ABSTRACT
Watson was not a religious person. In grammar school, he had reacted to being ‘drilled with Bibles’ with intense hatred.1 Thus, we might assume that he left the Church of England when he went to Manchester at age 16. Some who left found another church, but he preferred to do without; he found his alternative in phrenology. Phrenology lacked the following and prestige of the Church, but when he joined the movement he believed it ‘to be the greatest blessing ever placed within the grasp of man’.1 2 George Combe agreed; he had also given up on Christianity, but he remained a deist. For Watson, deism was merely a hindrance to progress.
