James Hunt (1833 – 29 August 1869) was an anthropologist and speech therapist in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, England, during this middle of the nineteenth century. His clients included
Charles Kingsley,
Leo Tennyson (son of the poet laureate
Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...
), and
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequ ...
(Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) author of ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland''.
Lewis Carroll was a children’s author, mathematician, and clergyman. He had a stammer that was said to have affected his job. The 1861 census shows that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was staying at Ore House in 1861 and being treated by Dr. Hunt a
psellismolligist. Since his book was published in 1865 it is quite possible that some of it was written during his stay.
His other main interest was in anthropology and in 1863 he established the
Anthropological Society of London
The Anthropological Society of London (ASL) was a short-lived organisation of the 1860s whose founders aimed to furnish scientific evidence for white supremacy which they construed in terms of polygenism. It was founded in 1863 by Richard Francis ...
, which after his death merged with the more established
Ethnological Society of London
The Ethnological Society of London (ESL) was a learned society founded in 1843 as an offshoot of the Aborigines' Protection Society (APS). The meaning of ethnology as a discipline was not then fixed: approaches and attitudes to it changed over its ...
to become the
Royal Anthropological Institute.
Career
James Hunt was born in Swanage, Dorset, the son of the speech therapist
Thomas Hunt (1802–1851) and his wife Mary. He was trained by his father in the art of curing stuttering by means of breath exercises, muscle control and building the patient's confidence. He bought a doctorate from the
University of Giessen
University of Giessen, official name Justus Liebig University Giessen (german: Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), is a large public research university in Giessen, Hesse, Germany. It is named after its most famous faculty member, Justus von ...
in
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
and set up a practice in 1856 in
Regent Street,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
. He dedicated his first ''Manual'' on the subject to
Charles Kingsley who spent three weeks with him in 1859. He moved to
Hastings
Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England,
east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west ...
where ran residential courses during the summer season with his sister Elizabeth's husband, Rev. Henry F. Rivers.
Anthropology
In 1854 he joined the
Ethnological Society of London
The Ethnological Society of London (ESL) was a learned society founded in 1843 as an offshoot of the Aborigines' Protection Society (APS). The meaning of ethnology as a discipline was not then fixed: approaches and attitudes to it changed over its ...
because of his interest in racial differences and from 1859 to 1862 was the honorary secretary. However many members of this society disliked his attacks on humanitarian and missionary societies and the anti-slavery movement. So in 1863 with the help of the explorer
Richard Burton
Richard Burton (; born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr.; 10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor. Noted for his baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s, and he gave a memorable pe ...
he set up the
Anthropological Society of London
The Anthropological Society of London (ASL) was a short-lived organisation of the 1860s whose founders aimed to furnish scientific evidence for white supremacy which they construed in terms of polygenism. It was founded in 1863 by Richard Francis ...
, becoming its first president. His paper ''The Negro's place in nature'' was greeted with boos and hisses when given at the
British Association
The British Science Association (BSA) is a charity and learned society founded in 1831 to aid in the promotion and development of science. Until 2009 it was known as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA). The current Chie ...
meeting in 1863 because of its defense of slavery in the
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States or the Confederacy was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confeder ...
and belief in the
plurality of the human species
Polygenism is a theory of human origins which posits the view that the human races are of different origins (''polygenesis''). This view is opposite to the idea of monogenism, which posits a single origin of humanity. Modern scientific views no ...
.
He established the ''Anthropological Review'' as the organ of the society and by 1867 the membership of the Society had reached 500. However, by 1867 allegations by one of the members
Hyde Clarke
Henry Harcourt Hyde Clarke, known as Hyde Clarke, (14 December 1815 – 1 March 1895) was an English engineer, philologist and author.
The son of Henry and Susannah Clarke, he was born at Little Bell Alley, Barbican in London. He edited the ''R ...
of financial irregularities in his running of the society caused his temporary resignation as president, though he returned in 1868 when Clarke was expelled. This took a toll on his health and in 1869 he died of an inflammation of the brain. The society shortly afterwards started discussions to merge with the Ethnological Society.
He left a widow, Henrietta, and five children and left his books to his nephew
W.H.R. Rivers who refused them, though, through unconnected means, he later became an anthropologist himself.
Publications
* ''Manual of the Philosophy of Voice and Speech'', 1859
* ''Stammering and Stuttering, their nature and treatment'', London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1861.
* "The Negro's Place in Nature" (1863), ''Memoirs read before the Anthropological Society of London'', 1865.
Further reading
Efram Sera-Shriar, ‘Observing Human Difference: James Hunt, Thomas Huxley, and Competing Disciplinary Strategies in the 1860s’, Annals of Science, 70 (2013), 461-491
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hunt, James
1833 births
1869 deaths
Speech and language pathologists
British anthropologists
Fellows of the Ethnological Society of London
White supremacists