Illustrated Talk: James Cowles Prichard of the Red Lodge

Author Margaret Crump will introduce us to James Cowles Prichard, the subject of her biography James Cowles Prichard of the Red Lodge: A Life of Science during the Age of Improvement, to be published in June this year.

Young Dr Prichard, fresh from university, settled in wartime Bristol in 1810. He found the city sadly lacking in opportunities to pursue what he most loved: science and scholarship. He spent the next 35 years trying to put that right, helping to found the Bristol Institution and the liberal Bristol College and forging links with national scientific societies.

When not dosing, bleeding and purging his affluent and charity patients alike and attending meetings of the Bear’s Cub Club, he found the time to produce ground-breaking textbooks on anthropology, psychiatry and Celtic linguistics. Prichard, founder of British anthropology and the nation’s premier psychiatric theorist, is also considered the greatest anti-racist scientific writer of the 19th century.

There will also be complimentary tea, coffee, and homemade cakes.