In order to give us a better understanding of phrenological readings and the contexts in which they took place, let us consider some of the verbal portraits which abound – predictably enough – in George Combe's account of his tour of the north-eastern United States between 1838 and 1840. We will then compare them to the ways in which Douglass and William Wells Brown, travelling in the opposite direction, described the people they met in Britain and Ireland. Attending to the methods of characterisation used by these three writers reveals not only how Douglass and Brown both challenged phrenological conventions, but that they did so very differently.

A mixture of business and pleasure, Combe's ‘phrenological visit’ (as he titled it) involved giving numerous lectures, inspecting a large number of disciplinary institutions such as asylums, prisons and schools, and enjoying more recreational excursions, at which points Combe's narrative often defers to that of his wife Cecilia, whose journal he quotes frequently.

Here, for example, is Dr Samuel B. Woodward, the superintendent of the state lunatic asylum at Worcester, Massachusetts:

Silas Jones, who runs the Asylum for the Blind in New York, ‘has a large head, ample anterior lobe, large Benevolence, and Love of Approbation’. Of the reformer Dr W. E. Channing, he writes: ‘The anterior lobe of his brain is well developed, the lower region predominating; Ideality is prominently conspicuous, and the organs of all the moral sentiments are large.’

What is noteworthy about his narrative is the way it reveals how diverse is Combe's notion of physical appearance. Although his readings give priority to the shape and size of (different parts of) the head, they also frequently take account of tone of voice, facial expressions, posture, gait, gesture, voice and clothing. Of his assessment of Aaron Burr, whom he first describes on the basis of his death mask, he finds confirmation of the former Vice-President's secretive character in a remark in the New York Mirror: ‘He glided rather than walked; his foot had that quiet, stealthy movement which involuntarily makes one think of treachery.’