Racist lithograph print 'A black lecture on phrenology / No. 1 To be Continued' from Follitt's Black Lectures. Published by 'John Follit [sic], importer of French prints to the trade, 22 St Martin's Court, St Martin's Lane', 1830-1869. The title above the lithograph image of a smartly dressed, caricatured black man standing behind a desk with arms bent holding two phrenology heads, one white to the left, one black to the right. Further phrenology heads behind. The letterpress text below purports to be the text of the lecture, using language and style that mocks perceived black ways of speaking.

This is one of four offensive caricatures that use ethnicity as the context for ridiculing contemporary pseudo-science. By making the lecturer black and using racist language and style in the accompanying ‘lecture’ text, the series attacks the fashion for scientific lectures and the subjects being presented. They play on attributes then stereotypically seen as being inherent to the black population, including drunkenness, dirt, thieving, lechery and lack of education. This lecture focuses on phrenology, a science built on examining the shape of a person’s skull to determine their physical attributes. Even at the time, many people questioned whether this was a science. The method was used to argue for certain types of people being inferior, which the text implies to be the case for black people as opposed to white. The kind of racial discrimination shown in this print would have been experienced by the West Indian lecturer W. D. Maxwell when he travelled to London to deliver a series of phrenology lectures in the 1860s.