Tom: you can remove the cooling system thermostat, but only if you restrict the amount of air coming in. In the days before the familiar t'stat appeared, people used radiator muffs to maintain the correct temp. (You still see them on vehicles operating in arctic weather, as on Ice Road Trucks.)
My dad's first car had no thermostat, but it did have a clever roller blind fitted in front of the rad., that looked exactly like the kind you might have in a window. There was a control under the dash that raised or lowered it, but of course it required constant monitoring as it wasn't automatic. My first car (a 1939 Austin) had none either (nor a water pump), but as you could buy the roller blinds from the OEM manufacturer, I fitted one. The side-valve English Ford engines that "powered" the Anglia, Prefect and Popular, right up to the early 60s, had neither thermostat nor water pump, and thus, no heater, and a lot of owners fitted the blind thing. (You could get after-market heaters that involved bolting an external water pump to the cylinder head, with a roller that bore down on the outside of the fan belt, and the necessary wiring, plumbing and hoses. They worked well if you had the blind to keep the coolant at 180).
As early as the 1930s (possibly even earlier), Rolls-Royce had a neat system where a bi-metallc device changed the pitch of the vertical grille bars, so as to close them fully when the engine was cold and progressively open them as the water temperature increased, thus keeping the coolant temp. quite well stabilized.