(Born: 1814 - Died: about 1891)

American mesmerist, phrenologist, lecturer, showman, and amateur inventor. He was a self-described professor of Mesmerism and Psychography. Among other inventions, he discovered a covering for electic telegraph cables, a new method for crushing quartz, and an improved breech loading canon. He engaged in a considerable amount of experimenting with anethesia and "animal magnetisim."

He was born at St. Helier, Jersey, in England. His partents were Ann Dujardin and Robert Mitchell Collyer. He studied phrenology in Paris under Johann Gaspar Spurzheim. He later attended classes at London University, although he apparently did not graduate. He emigrated to the United States with his parents and siblings on March 21, 1836, leaving from Liverpool and arriving in Philadelphia.

He published several editions of A Manual of Phrenology, or the Physiology of the Human Brain, with the first appearing in 1839. Also Lights and Shadows of American Life, Boston, Brainard & Co. (and New York: Burgess & Stringer), 1844

In 1838, his wife was found to have committed adultery with Captain Marryatt, which resulted in a considerable scandal and the threat of a duel. Although their marriage continued to suffer a number of difficulties, they did not divorce, although he appears to have married a second time in 1845, thus finding himself guilty of bigamy. (One of these marriages was annulled in 1873.) He died in New Orleans, LA.