Jeremy Bentham was born on February 15, 1748 in London, England.
His father, a lawyer, believed Bentham would follow in his footsteps and enter the law
profession.
Due to his son's very apparent genius, being something of an intellectual prodigy, he even
had wild ambitions for Jeremy to ascend to the position of Lord Chancellor of England.
And, indeed, Young Jeremy showed a propensity for learning at an early age, starting to
learn Latin at the age of three and attending the Queen’s College Oxford at twelve.
But after listening to leading law practitioners of the time, such as Sir William Blackstone,
Bentham became disillusioned with the career path.
So instead, he dedicated his life to writing about the inequities in law and proposing
numerous social reforms- everything from advocating for a minimum wage, gay rights, universal
suffrage, equal rights for women, ending slavery, separation of church and state, freedom of
expression, the end of physical punishment (both concerning children and criminals),
animal welfare, and ceasing capital punishment.
In his spare time, he also was one of the founding fathers of utilitarianism.
While he was a prolific writer from childhood up to the day he died, it is what happened
after his death on June 6, 1832 that is the subject of this video.
You see, in his Will, Bentham left very specific, and somewhat peculiar, instructions of what
he wanted done with his body: “My body I give to my dear friend Doctor
Southwood Smith to be disposed of in a manner hereinafter mentioned, and I direct (that)
he will take my body under his charge and take the requisite and appropriate measures
for the disposal and preservation of the several parts of my bodily frame in the manner expressed
in the paper annexed to this my Will and at the top of which I have written Auto Icon.
The skeleton he will cause to be put together in such a manner as that the whole figure
may be seated in a chair usually occupied by me when living, in the attitude in which
I am sitting when engaged in thought in the course of time employed in writing.
I direct that the body thus prepared shall be transferred to my executor.
He will cause the skeleton to be clad in one of the suits of black occasionally worn by
me.
The body so clothed, together with the chair and the staff in the my later years borne
by me, he will take charge of and for containing the whole apparatus he will cause to be prepared
an appropriate box or case and will cause to be engraved in conspicuous characters on
a plate to be affixed thereon and also on the labels on the glass cases in which the
preparations of the soft parts of my body shall be contained ... my name at length with
the letters OB followed by the day of my decease.
If it should so happen that my personal friends and other disciples should be disposed to
meet together on some day or days of the year for the purpose of commemorating the founder
of the greatest happiness system of morals and legislation, my executor will from time
to time cause to be conveyed to the room in which they meet the said box or case with
the contents therein to be stationed in such part of the room as to the assembled company
shall ... meet.”
Why Bentham chose this specific fate for his remains isn't known.
It is also important to note that during Bentham’s life, dissection was illegal in England with
the exception of when the body belonged to an executed criminal.
Members of Parliament were discussing the 1832 Anatomy Act, which would allow dissections
so long as the body was acquired legally, at the time of Bentham’s death.
However it was not yet law.
Both Bentham and Dr. Southwood Smith believed the laws against dissection were silly, and
even counterproductive, making it extremely difficult for physicians to advance their
craft, or even sometimes just get adequate training in internal anatomy.
(To get around this problem, medical schools often secretly purchased bodies from grave
robbers, and sometimes from murderers claiming to be grave robbers.)
In any event, Dr. Southwood Smith performed the illegal dissection of Bentham's body as
a part of an anatomy lecture, attempting to fulfill the requirements of the Will by removing
all of the soft tissue in and on Bentham's body.
The good doctor then wired the skeleton together with copper wire and pins.
It was dressed in a set of Bentham's clothes, including a black coat, before being stuffed
with hay and lavender to fill out his figure.
The body was eventually bolted to the chair.
Bentham planned for his head to be preserved as well, but this didn't work out.
Dr. Smith removed the head from the body and attempted to preserve it via a method of desiccation
used by the Maori of New Zealand.
But when the procedure was complete, the head did not take on the same hardness of those
preserved by the Maori and the dehydration removed any expression from the face, as well
as made it look somewhat grotesque.
To get around the issue, Dr. Smith had a wax head modeled after a bust and pictures of
the philosopher.
When it was completed, the wax head was affixed to the skeleton with a metal spike.
Bentham’s skeleton and its box, referred to as the Auto-Icon, remained in the possession
of Dr. Southwood Smith until 1850, when the University College London received it.
The box remained untouched in a secluded location of the university until around 1898, when
the Curator of the Museum and Professor George Thane removed it from the box for examination.
They observed a layer of dust and moth-eaten clothes, but they also made a significant
discovery.
