Passed by hundreds of students everyday
sitting in a box at the end of a hallway in a university building in London
is the corpse of one of the most important philosophers in modern history
Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher
he is considered the father of utilitarianism
the notion that you want to do the most good for the largest number of people
he was also a man well ahead of his time
while women were still being persecuted for witchcraft in other parts of Europe
Jeremy Bentham was espousing things like
gay rights, the end of slavery, the end of child labor, animal rights
he was a guy who was forward thinking
and when it came time for his death
he didn’t want to be buried
he wanted to be made into an “Auto-Icon"
Jeremy Bentham wrote his will when he was twenty one
and he already knew what he wanted to happen when he died
his body was given to his friend to dissect
so that he might learn something from it
Bentham also wanted to be made into a corpse
that he thought maybe his friends would come and visit
that could be taken out at parties
and he did this for a number of reasons
One, he didn’t have a real high view of the church
and in some ways this was a way of kind of thumbing his nose
at the religious traditions
Second, as a utilitarian he genuinely thought
what is the most value that my dead body could possibly have
and, finally he was just funny
he was just a funny guy, who probably thought that this was hilarious
these are the reasons he decided he wanted himself made into an “Auto-Icon"
In fact he used to carry around a set of glass eyes
that he wanted put into his Auto-Icon
and he would bring them to parties and he would pull them out
and sort of use them as a conversation piece
and as a way of shocking some of the more proper people at the party
the same friend who dissected him
also did the mummification of his head
he did so using a Maori style of mummification
that involves sort of stretching and heating
and I think using hot sulfur
but it looked pretty bad
with sunken cheeks and the skin is sort of tight over the skull
it’s not a super great look
of course, they still dutifully popped those glass eyes in there
Here’s the solution. We are going to have a beautiful wax head made for him
it’s going to look just like him
it’s going to be nice and fleshy faced like he was in life
for a long time he sat there. Serene.
wax head. Real head down beneath his feet
ghoulishly looking out with these bright glass eyes
However, in the 1970s some students managed to just extract the head, the real head
which they then ransomed to the college
asking for a hundred pounds given to a charity
the university said we’ll give 10 pounds to the charity
and the students dutifully returned the head.
After this prank, they decided to keep it somewhere safer than between the feet of Bentham
so it is now in a Victorian bell jar
in a box
that takes four keys and two people to open
and no one is going to open it for you.
That said Bentham’s Auto-Icon, it does get around.
It was taken out for the 150th anniversary of the college
and he recently attended the retirement of a particularly long serving provost
and when they had to take him to a conservator in another part of London
they just put him in a car
they just drove him there in the passenger seat
Weekend at Bernie's style
There are some other stories of pranks that have happened
One of the most famous is that his head was stolen and used in a football game
This is a total myth
For no other reason than basically that his real head could never have survived
Some students did steal the wax head in the 90s
and take some pictures of themselves hanging out with it
As a utilitarian, I think Bentham asked himself
“What good can my corpse do?"
and having had it dissected, having had it appear at various functions
having it serve as just an amusing backdrop for the students of University College London
I think you can’t get a whole lot more utility
out of a dead body, than that.
Bentham!
So there is a particularly weird twitter stream
related to Jeremy Bentham, you should follow
there is a little camera hooked up, which takes a picture every hour or so
and sends a stream of basically what Jeremy Bentham sees
it’s like the Jeremy Bentham Cam
It is strangely hypnotic, and I highly suggest you follow @panopticonstream
and you know, see through the eyes of Bentham himself