Jeremy Bentham's legacy included 200 boxes of papers, knitted
smalls and himself. Negley Harte welcomes the return of the father of utilitarianism to UCL.
There was no fanfare to mark Jeremy Bentham's return. Few, in fact, knew he had even been away.
But for approaching two years, the philosopher's remains had not been on display in his usual place between the south cloisters
and the provost's office at University College London.
His
clothes were there, certainly. And the fine wax model of his head made soon after his death in 1832. Bentham's skeleton and
mummified head, however, lay across the road in the conservation studio of the Institute of Archaeology.
Now
the auto-icon (a term Bentham coined) is back. Although it must be said that he is not looking his best. One hundred and seventy-two
years after his death aged 84, Bentham is beginning to look his age. The textile conservationists did not like his 1830s clothes
to be padded out as roundly as they used to be, leaving him withered and sinking. He used to have a timelessly smug and rubicund
air; now he appears as if he is finally approaching death.
The
creator of the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" principle naturally believed that the dead should be made useful
to the living. He would have loved to have carried a donor card. As it was, he left careful instructions about the fate of
his body. His medical disciple, Thomas Southwood Smith, was to dissect his body while lecturing on its parts, and an auto-icon
was to be created afterward.
In
recent years, the auto-icon has enjoyed much attention and has been a source of many surprises. One of the more unusual emerged
when, some 20 years ago, his clothes were taken to the Textile Conservation Centre, then an outpost of the Courtauld Institute
at Hampton Court, where they were conserved and left a good deal cleaner than they would have been when he first put them
on.
Bentham
was found to be wearing knitted underpants. These later became common male underwear, but he was clearly way ahead of his
time - most of his contemporaries just tucked the tails of their shirts between their legs. It is not widely known that the
great philosopher of jurisprudence and ground-breaking social scientist was also a pioneer of pants.
And
so, in the 1980s, Bentham's knitted underpants were photographed from every possible angle by a keen young researcher to accompany
an article for the journal Textile History, with which I was then involved. Months later, I noted that the piece had
not appeared. When I asked why, I was told that the woman in question had left the centre to get married. "Surely marriage
and writing an article about Jeremy Bentham's underpants are not incompatible," I found myself saying. Yet the piece has still
not been written. I do not know if the young woman is still married.
You
cannot, of course, see Bentham's pants. In the 1830s and for many subsequent generations, the sight of underwear would have
been quite unacceptable. But they are unquestionably there, underneath his loosely hanging clothes.
However,
Bentham's mummified head, with its captivating blue glass eyes, is not. This is kept in a safe and ranks as perhaps the most
unusual possession of any university in the world.
Until
the Second World War, it was displayed in a box at the feet of the auto-icon. After the war, when the remains returned from
their place of safety in the country to the badly bomb-damaged UCL, the head was abstracted and provided with its own box,
specially designed by Sir Albert Richardson, the magnificently eccentric professor of architecture.
This
accommodates the head in one of those glass domes in which Victorians liked to present squirrels or mongooses. It has to be
unlocked by five keys, two of which have to be turned simultaneously. I know this because I have tried - and struggled - to
do it. There is, I fear, a BBC Discovery film capturing my repeated attempts that eventually prompted Rosamund Cummings, the
UCL records officer, to shout instructions through the door of her office. She had refused to be in the same room as the head
and so had to despatch one of her temporary student assistants to help.
When
we finally opened the box, it was evident that the head had fallen off its plastic support inside the glass dome. "You hold
it up and I'll straighten the support," said the student. So I can claim to be one of the few people outside the conservation
studio to have held the great man's head.
Some
years previously, I had arranged for it to be shown during a lecture I gave at UCL to the Camden History Society. I stopped
the slides, brought up the lights, and two beadles carried in the box, taking the top off with a dramatic flourish. The audience
gasped at the bright blue eyes, the leathery skin and the wisps of hair.
Despite
the fact that UCL is the proud owner of Bentham's body in two separate boxes, he was not, as is commonly supposed, the institution's
founder. I have explained this to countless journalists but most merrily go on to describe him as such, as well as recounting
as sober fact a host of stories that I always specify are apocryphal, such as the auto-icon attending college meetings and
the head being used by rival students from King's College London as a football.
Bentham
did not in fact leave his body to UCL - he left it to Southwood Smith. Nor did he leave his vast collection of unpublished
papers to the university - he bequeathed them to his literary disciple John Bowring.
Bowring
did some desultory editing of the papers, but eventually passed over 200 boxes of them to UCL in 1849. Little was done with
the documents until 1959 when the current Bentham Project began the huge task of publishing them. Twenty-five massive volumes
have appeared so far. It is estimated that a further 45 volumes are left.
In
1850 the auto-icon turned up. Southwood Smith was about to retire, and an enthusiastic Lord Brougham persuaded UCL to accept
it.
While
some of the words that Bentham invented caught on - "international" and "codify" are with us still - "auto-icon" never really
did, despite his grand gesture. He wanted to render marble and stone statues obsolete, but he also wanted to demythologise
the human body by showing the usefulness of providing cadavers for dissection by medical students. The traditional Christian
objection to this practice was something he was keen to overcome; he expected it would now be recognised as a sensible form
of progress.
In
June 1832, Southwood Smith gave his lecture while dissecting his mentor's body - pale-faced but steady-handed - before Bentham's
assembled friends at the Webb Street School of Anatomy. He later arranged to have the skeleton assembled with the head mummified
and the auto-icon created.
There
was an important practical point being made but there was also a great deal of self-indulgence. Bentham had made arrangements
for 24 of his best friends, or disciples, as I have called them, to be presented with a specially designed signet ring containing
his profile and a lock of his hair. It was suggested to them that they meet from time to time in the presence of the auto-icon
to discuss ways of increasing the happiness of the greatest number.
The
disciples who attended the dissection included many of what Bentham called "the association of liberals" who had founded the
University of London six years earlier. Lord Brougham was certainly present, as were George Grote, John Stuart Mill and Francis Place.
Bentham
himself spent £100 (more than twice a craftsman's annual salary at the time) to buy one share in the new institution. He played
no more active role in the university than that. But his inspirational as well as physical presence lingers on.
Negley
Harte is senior lecturer in economic history at University College London. The third edition of his history of UCL, written
with John North, was published last year.
