Telling the future and the past through the palm

From fairground palmistry to the science of fingerprinting, historian Alison Bashford explores the secrets, history and psychology of the hand.

Alison was in a London library when she discovered a ginormous palm print of a gorilla, taken two days after it died at London Zoo in the 1930s.

She had no idea whatsoever about why someone had made this mysterious print, or why it had been kept in pristine condition for all these years.

Alison plunged into researching the history of the hand, from fairground palm reading to Jungian analysis.

She was transported into the magical, scientific and pseudo-scientific attitudes to markings on the body.

She encountered Victorian wellness entrepreneurs, how Down Syndrome was first diagnosed in neonates, and celebrity palm readers whose influence reached all the way to former British Prime Minister, William Gladstone.

Further information

Alison's book Decoding The Hand: A History of Science, Medicine, and Magic is published by The University of Chicago Press.

This episode of Conversations was produced by Alice Moldovan. The Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.

To binge even more great episodes of the Conversations podcast with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

This episode explores gypsies, Roma, palm reading, fortune telling, psychology, psychoanalysis, Charlotte Wolff, Carl Jung, Weimar Germany, Nazi Germany, Brahmin, palmistry, cheiromancy, Cheiro, writing a book, university, Hollywood, 1930s Hollywood, celebrity, Down Syndrome, diagnosis, genetics, eugenics, Lionel Penrose, BBC, simian line, occult, Francis Galton, Ellis Family and British Institute for Mental Science.