ASTROLOGY AND BUMPOLOGY
It was a co-worker of mine, Joseph Hopkinson (“Joe Hobble”), a warpdresser, of Haworth, who introduced me to Jack Kay and Harry Mac, two fortune tellers who were in Haworth. Harry Mac had a book with which he told fortunes, and this book, which was an English translation of a Greek work on astrology, Joe Hopkinson borrowed for me. I perused the book in the hope of one day being able to do a little fortune telling. Harry Mac and Jack Kay had done very well out of the book, and their knowledge of it; but my object in learning to presage events, was not as a means of livelihood, but in order to appease my appetite for a bit of fun. It was while I was “reading, learning, and inwardly digesting” the contents of the book that Professor Fowler, the well-known phrenologist, came to Keighley and gave lectures on the science of bumps, or phrenology, in the old Mechanics’ Hall—now the Yorkshire Penny Bank. I attended one of those lectures in company with Morgan Kennedy, a Keighley man, who afterwards became a professional phrenologist. When the time came for practical demonstrations the audience called out for me to go on the platform. I complied, and the Professor set himself to “feel my bumps.” In the first place he told the audience that “this was one of the few heads that he had had the opportunity of examining,” which, of itself, was neither very favourable, nor very unfavourable. But there was suppressed tittering among the audience when he continued, “I have been on the Continent, and have examined the heads of Louis Napoleon, Victor Hugo, Garibaldi, and Louis Kossuth. This head, I may venture to say, rather touches upon those.” I felt that the Professor had got out of his reckoning in making these comparisons; for although I had done a little soldiering, and was a poet in my own rough way, I knew that I had no claim whatever to be a governor, seeing that I had never been able to govern myself. However, I got through the ordeal. The result of my visit to Professor Fowler was that I combined the study of bumpology with that of astrology, and I got on very well, and had some nice quiet fun, with telling people—mostly servant girls in public-houses—their fortunes, and describing their bumps. Many people, I know, really thought I was a “nap-hand” in the work. One incident I remember well. A young man of the name of Tom Smith, a warpdresser, one night came to ask me to rule the planets and tell him whether he and his wife would ever live together again. I told my visitor that I could do nothing for him that night, but if he would call the following evening I should then be prepared to “invoke the infernal regions.” He was at my house the next night, and asked me whether “ahr Emma” would ever live with him again. I said “Well, Tom, the first thing you will have to do is to go upstairs blindfolded.” I placed a bandage over his eyes, and sent him upstairs, having told him to walk quietly across the middle of the chamber floor. I had suspended the beam of a warp-dressing frame from the ceiling. Tom walked against this beam, which swung back upon him, and, apparently, greatly frightened him, for of all the screaming I ever heard, it took place that night in that chamber. Tom was blindfolded, and, in addition to that, the room was in darkness; and when he was able to pick his way out of the “chamber of horrors,” he beat a hasty retreat from the house. This is a sample of the fun I had during my experiences as a humble advocate (?) of the “art of professing to reveal future events in the life of another.”