The Galton Laboratory, University College London

Abstract

Francis Galton opened his first Anthropometric Laboratory at the International Health Exhibition of 1884. Here people were measured at a charge of 3d each and given a copy of their measurements, while the schedule was kept for his records. According to a contemporary newspaper cutting, nearly 10 000 people were measured; we still have some of these records in the department. In 1888 he set up a more permanent laboratory, also called the Anthropometric Laboratory, built at his own expense on land given by the commissioners of the 1851 exhibition and reached through the Western Exhibition Galleries at the Science Museum in South Kensington. Later the land became the property of the Imperial Institute who wanted it for building; the museum then offered him space in their own building, where the second Anthropometric Laboratory opened in 1891.