Jeremy Bentham Timeline

Bentham published A Fragment on Government in 1776, a critical attack on Sir William Blackstone's legal doctrine. The 'Fragment' was only a small part of his larger Commentary on the Commentaries, which remained unpublished until the twentieth century.

Image source: Jeremy Bentham

When the American colonies published their Declaration of Independence in July 1776, the British government did not issue any official response but instead secretly commissioned London lawyer and pamphleteer John Lind to publish a rebuttal, to which Bentham contributed the Short Review of the Declaration (1776).

Image source: United States Declaration of Independence

In 1780, alluding to the limited degree of legal protection afforded to slaves in the French West Indies by the Code Noir, Bentham wrote that the greater part of the species had been treated by law exactly upon the same footing as, in England, the inferior races of animals were still treated.

Image source: Code Noir

Bentham's c. 1785 essay 'Paederasty (Offences Against One's Self)' argued for the liberalisation of laws prohibiting homosexual sex. It was not published until 1978, when the Journal of Homosexuality described it as the first known argument for homosexual law reform in England.

Image source: Exoletus

Between 1786 and 1789, Bentham wrote A Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace, which forms part IV of his Principles of International Law. It includes such interesting writings on international relations and was included in Bowring's standard edition of Bentham's works.

Image source: Nuremberg principles

Bentham wrote a series of thirteen 'Letters' addressed to Adam Smith, published in 1787 as Defence of Usury. The work attacked restrictions on lending money at interest; repeal of these restrictions was achieved in stages and fully achieved in England in 1854.

Image source: Usury

Bentham's most famous book, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), presents his theory of utilitarianism and is regarded as the first major book on the topic, establishing him as the founder of modern utilitarianism.

Image source: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

In Anarchical Fallacies: Being an Examination of the Declarations of Rights Issued During the French Revolution (written around 1796), Bentham was an outspoken critic of the revolutionary discourse of natural rights and of the violence that arose after the Jacobins took power in 1792.

Swear Not At All was printed in 1817 by Effingham Wilson and published in 1818, one of Bentham's works attacking oaths and religious tests, reflecting his radical critique of established institutions.

In August 1831, Bentham drafted an unpublished work entitled 'Colonization Company Proposal', his commentary upon the National Colonization Society's 'Proposal' approved on 3 August 1831 to establish a free colony on the south coast of Australia funded by the sale of appropriated colonial lands.

Some of Bentham's writings on 'sexual non-conformity' were first published in 1931, but Paederasty was not published until 1978 in the Journal of Homosexuality, where it was described as the first known argument for homosexual law reform in England.

In 1787, Bentham published Panopticon; or, the Inspection-House, proposing a circular prison design allowing constant observation of inmates. Twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault later argued that the panopticon was paradigmatic of several 19th-century 'disciplinary' institutions.

Bentham's 1793 pamphlet Emancipate Your Colonies! critiqued French colonialism, addressed to the National Convention of France. He was an outspoken critic of colonial exploitation throughout his career.

Image source: Colonialism

Bentham was eventually successful in winning over Pitt and his advisors, and in 1794 was paid £2,000 for preliminary work on the panopticon prison project.

Using government money, Bentham bought land on behalf of the Crown for £12,000 in November 1799. The intended site was one authorised under the Appropriation Act 1799, intended for the panopticon prison project.

Image source: Millbank Prison

Bentham's proposals contributed to the Depredations on the Thames Act 1800 (39 & 40 Geo. 3), which addressed theft and damage on the River Thames, demonstrating his influence on practical legislative reform.

Image source: Depredations on the Thames Act 1800

Negotiations continued, but in 1801 Pitt resigned from office, and in 1803 the new Addington administration decided not to proceed with the panopticon project, a bitter disappointment for Bentham after years of effort.

Image source: Panopticon

Bentham lobbied hard for the formation of codification commissions in both England and the United States, and went so far as to write to President James Madison in 1811 to volunteer to write a complete legal code for the young country.

Image source: James Madison

A few years later, the government revived the idea of a National Penitentiary, and in 1811 and 1812 returned specifically to the idea of a panopticon, though Bentham ultimately did not secure its adoption.

In 1821, John Cartwright proposed to Bentham that they serve as 'Guardians of Constitutional Reform', seven 'wise men' whose reports and observations would 'concern the entire Democracy or Commons of the United Kingdom'.

Image source: John Cartwright (political reformer)

In 1823, Bentham co-founded The Westminster Review with James Mill as a journal for the 'Philosophical Radicals'—a group of younger disciples through whom Bentham exerted considerable influence in British public life.

Image source: The Westminster Review

Bentham is widely associated with the foundation in 1826 of London University (which became University College London in 1836), though he was 78 years old when the university opened and played only an indirect role in its establishment.

Image source: University College London

Bentham failed in his efforts to see his disciple John Bowring appointed professor of English or History at London University, but he did oversee the appointment of another pupil, John Austin, as the first professor of Jurisprudence in 1829.

Image source: John Austin (legal philosopher)

A paper written in 1830, instructing Thomas Southwood Smith to create the auto-icon, was attached to Bentham's last will, dated 30 May 1832 – Queen's Square Place, Westminster. On his death, Bentham left instructions for his body to be dissected and then permanently preserved as an 'auto-icon', or self-image.

On 8 June 1832, two days after his death, invitations were distributed to a select group of friends, and on the following day at 3 p.m., Southwood Smith delivered a lengthy oration over Bentham's remains in the Webb Street School of Anatomy & Medicine in Southwark, London.

Image source: Thomas Southwood Smith

Bentham's writings appeared in 11 volumes in 1838–1843 under the editorship of John Bowring. Bowring's remained the standard edition of most of Bentham's writings for over a century and is still only partially superseded.

Image source: John Bowring

The more direct associations between Bentham and UCL postdate his death: the majority of his surviving papers were donated to the college in 1849, followed by the auto-icon in 1850.

After standing in Southwood Smith's Finsbury Square consulting rooms from 1833 and then painter Margaret Gillies's studio at 36 Percy Street, Southwood Smith offered the auto-icon to Henry Brougham in March 1850, who readily accepted it for UCL, where it has been displayed ever since.

In 1952–1954, Werner Stark published a three-volume set, Jeremy Bentham's Economic Writings, in which he attempted to bring together all of Bentham's writings on economic matters, including both published and unpublished material.

Since 1959, when the Bentham Committee was first established under the auspices of University College London, UCL has hosted the Bentham Project, which is progressively publishing a definitive edition of Bentham's writings, The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham.

The Bentham Project set up to produce a definitive edition published the first volume of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham in 1968. Of Laws in General (1970) was found to contain many errors and was replaced by Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence (2010).

Launched in September 2010, the Transcribe Bentham initiative makes freely available digital images of UCL's vast Bentham Papers collection—which runs to some 60,000 manuscript folios—to engage the public and recruit volunteers to help transcribe the material.

Image source: Transcribe Bentham

Upon the retirement of Sir Malcolm Grant as provost of UCL in 2013, Bentham's body was present at Grant's final council meeting—the only time the body has been taken to a UCL council meeting. That same year, on 28 November, IMF Limited adopted Bentham's name to become Bentham IMF Limited in recognition of Bentham being among the first to support the utility of litigation funding.

Previously displayed at the end of the South Cloisters in UCL's main building, the auto-icon was put into a new glass display case in 2020 and moved to the entrance of UCL's new Student Centre on Gordon Square.