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>> When a prospective student visits UCL, they are brought
to see Jeremy Bentham who sits in his box very serenely
in the South Cloisters of the college.
They are told three facts about Bentham.
First, Bentham was the founder of UCL; second, he left his body
to the college; and third, his head was used as a football
and so, it's no longer fit to be put on display.
But who was Jeremy Bentham?
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>> Bentham was born in 1748 in London.
He lived to the ripe old age of 84.
He died in 1832 just as the Great Reform Act was passing.
Bentham was the founder of the modern doctrine
of utilitarianism, that the greatest happiness
of the greatest number was the right and proper end of action.
Happiness was cashed out in terms of pains and pleasures
and so, when you start to add up the amount of pleasure
which a person is experiencing and offset
that against the pain, you come to the modern doctrine
of cost benefit analysis which so dominates economics.
Bentham's also been extremely influential in legal thought,
for instance in his theory of evidence, in his views
on codification, and in his general philosophy of law.
Bentham developed a systematic theory of punishment
which stressed deterrence
and rehabilitation rather than revenge.
In politics, he was the first advocate
from a utilitarian prospective of equality.
He even advocated women's suffrage as early as 1789.
And later life
in his magisterial Constitutional Code he developed
a blueprint for representative democracy with the stress
on openness and publicity in government.
And perhaps most well-known
of all is the panopticon prison scheme.
This Bentham developed with his brother Samuel Bentham,
a famous naval architect, whereby, the governor
in the centre of the prison could monitor all the activities
of the inmates and this could be transferred
to other institutions
where central inspection was necessary.
These were some
of the extraordinary achievements of Jeremy Bentham.
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>> That Bentham was the founder of UCL seemed to be confirmed
by this imposing painting which is located under the dome
of the Wilkins building
which was once the main entrance to the college.
The painting was executed by William Tonks,
the Slade professor in 1922.
It's entitled, the Founders of University College.
Kneeling on the right is the architect, William Wilkins.
Next to him is Thomas Campbell,
the poet who first formally proposed the establishment
of the university.
On the other side is Henry Brougham,
the future Lord Chancellor and one of the main movers
in the foundation of the college
and the diarist Henry Crabb Robinson.
They're all looking on anxiously
as Bentham approves the plans for the college.
I think it would have been a great disappointment to them
if he had disapproved given
that this is we can see the background that the portico
of the college is already constructed.
Well, I'm afraid that scene is imagined.
Bentham never met the architect and he never,
as far as we know came to visit the college.
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>> Did Bentham donate his body to UCL?
Well, I'm afraid that is a myth as well.
Thomas Southwood Smith,
the surgeon who created the Auto-icon actually had the
Auto-icon living in his house for many years.
It was only in March 1850 when Southwood Smith moved
to a smaller house and decided he no longer had room
for his non-paying lodger
that he gave the Auto-icon to the college.
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>> Now, what about the claim
that Bentham's head was used as a football.
I think this is the least plausible of the claims.
The head would not have bounced very well,
but at least we can investigate it
by taking a look at the head itself.
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>> There's a myth that students borrowed the head
for football practice in the front quad.
I think if you look at it with all its tiny hairs
that seemed incredibly fragile, the hairs on the head come off
if you even move the head.
I don't conceive anybody could have thought it possible
to kick it around and if they had,
it wouldn't look like it does today.
It's simply way too fragile.
The desiccation process involved drawing sulphuric acid vapours
over the head and that resulted
in not just the fatty tissue being dried out,
so hence it's rather shrunk in appearance,
but also in the discolouration of the skin,
which gives it this, to our eyes anyway rather florid red colour.
Originally, it was taken off display
because it was found shocking.
We do now have a policy on how we kept his remains at UCL
and when Bentham died, he clearly wanted his head to be
on at least semi-public view.
He couldn't have known how the process would turn out
and shortly after his death it was decided
to replace his head with a wax portrait.
And so, the people who knew him presumably concluded
that the head wasn't to be on display.
>> Bentham lived in London
through the vast majority of his life.
He was born in Houndsditch and then sent as a boarder
to Westminster School.
At a tender age of 12, the young Jeremy began his university
education at Queen's College, Oxford.
He was supposedly the youngest person ever
to have been admitted to Oxford up to that time.
One of the defining moments of his life occurred in 1765
when he was forced to subscribe to the 39 articles of the Church
of England in order to take his degree.
This was the most notable occasion,
perhaps the only occasion on which he was forced
to compromise his intellectual integrity.
He realised that not
to subscribe would have dashed the hopes
of his father Jeremiah,
who hoped that his son would not only follow his own footsteps
into a career in the law,
but would become Lord Chancellor of England.
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>> And Bentham's next move was to rooms here at Lincoln's Inn.
At the age of 21, in 1769 he qualified as a barrister,
but he decided that instead of practicing law
for which he soon gained a very healthy contempt,
he would devote himself to reforming it.
He wouldn't have become Lord Chancellor in the way
that his father had wished.
