The skulls of two students of African descent in the University of Edinburgh’s Anatomical Museum

This article investigates the identities of two students of African descent whose skulls, having first been acquired by the Phrenological Society of Edinburgh sometime in the mid-nineteenth century, today reside in the University of Edinburgh's Anatomical Museum. Examining archival records in Edinburgh and the Caribbean, it proposes a possible identification of the individuals as Robert Bruce Richards and George Richards, two brothers of mixed European and African descent from Barbados who appear to have studied at the University of Edinburgh in the early 1830s and died during their time there. The article explains the rationale for this possible identification, while also acknowledging and explaining evidential gaps and inconsistencies. It provides information on the Richards' background in Barbados and their deaths in Edinburgh and speculates how and why the students' skulls might have been acquired by Edinburgh's Phrenological Society (whose collection of human remains later entered the University's Anatomical Museum). Finally, the article reflects on the significance and methodological and ethical complexities of this case, situating the research in the context of calls for decolonisation, reparative justice and the repatriation of colonially derived ancestral remains in the Anatomical Museum's contested 'collection'.