Upon opening up the clothes to examine the skeleton and hay used to fill out the garments,
they found Bentham’s real head wrapped inside a cloth and located inside his abdomen.
They placed his head on the floor between his legs when the Auto-Icon was returned to
the box.
There the head remained until 1948 when it was placed in a box to give it an added layer
of protection.
Since the wooden box was too large to fit inside the larger one with the Auto-Icon,
it was first placed on top of the Auto-Icon box, and then above a doorway in the Cloisters
that led to a staircase.
But as often happens with college students, the head was an easy target for pranks and
was frequently stolen.
One of the most famous cases of theft occurred in 1975 when students from King’s College
London took the head and asked for a ransom of £100.
That money was to be paid directly to a local shelter.
The University College London offered £10 instead, and the head was returned.
Finally fed up with the thefts of the great philosopher's head, it was placed in storage
in the Strong Room of the Records Department in late 1975.
Thirty years later, in 2005, it was moved to the Institute of Archaeology.
Today it is located in the Conservation Safe where it is only removed for specific academic
inspection.
As for the Auto-Icon, it resides in the South Cloisters of University College’s main building,
where the doors of the box are opened around 8 AM every morning and closed around 6 PM
each night.
Bonus Fact: Another great thinker in human history likewise
had a part of his head stolen after his death- Albert Einstein.
One Dr. Thomas Stolz Harvey was the pathologist on call during the early morning hours of
the 18th and was the doctor assigned to attend to Dr. Einstein shortly before his death.
After Einstein died, Harvey began an autopsy he claimed he was given permission to do.
During this, he went about removing, measuring, and weighing Einstein’s brain.
He then injected and immersed the brain in formaldehyde.
After he was done with that, he took Einstein’s eyeballs out, which were later given to Einstein's
eye doctor Henry Adams.
Finally, he gave the rest of the body back to be cremated.
On April 19th, after the removal and storing of the brain, Harvey went about asking for
permission retroactively from Einstein’s son, Hans Albert Einstein.
Hans Albert granted the permission, making Harvey promise that his father’s mind would
be used for careful scientific study and the findings published in legitimate medical journals.
When word got out that Harvey had the brain, requests came flooding in from across the
world from others who wanted to see and study it.
However, for whatever reason, Dr. Harvey decided instead to keep it, storing it in a jar in
his home office and, later, when he was fired from Princeton Hospital, he took the brain
with him.
Harvey went to the University of Pennsylvania, and with help of a technician, cut up the
brain into a thousand slides and 240 blocks, putting them into squares of celluloid.
He did give a few slices away for study, but on the whole generally refused such requests.
insisting that he was “a year from finishing study on the specimen.”
He eventually made his way to Wichita, Kansas, where he worked as a medical supervisor in
a biological testing lab.
During his time in Wichita, he kept Einstein’s brain in a cider box underneath a beer cooler.
For the next thirty years, Harvey moved around the Midwest, towing the brain along, never
publishing any studies.
Every once in a while, a researcher would contact him and rather than his normal refusal,
he would randomly go ahead and send them a slide or two.
In 1985, three decades after Einstein's death, someone finally published a study on Einstein’s
brain after receiving slides from Harvey - Marian Diamond of UCLA.
Published in Experimental Neurology, her study was (admittedly) far from conclusive, but
it did speculate that Einstein’s brain had more glial cells for every neuron than a normal
brain.
This could mean that the cells had a greater “metabolic need” - meaning more energy
was used and needed, which it was speculated could also mean an increase in conceptual
and thinking skills.
While recent research may have debunked this theory, there were finally studies about Einstein’s
stolen brain published in legitimate medical journals.
Yet, this still wasn’t the end to the brain’s journey.
In 1988, Thomas Harvey had his medical license revoked when he failed a three day competency
exam in Missouri.
A few years later, he returned to Princeton, only to be convinced by writer Michael Paterniti
to go meet Einstein’s granddaughter in California.
Of course, he had to bring the brain.
In Paterniti’s book Driving Mr. Albert, it describes, with the jars of brain in a
duffle-bag in the trunk of Harvey’s Buick Skylark, their drive to sunny California.
They did, indeed, meet Evelyn Einstein in Berkeley, where Harvey forgot the brain at
her house when he left.
She returned it to him, not wanting anything to do with it.
Thomas Harvey passed away in 2007, but before he did, he donated the brain to the Princeton
Hospital, the same place that the brain began its extra-curricular journey over fifty years
prior.
Today, you can see slides of Einstein’s brain at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.