I’m starting to think that another reason is that I don’t think writing a blog entry, an article, a book or a museum label is the same thing as having a meaningful dialogue about a complicated subject. Part of the reason for this is that it’s one of two collections I work with and I don’t want to blunder in on such a difficult subject until I’ve been able to research it to an appropriate level. I haven’t written nearly as much as I would have liked to about the Galton Collection in the time I’ve worked with it. There is no shortage of hats (up until the 1960s), but they change colour depending on how the scene is lit. I try to explain how history is not like a Western you can’t tell who the bad guy is by the colour hat they are wearing. But I don’t think I would be doing my job properly if I didn’t also tell them about how his work in statistics, meteorology and crime science, along with how some of his ideas and inventions have had a huge influence on the way we live today. On the rare occasion that a class comes to the Galton Collection and don’t know that he is the propounder of eugenics, I make sure they know it before they leave.

I am fully aware of the effects and implications of his work, and I find his racism disgusting. I do this in classes for departments across UCL, including History, Anthroplogy, The Jill Dando Institute for Crime Science, Science and Technology Studies and Information Studies. Francis Galton (1822 – 1911) British scientist, statistician and eugenicist.Īs Curator of the Galton Collection, I’ll admit that when I first heard that Galton had been name-checked in these discussions, my first response was “Oh, God, they’re going to want to burn the collection.” (Some Museum Studies degrees can include up to a whole module on ‘Curatorial Paranoia’.)įor the last three years I have attempted to talk about Galton and his work in a balanced way.

Galton statistics