bruce, 18, a divinity scholar who died of typhoid fever in 1833. Exactly how the Richards brothers' skulls came to be separated from their bodies, recorded as interned in the South Leith parish church cemetery, is unknown. But they were almost certainly acquired by the Edinburgh Phrenological Society to study supposed racial difference. Researchers believe their case exemplifies the challenging questions facing the university, which, it has now emerged, played a pivotal role in the creation and perpetuation of racist ideas about white superiority and racial difference from the late 1700s onwards – ideas taught to thousands of Edinburgh students who dispersed across the British empire. University records studied by Dr Simon Buck suggest the brothers were of mixed African and European descent, born in Barbados to George Richards, an Edinburgh-educated doctor who practised medicine on sugar plantations and who owned enslaved people – possibly including George and Robert Bruce's mother. Edinburgh Phrenological Society's 1858 catalogue records the skulls (listed as No 1 and No 2) as having belonged to 'mulatto' students of divinity and medicine. 'It can be assumed that the racialisation of these two individuals as 'mulatto' – a hybrid racial category that both fascinated and bewildered phrenologists – is what aroused interest among members of the society in the skulls of these two students,' Edinburgh's decolonisation report concludes. The brothers' skulls are among the roughly 400 amassed by the society and later absorbed into the anatomical museum's collection, which now contains about 1,500 skulls. These are held in the Skull Room, to which The Guardian was granted rare access. Many of these ancestral remains, the report states, 'were taken, without consent, from prisons, asylums, hospitals, archaeological sites and battlefields', with others 'having been stolen and exported from the British empire's colonies', often gifted by a global network of Edinburgh alumni. 'We can't escape the fact that some of [the skulls] will have been collected with the absolute express purpose of saying, 'This is a person from a specific race, and aren't they inferior to the white man',' said Prof Tom Gillingwater, the chair of anatomy at the University of Edinburgh, who now oversees the anatomical collection. 'We can't get away from that.' The Edinburgh Phrenological Society was founded by George Combe, a lawyer, and his younger brother, Andrew, a doctor, with roughly a third of its early members being physicians. Both were students at the university, and some Edinburgh professors were active members. Through its acquisition of skulls from across the globe, the society played a central role in turning the 'science' of phrenology, which claimed to decode an individual's intellect and moral character from bumps and grooves on the skull, into a tool of racial categorisation that placed the white European man at the top of a supposed hierarchy. George Combe's book, The Constitution of Man, was a 19th-century international bestseller and the Combe Trust (founded with money made from books and lecture tours promoting phrenology) endowed Edinburgh's first professorship in psychology in 1906 and continues to fund annual Combe Trust fellowships in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Phrenology was criticised by some of Edinburgh's medical elite for its unscientific approach. But some of its most vocal critics were nonetheless persuaded that immutable biological differences in intelligence and temperament existed between populations, a study by Dr Ian Stewart for the university's decolonisation report reveals. These included Alexander Monro III, an anatomy professor at the University of Edinburgh medical school, who lectured 'that the Negro skull, and consequently the brain, is smaller than that of the European', and Robert Jameson, a regius professor of natural history, whose lectures at the university in the 1810s included a hierarchical racial diagram of brain size and intelligence. Despite the fact that phrenology was never formally taught at Edinburgh, and its accuracy was heavily contested by Edinburgh academics, the skull room, which is closed to the public, was built partly to house its collection by the then professor of anatomy Sir William Turner, when he helped oversee the construction of its new medical school in the 1880s. Among its reparatory justice recommendations of Edinburgh's investigation is that the university provide more support for the repatriation of ancestral remains to their original communities. This, Gillingwater suggested, possibly underplays the complexities involved – even for cases such as the Richards brothers. He regards the circumstantial evidence in their case as 'strong' but says it does not meet the forensic threshold required for conclusive identification. 'From a legal perspective, it wouldn't be watertight,' said Gillingwater. 'I would never dream of returning remains to a family when I didn't know who they definitely were.' Active engagement surrounding repatriation is taking place in relation to several of the skulls from the phrenology collection; more than 100 have already been repatriated to their places of origin. But each case takes time building trust with communities and in some cases navigating geopolitical tensions over which descendent community has the strongest claim to the remains. 'To look at perhaps repatriation, burials, or whatever, it's literally years of work almost for each individual case,' said Gillingwater. 'And what I found is that every individual culture you deal with wants things done completely differently.' Many of the skulls will never be identified and their provenance is likely to remain unknown. 'That is something that keeps me awake at night,' said Gillingwater. 'For some of our skulls, I know that whatever we do, we're never going to end up with an answer.' 'All I can offer at the minute is that we just continue to care for them,' he added. 'They've been with us, many of them, for a couple of hundred years. So we can look after them. We can care for them. We can treat them with that dignity and respect they all deserve individually.'
