Dr Tim Causer shows Bentham-related items at UCL event ‘Treasures of the Written Word’

Dr Causer presented original material from Bentham’s archive including letters, drawings of Bentham’s proposed panopticon prison, and the first page of the earliest Australian convict narrative, Memorandoms by James Martin, soon to be published in open-access by UCL Press.

Treasures of the Written Word was part of UCL Festival of Culture events and represented a rare opportunity to view highlights from UCL Special Collections, Archives and Records, one of the UK’s foremost university collections.

Dr Causer said:

‘UCL Special Collections has some wonderful holdings, not least of which are the Bentham Papers, and this event was a great opportunity to discuss some of the material with members of the public’.

Image 1: Bentham Papers, box 169, folio 179 (the first page of the Memorandoms)

Image 2: Bentham Papers, box 9, folio 16 (A letter dated 19 February 1792 from the renowned penal reformer, Sir William Eden to Bentham, expressing his approval for the principles behind Bentham’s panopticon prison scheme. This was published in volume 4 of the Correspondence)

Image 3: Bentham Papers, box 107, folio 109 (recipes apparently collated for the panopticon prison’s kitchen, to provide inmates with cheap, nourishing food. The recipes were published as Jeremy Bentham’s Prison Cooking in 2015, and copies of the book will be available to buy for £10)

All the images are ‘Courtesy UCL Special Collections’.

Find out more about the event

Read more about the Bentham Project

Read more about Transcribe Bentham

Find out more about the Memorandoms