Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham never married. He died on 6 June 1832 at his residence in Queen Square Place in Westminster, London. He was then eighty-four years old. In accordance with his will, his body was publicly dissected by his friend, the sanitary reformer Dr. Thomas Southwood Smith, and then permanently preserved as an ‘auto-icon.’

The ‘auto-icon’ was kept with Dr. Southwood Smith until 1850. In that year, it was acquired by the University College London and put on public display at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building, where it remains still now.

Jeremy Bentham was born on 15 February 1748 in Houndsditch, London into a wealthy family which supported the Tory party. His father, Jeremiah Bentham, was a successful practitioner in the Court of Chancery. His mother, Alicia Whitehorn née Grove, was a pious woman; Jeremiah was her second husband.

Jeremy was the eldest of his parents’ seven children. However, all but his youngest sibling, Samuel, died in infancy. His mother too died on 6 January 1759. Thereafter, the two brothers were mostly raised by their father. They also spent a lot of time in their grandmother’s home.

Jeremy was a child prodigy. It is said that when he was still a toddler, he would sit at his father’s desk to read English history and that he began to study Latin at the age of three. Later he was admitted to Westminster, but did not enjoy his experience there.

In 1760, when he was barely twelve years old, his father made him enter the Queen’s College, Oxford. However, he did not find the environment at the college very stimulating.

To him, Oxford was a seat of prejudice and idleness. His experience during this period stimulated in him distrust for Anglican churches and antipathy towards oaths. Therefore, when he graduated in 1763 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, he was in a great dilemma.

Initially, Jeremy Bentham was a little confused about the goal of his life. Although he continued studying law at the behest of his father he soon became thoroughly disillusioned with it.

In 1766, while still a student of law, Benthen published his first book, ‘A Fragment of Government’. Written in a clear and concise style, the book is said to mark the beginning of his philosophical radicalism.

In 1769, he came across the works of prominent writers like Montesquieu, Helvétius, Beccaria, Voltaire, David Hume, David Hartley and Joseph Priestley. They helped him not only to find a direction for his life, but also to construct an initial version of his principle of the utility.

Also in 1769, Bentham was called to the bar. But to the immense disappointed of his father, who was confident that his eldest son would one day become the Lord Chancellor, he decided not to practice law. Instead, he began to concentrate on analytic jurisprudence.

He now spent long hours in reading and writing. By 1780, he had his first major work ‘An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation’ ready. However, the book was not published until 1789.

Sometime in the mid-1780s, Jeremy Bentham travelled to Krichev in Belarus (then known as White Russia) to visit his brother, Samuel. There, he came across the concept of ‘Panopticon’, a circular building that allowed a single watchman to observe all (pan) inmates of an institution.

He then began to develop the idea and proposed that prisons be built on this model. However, his proposal was never taken seriously; but the incident gave rise to his theory of ‘Sinister Interest’, which he propagated in the summer of 1804.

Concurrently, he also started pondering on the legal restraints on pecuniary bargains prevalent at that time. In 1787, he wrote a series of thirteen letters, addressed to economist Adam Smith, who opposed free interest rates, on this subject.

These letters were subsequently published in book form as ‘Defence of Usury’. In this book, he put forward strong arguments against any such restrictions. He stated that each person is best judge of his advantage and should be allowed to decide on what terms he should lend his money.