The night that Robert Burns' skull - with hair still attached - was taken from his Scottish crypt

A group of men intent on retrieving the poet’s skull gathered close to the Burns Mausoleum in Dumfries at 7pm one night in late March, 1834. With too many people on the streets of town at that time, they returned at 10pm, and let themselves into the vault with a ladder and a muffled lantern, according to accounts.

Later, John McDiarmid, editor of The Dumfries Courier, walked up into town carrying the skull, which reportedly still had some hair attached, in a linen bag as he sought out a man to make a copy.

McDiarmid was one of a group of men determined to have Burns analysed using the-then fashionable science of phrenology. Now discounted, its followers claimed it could determine a person’s character and intelligence by an examination of the shape of different parts of the skull.

Jean Armour, the wife of Burns, had been horrified at the suggestion her husband’s skull should be removed, not least given he had already been laid to rest twice.

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Burns’s original grave in St Michael’s churchyard, where he was buried following his death in 1796, was deemed unfitting for the bard after several esteemed visitors to Dumfries, including Coleridge and the Wordsworths, reported difficulty in finding it to pay their respects.

Burns was later moved to a grand mausoleum in the graveyard, which was built following a long-running public subscription and completed in 1815 - 19 years after his death.

When the original coffin was opened up before Burns was moved, his head separated from his torso and his body “turned to dust”.

After Jean died in 1834, the opportunity arose to open the crypt again and her brother gave permission for Burns’ skull to be removed.

Judith Hewitt is museums curator with Dumfries and Galloway Council, which holds one of the casts of the poet’s skull at the Robert Burns Centre.

She said: “On the floor of the mausoleum lies a number of iron rings, which are used to lift up the floor and enter the crypt. It has been opened several times, the first when Burns was placed there and the second when Jean Armour was put there following her death in 1834.

“At that point, phrenology was pretty popular and there was real interest in examining Burns’s skull. It was thought when the crypt was opened for Jean Armour, it was a good opportunity to retrieve Burns’s skull.

“Before Jean Armour was buried, the crypt was opened and his skull was removed from his body and his jaw fell off. There were still bits of his hair on the skull.”

It is understood McDiarmid believed he could take a plaster cast of the skull in the crypt, but this proved not to be the case. He then walked up through the town to see plasterer James Fraser at his work in Queensberry Street, where a mould was made and a skull cast.

The replica was then taken to Edinburgh to be examined by George Combe, who worked as a lawyer then brewer and went on to devote his life to the promotion of phrenology, which he described as the “greatest and most important discovery ever communicated to mankind”.

He published widely on the subject and his book ‘The Constitution of Man’ became a bestseller when it was published in 1828.

Following his study of the bard’s skull, Combe then published the Book of Phrenological Development of Robert Burns, which reported the poet’s “strong animal passions and equally powerful moral emotions”.

Ms Hewitt described the book as “a treatise on phrenology using Burns’s skull as an example” and which appeared to follow the early 19th-century narratives surrounding Burns’s character as a “philanderer, the ploughman poet and of a genius”, she said.

Combe wrote: “The skull indicates the combination of strong animal passions, with equally powerful moral emotions. If the natural morality had been less, the endowment of the propensities is sufficient to have constituted a character of the most desperate description.

“The combination, as it exists, bespeaks a mind extremely subject to contending emotions - capable of great good or great evil - and encompassed with vast difficulties in preserving a steady, even, onward course of practical morality.”

Combe found “the elements of the exquisite tenderness and refinement, which Burns so frequently manifested, even when at the worst stage of his career”.

“In the combination of great combativeness, destructiveness and self-esteem, we find the fundamental qualities which inspired ‘Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled’, and similar productions,” the book added.

Dramatic talent and humour could also be detected in the shape of Burns’s skull, Combes wrote.

Ms Hewitt described phrenology as “quack science”, with the conclusions of Combe part of a broader, popular assessment of the poet, which she described as “simplistic” and which often persisted today.

She said: “During the 19th century, this narrative grew up around Burns as the philanderer, the peasant poet, the raw genius and it feels like they were trying to explain all that through phrenology.

“That narrative is based on the first biography of Burns when a lot of him is made of his drinking.

“A lot of people blamed him for his own death through the drinking. But really Burns rode everywhere, he was working three jobs and he had extra marital relations with different women. It wasn’t all that uncommon then - and it is not that uncommon now.

“It is all part of the myth of Robert Burns and it is simplistic. When he was working as an exciseman, that is a very learned, very meticulous job. A skilled job using mathematics.

“He was involved in the Theatre Royal in Dumfries, where he wrote several pieces for performance. He had a a huge number of friends. He lived large and he loved large and made an impact wherever he went.”

At least three replica skulls of Burns are known to exist. One is held at Edinburgh University and another at the Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway.