In-Person | Jeremy Bentham, the Panopticon penitentiary scheme, and ‘A Picture of the Treasury’
23 July 2025–24 July 2025, 9:00 am–5:00 pm

The Conference is generously supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Organiser
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UCL Laws Events
Location
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UCL Faculty of Laws,Bentham House, Endsleigh GardensLondonWC1H 0EG
Jeremy Bentham, the Panopticon penitentiary scheme, and ‘A Picture of the Treasury’ Conference
Call for Paper Proposals
The Bentham Project is hosting a two-day conference entitled ‘Jeremy Bentham, the Panopticon penitentiary scheme, and “A Picture of the Treasury”’, which will take place at Bentham House, Faculty of Laws, University College London, on 23 and 24 July 2025.
The aim of the conference is to discuss the forthcoming critical edition of ‘A Picture of the Treasury’ in The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham (UCL Press), publishing for the first time Bentham’s personal account of his dealings with the government, most notably the Treasury department, but also the Home Office, in his attempts to erect, and to become governor of, a panopticon penitentiary.
‘A Picture of the Treasury’ (written in 1802) contains Bentham’s highly detailed reflections on his dealings with and treatment by government officials between 1798 and 1802, and gives a unique insight into how he felt at this time. He exposes the individuals by whom, and administrative processes and malpractices by which, he believed his interests, and the public interest at large, had been thwarted. Bentham states, for instance, that his ‘adversary’, the British government, had all along sought to abandon the panopticon scheme by making things so drawn out that he might have been ‘provoked … beyond endurance’, give up through ‘weariness and despondency’, or simply die—die either ‘in the natural way of things’, as a result of ‘wear and tear of vexations and disappointments’, or even by him being driven to suicide.
The text consists of twenty-four sections, which are interspersed with over one hundred pieces of documentary evidence, including letters sent and unsent, extracts from official documents and third-party correspondence, alongside Bentham’s own commentary, all of which, Bentham says, might serve in prompting people to ask, ‘Well—and when this came out—what were your feelings?—and how did you endure it?’
Prior to the conference, a pre-publication version of ‘A Picture of the Treasury’ will be made available online for speakers and guests in order to facilitate discussion. For a draft table of contents for ‘Picture’, please see below on the accordion container.
In order to facilitate discussion, a pre-publication version of ‘A Picture of the Treasury’ has been made available online for speakers and guests as a .pdf.
Please send paper or panel proposals of approximately 300 words, and any enquiries, to pictureconference@ucl.ac.uk, before 28 February 2025. (Individual papers should be around 20 minutes in duration, with 10 minutes for questions, and panels around 1 hr 30 minutes in total, accommodating three speakers).
We look forward to receiving your proposals, and to welcoming you to the conference!
Dr Tim Causer, Principal Research Fellow, UCL Faculty of Laws
Dr Chris Riley, Research Fellow, UCL Faculty of Laws
Speakers:
- Anne Brunon-Ernst, Panthéon-Assas University, Paris.
- Mark Knights, University of Warwick.
- Carrie Shanafelt, Yeshiva University, New York.
- Malcolm Quinn, University of the Arts London.
- Table of Contents
§ 1. Purchase of Ld Salisbury’s on the proposal of Mr Long.
History Of the purchase made of the estate of the Marquis of Salisbury at Milbank, Westminster for the alledged purpose of a National Penitentiary Establishment: and of the causes which have hitherto prevented the application of it to that use: addressed to The Right Honble the Ld Pelham, his Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Home Department.
§ 2. Secret Plan for Rendering the Purchase Useless.
§ 3. Clandestine and perfidious assurance to Ld Belgrave.
§ 4. Symptoms of earlier treachery—Tergiversations of Mr Rose.
§ 5. Breach of faith 1st. Previous Contract.
§ 6. Breach of faith 2d. Buying out Leases.
§ 7. Breach of faith 3d. Mr Wise’s Land.
§ 8. The Establishment encreased, to make a pretence for crushing it.
§ 9. Further Intercourse forbidden by Mr Long.
§ 10. Armed Memorial, and its consequences.
§ 11. Disarmed Memorial, and its consequences.
§ 12. Negotiation of Mr Nepean alone with Messrs Long and King.
§ 13. Anonymous Report to the House of Commons.
§ 14. Secret blabbed by King.
§ 15. Change of Ministry—Insidious Letter.
§ 16. Secret Minutes brought to light—Grounds of relinquishment.
§ [16A.] Grounds of Relinquishment—Jail Improvements.
[§ 17. Offer of Compensation.]
§ [18.] Difference between Suppression of Documents & Forgery.
§ 19. Perfidy.
§ [20.] On the Dispensing power exercised by the Duke of Portland and his confederates.
§ 21. Principles of Waste and Peculation.
§ 22. Official Incapacity.
§ 23. Killing no Murder.
§ 24. Anarchy and Despotism.
- Registration
Information on Registration will be added here in due course