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A B e n t h a m Wa l k
6. 36 Percy Street.
7. Whitfield Gardens.
A new outdoor art installation at Whitfield Gardens, named after the
Revd George Whitefield, an evangelical preacher who founded a
chapel on this site in 1756, includes a portrait of Jeremy Bentham.
The installation by Art.@the Art of Change consists of twelve panels
each containing an hour-glass representing the history of the area
from Whitefield onwards trickling through 'to mingle with the images
of today and tomorrow'. The panel in which Bentham features is
entitled 'Our Glass 6 - Aesthetics and Anaesthetics', and also
includes Shillibeer's Omnibus, Charles Dickens who lived in
Fitzrovia as a boy, and Robert Lister who performed the first
operation using general anaesthetic at University College Hospital.
From Tottenham Court Road turn right into Torrington Place, and
left into Gower Street, entering UCL through the main gates. Take
the right-hand door in the Portico Facade into the South Cloisters _
500 metres, or 542 yards.
8. Auto-Icon, South Cloisters, UCL, Gower Street.
Bentham left his body to medical science in his first will, written at
the age of 21 in 1769, when only the corpses of hanged murderers
were available to further anatomical knowledge, diagnosis, and
treatment. In a later will of 1824, in the hope of encouraging others
to do the same, Bentham left his body to be the subject of a public
lecture, and later to be dissected at the Webb Street Anatomy
School. At this time he also began to develop the idea of the AutoIcon _ man in his own image _ the actual corpse could replace
memorial sculpture. Bentham hoped his fellow-utilitarians might
meet with his Auto-Icon on occasion to remember his life and
ideas. The Auto-Icon is capable of many interpretations: is it a
joke, a refutation of the Christian belief in corporeal resurrection, a
lesson to combat fear of the dead, or a product of altruistic rational
thought?
Retrace your steps into Gower Street, cross over the road, head in a
southerly direction and turn first right into University Street.
9. Jeremy Bentham Pub, University Street.
Have a drink!
Jeremy Bentham (1748_1832) lived all his life in London.
Educated at Westminster School, London, and Queen’s
College, Oxford, he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in 1763 to
begin training as a lawyer _ his father hoped Bentham would
become Lord Chancellor one day. In fact Bentham devoted his
life to reform through his writing. Bentham believed the proper
purpose of the law, as of all human action, was to promote
utility, or to use the more famous statement of the principle of
utility _ the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
Working for most of his life at Queen Square Place, Bentham
used the principle of utility as a critical tool with which the
value of laws, institutions, practices, and beliefs could be
tested, and, if found wanting, improvements suggested.
Some, but not all, of Bentham’s works were published in his
lifetime, and a new, authoritative edition of The Collected
Works of Jeremy Bentham is being produced by the Bentham
Project at UCL. So far over one-third of the planned sixtyeight volumes which will constitute the edition have been
published.
The Bentham Project attracts a constant stream of academic
visitors from all over the world. It maintains an informative and
highly-regarded website, which includes a Bentham
bibliography, and the e-Journal of Bentham Studies. It has
produced an online database catalogue of the Bentham
Papers, about 60,000 manuscripts, at UCL Library.
Bentham Project
UCL Faculty of Laws
University College London
Bentham House
4-8 Endsleigh Gardens
London WC1H 0EG
Tel: +44 (0)20 7679 3610
Fax: +44 (0)20 7679 3933
Email: bentham.project@ucl.ac.uk
www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project
Devised and written by Catherine Fuller, and photographed by
Deborah McVea, UCL Bentham Project. Map and leaflet design
by the Drawing Office, UCL Department of Geography.
Revised February 2008.
UCL FACULTY OF LAWS
THE BENTHAM PROJECT
A B E N T H A M WA L K
When Bentham’s Auto-Icon was created in 1832 (see item 8), it
was kept in the consulting rooms of its maker Dr Thomas
Southwood Smith at Finsbury Square, but when Smith gave up
these premises in the winter of 1849-50, the Auto-Icon was moved
to the studio at 36 Percy Street of the artist Margaret Gillies, with
whom Smith had lived since the early 1830s. From this address
the Auto-Icon was transported to UCL in March 1850.
Walk down Percy Street, and turn left into Tottenham Court Road.
Continue north down Tottenham Court Road, past Goodge Street
Underground Station. Turn left into Whitfield Gardens _ 310
metres, or 330 yards.
Jeremy Bentham and the
Bentham Project at UCL
19/2/08
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The walk begins in Westminster and ends at UCL, covering
approximately 4 kilometres, or 2 miles.
NB: If you want to see the Auto-Icon displayed at UCL the walk
should be undertaken on a weekday _ Monday to Friday between
the hours of 9am and 5pm.