So, he sat down and he started writings his works
on jurisprudence, and in particular his first magnum opus
of penal code but as he went on even more and more and more,
the work has expanded and expanded and expanded.
Bentham's family house was
in what was then called Queen Square Place
and when Bentham's father died in 1792,
Bentham inherited the house and moved in.
The site is now occupied perhaps ironically enough
by the Ministry of Justice.
Bentham was living here in the centre of the British Empire
and of course was very interested in politics.
In 1793, even got parliament to pass an Act, permitting him
to build his panopticon prison, but he became so frustrated
to the lack of progress that drove him
to political radicalism.
In 1809, he started writing on parliamentary reform.
As he got older, he got more and more radical
and by the time he finished his career,
he was advocating representative democracy,
he wanted to abolish the monarchy and the aristocracy,
and established himself instead a single chamber annually
elected represented assembly.
In the 1820's when the radicals and reformers
who were establishing the University of London
which became UCL, were they not
at least influenced by Bentham's ideas.
Bentham himself had very little practical involvement
in the establishment of the university.
He did spend 100 pounds buying a share in the new establishment,
but then so did over a thousand other people.
Bentham tried to persuade with Henry Brougham
to appoint John Bowring and Bentham's disciple
and to the Chair of English literature and possibly
as a secretary of foreign correspondence.
This was in 1827.
Brougham however declined to appoint Bowring.
Bentham became upset about the way in which Brougham
and James Mill were going about things.
>> The aristocratically closed conduct pursued by you
in conjunction with Mr. Mill in the management of that concern,
the University of London has all along appeared to me to be
in the teeth of those democratical principles of mine
which are in print and which have on all occasions
on which it is being impartial been approved on by Mr. Mill.
>> Bentham complained that on 19th of December 1825, Brougham
and Mill had manipulated the elections
of the first College Council.
Brougham responded that if the proprietors had been left
to themselves, they would have elected a whole host
of inappropriate persons.
But at least one Benthamite landed a chair,
John Austin was appointed
as the first professor of Jurisprudence.
Having said that, Bentham does have a claim to be the founder
of UCL, or at least its spiritual founder, although,
Bentham would not have approved
of the word spiritual given his religious views.
In 1817, Bentham wrote a treatise called Chrestomathia,
which was aimed at the middle and higher classes and wanted
to provide for them a useful education;
that's what Chrestomathia means.
On the first historian of University College London,
HL Ballot thought that Bentham's ideas
in Chrestomathia were a forecast for the University of London.
>> A forecast of the University of London.
The school was to serve the middling classes.
It was to be launched by a body of shareholders
in a joint-stock company.
It was to be cheap and in the end self supporting.
By virtue of being non-residential,
it was to be free from the embarrassing obligation
to provide religious teaching.
It was to attend to useful and not merely
to ornamental instruction.
And it was therefore to educate its pupils in a great variety
of subjects, not at that date commonly recognised as part even
of a university curriculum.
In spite of the strange jargon with which it is hedged about,
no reader of the Chrestomathia can fail to perceive
in it a gleam of extraordinary freshness.
>> For Bentham, the point was to divorce religion from education,
just as it was to divorce religion from legislation.
And it was this reforming, yet tolerant secularism which was
at the basis of his thought and also the basis
of the foundation of UCL.
Now, the Church of England responded
by founding King's College
and a contemporary radical cartoon gives a flavour
of how the foundation of Kings was perceived by the radicals.
At the top of the seesaw, Bentham and his friends
and disciples with the all their boots of sense
and science being outweighed by the fat bishops weighed
down by money who were about to slide off the other end
of the seesaw into eternal damnation.
Now, there is another story told about Bentham in UCL and this is
that Bentham attends meetings of the College Council
and that is recorded in the minutes
that Mr. Bentham is present, but not voting.
Now, surely, Bentham doesn't attend meetings
of the College Council.
Well, he did once.
He attended the meeting held on the 158th anniversary
of the founding of the college on the 10th of February 1976.
It's recorded in the minutes,
Mr. Jeremy Bentham present, but not voting.
After Bentham's death and according to instructions left
in his will, around 24 of his friends, relatives
and employees, were presented with a mourning ring.
This is one of those rings.
The rings were made in 1822.
The silhouette was painted by John Field.
On the reverse, there is a plait of Bentham's hair.
Each of the rings was inscribed with the name of the recipient.
This particular ring was given to John Stuart Mill.
Mr. Michael Phillips, an alumnae for Laws Faculty and fellow
of the college spotted the ring in a shop in New Orleans,
bought it and donated it to the college.
Both from the point of view of historical importance
and contemporary significance, Bentham is an immense figure.
But instead of the question, what did Bentham do for UCL,
we can ask, well, what is UCL doing for Bentham?
Well, UCL is supporting the new edition of Bentham's writings
and it's not because of an adherence
to some foundation myth, but it's due to a recognition
of the importance of one
of the world's great philosophers and reformers.
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