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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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