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walking tour-inside
LAMBETH BRIDGE
Enter Dean’s Yard through an archway to the right of the main
entrance to Westminster Abbey. Little Dean’s Yard is approached
through an archway on the eastern side of Dean’s Yard.
Bentham attended Westminster School from 1755, aged 7, and
lodged with Mrs Morrell at 2 Little Dean’s Yard, which at the time
was not a yard, but a narrow cobbled lane. Extensive work on the
School and its environs began in 1785, and little of what Bentham
knew is now accessible to the public. Little Dean’s Yard cannot be
entered although you can stand just inside the Yard: the fourteenth
century archway at the entrance, and the School Gateway directly
opposite with the cobbled path leading to it, remain from
Bentham’s day. He left Westminster School in the summer of
1760, and went up to Oxford in October 1760, aged 12.
Cross Victoria Street, turn left into Tothill Street, and right into
Queen Anne’s Gate _ 310 metres, or 330 yards.
2. Queen Square Place, Westminster.
Bentham’s father, Jeremiah, moved to Queen Square Place in
1762. On the death of his father in 1792, the house at Queen
Square Place became Bentham’s home until his own death in
1832. A plaque on the wall in Queen Anne’s Gate on the site of
the former Home Office building records where his house once
stood. Bentham’s house could be entered through a dark
passageway from Queen Anne’s Gate near the site of the plaque,
or through a gate into his garden from Bird Cage Walk to the left
of the Barracks.
Continue down Queen Anne’s Gate, and turn left.
3. 40 Queen Anne’s Gate.
Bentham leased a number of properties in the area, and in 1817
William Hazlitt was his tenant at 19 York Street. Neither Queen
Square Place nor York Street exist now, but James Mill and his
family, including John Stuart Mill, were also tenants of Bentham
from 1814 until 1831. They lived at 40 Queen Anne’s Gate, which
is the only remaining domestic dwelling with which Bentham was
associated in this area.
Turn back into Queen Anne's Gate and turn first left into
St James’s Park, cross the lake via the bridge, cross the Mall, turn
left and walk towards Buckingham Palace, then turn right up
Queen’s Walk on the right hand side of Green Park _ 350 metres,or
400 yards.
4. St James’s Park.
Bentham was a fervent believer in a positive relationship between
a healthy body and a healthy mind. In the coach house at Queen
Square Place he erected a gymnasium, which included parallel
bars and a trapeze, where his secretaries, and the young John
Stuart Mill, took exercise. In 1825 Bentham also helped the
German gymnast, Karl Voelker, to set up a gym at 28 Leicester
Square. Bentham himself preferred to jog, and he variously
named the activity circumgyration, ante- or post-jentacularization.
In May 1822 he wrote to a correspondent in Portugal: ‘in order to
be refreshed, you must do as I do in my 75th year. Every twenty
four hours I spend three quarters of an hour in exercise, half
walking and half running, in the two parks, St James’s Park and
Hyde Park; in this way while the spirit relaxes, the body is
strengthened’.
From Green Park turn right into Piccadilly, cross the road and
turn left into Old Bond Street, and first right into Burlington
Gardens _ 1400 metres, or 1500 yards.
5. Rear entrance to the Royal Academy of Arts,
Burlington Gardens.
Sculpture of Bentham by Joseph Durham, 1869.
The University of London was founded in 1836 to determine
policy, to regulate, and to award grants to students of University
College (formerly the University of London), opened in 1826, and
King’s College, opened in 1831. The University of London’s first
purpose-built premises in the grounds of Burlington House were
opened in 1869. The facade, now the rear entrance to the Royal
Academy, was decorated with twenty-two statues of eminent men,
and the four statues on the portico of ‘illustrious Englishmen’ were
chosen to represent the four Faculties of the University in
Science, Law, Arts, and Medicine: they are Isaac Newton, Jeremy
Bentham, John Milton, and William Harvey. The University of
London later moved to South Kensington in 1900, and to its
present building in Malet Street in 1937. Directly behind you at
32 Old Burlington Street Bentham visited his dentist, Samuel
Cartwright, who, in 1823, had declared himself an admirer of
Bentham’s and therefore treated him free of charge. Cartwright
was also Dentist in Ordinary to George IV.
EITHER continue into Vigo Street, left into Regent Street, and then
right into Oxford Street, and take 10, 73 or 390 bus going in an
easterly direction and alight at Percy Street. OR from Vigo Street
cross Regent Street into Brewer Street which leads into Old
Compton Street. Turn left into Frith Street, cross Soho Square and
Oxford Street into Rathbone Place which leads into Charlotte
Street, at which point turn right into Percy Street _ 1 1/2
kilometres, or just under a mile.
Continued overleaf Ô