medal
- Museum number
- M.6154
- Description
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Bronze medal. (whole)
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Bare head of Jeremy Bentham, right. (obverse)
- Production date
- 1832
- Dimensions
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Diameter: 32.000 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- Brown 1980 states:
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), writer on jurisprudence, educated at Westminster and Queen's College, Oxford. He was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn and became a member in 1817. Bentham wrote extensively on logic, ethics and political economy. It has been stated that his influence on jurisprudence and ethics can scarcely be over-estimated; he tended to formulate his ideas on his own rather than in conversation with others and was not a member of the London Corresponding Society. Bentham was also an authority on prisons and designed one of his own which he called the 'Panopticon'. In this prison, the prisoners occupied cells on the circumference with the officers in the centre and the inmates were taught to 'love labour' by being made to do useful work and share in their produce. The project was not successful. A supporter of parliamentary reform, Bentham died on the evening before the Reform Bill received the Royal Assent.
Bentham was a principal in the foundation of what was to become University College London. He directed in his will that his body was to be dissected and that his skeleton be dressed in his own clothes and preserved in University College London. It may still be seen there in the South Cloisters of the College, in Gower Street.
Bibliography: Grueber, H. A., English Personal Medals for 1760, 'Numismatic Chronicle', third series vol. VIII, 1888/63.
- Location
- Not on display
- Associated events
- Commemoration of: Death of Jeremy Bentham, 1832
- Department
- Coins and Medals
- Registration number
- M.6154
- C&M catalogue number
-
MB3 (Brown 1) (376) (1568)
