William Bally

By the 1840s, phrenological exhibitions were being held at the Manchester Mechanics' Institute, attracting over 100,000 visitors and comprising thousands of casts, busts and masks.

[2][a] In 1841, Bally, who at least sometimes used a pantograph to create his work,[2] made casts of inscriptions on Manx crosses, and later sold them to the antiquarian Henry Dryden.

[7] In July 1849, after returning from a trip to the continent,[b] Bally was advertising his services as a phrenologist with rooms at 54 King Street, Manchester, where he was charging five shillings for a consultation and rather less for attending to more than two people from the same family.

[11] An 1851 article in The Times suggested that the coloured waxes that he used for modelling contained toxic materials and that these were the cause of ulceration in his throat and paralysis in his hands and arms; he was periodically "completely paralysed".

[16] Continued poor health meant that the funds raised by his supporters in 1850 had largely sustained Bally thereafter, being paid to him in instalments of no more than 30 shillings per week.

[17] Bally died in Manchester on 8 November 1858 and was buried with his wife a week later in a tomb at St Wilfrid's Roman Catholic Chapel in Hulme, where he had worshipped.

[18] Bally had amassed a collection of about 1000 phrenological busts but most of it had been bought from him during his lifetime with the intention that it would be put on display in a museum that, at the time of his death, had not been built.