Oh man, so, this is Jeremy Bentham. Jeremy sodding Bentham, architect of my earliest night frights. This bastard, this walnut-headed corpse, made me afraid to turn my night-light off for months. And I donât even go here.
Things you need to know about this whole bloody farce:
firstly, as some people have pointed out, heâs not exactly in the library, which is probably for the best, because that honestly just hands students an excuse not to go to the library on a plate. âSorry I didnât do the reading, but Jeremy fucking Bentham was staring into my frightened soul again.â Universities rely on students not dropping out because theyâre too afraid to study under the watchful eye of an eldritch abomination, so heâs in the cloister, apparently. Not that thatâs much better.
secondly, no, that is not his real head. Donât panic. You arenât staring into the sunken eyes of a corpse. Instead, youâre staring into the sunken eyes of an eerily lifelike wax head, deliberately coloured so as to give the pallor of death and mummification which, as Iâm sure we can all agree, is just fine. Why mummification, you ask?
well, because Jeremy Bentham was a bit weird, all things considered. From the age of 21, Bentham had bequeathed his body to be dissected by a family friend, which honestly is not what Iâd personally use my illustrious family connections for, but thatâs fine. This pal ultimately died before Bentham did, so Benthamâs dissection was carried out by his philosophical disciple, Thomas Southwood Smith. Bentham also instructed Smith to create an âauto iconâ of his body, which is a fancy way of saying âput me in a goddamn glass box and make me look as not-dead as possibleâ. This was to consist of his skeleton, padded out with hay and dressed in his favourite gladrags, and his actual mummified head, which was to be mummified so as to resemble Bentham as he was when he lived. However:
Bentham, although probably not ever in line to become the 6th member of One Direction, did not look like a raisin. His mummified head, though? Oh boy. Oh boy, did Smith fuck that up. He was something of a maverick, and decided to mummify Benthamâs head based on practices perfected by indigenous peoples of New Zealand. Those practitioners had had centuries to perfect their art. Smith did not. The end result is honestly too creepy for me to post here, but needless to say, it did not look like Bentham did in life. Unless Bentham looked like a shrunken prune with wispy white hair, anyway.
for a long time, Benthamâs body was displayed with the skeleton and wax head making up his âauto iconâ, with his real head in a box by his feet. A side note here: I once saw a photo of this as a kid and it gave me nightmares for about 6 months. Howevs, Bentham is on display at a university, so you know what that means. Yes, it means that students kept stealing the head as a fun prank. Let me repeat that: for a jovial funtime goof, teens stole the disembodied, shrivelled skull of the father of modern utilitarianism. Which is fine.
the only real parts of Bentham in that figure now are his hair, which they took from the skull, and his skeleton. Not that that makes it any less creepy, but this is essentially a headless classroom skeleton in a fancy padded outfit with a wax head. Writing it out, that kind of makes it worse.
the real head is now locked away, ostensibly so that students canât keep terrifying their flatmates with it by using it as the worldâs most haunting Scream mask, but probably in reality just to stop the fucking nightmares.
except itâs about to go on display again, so run for the hills, I guess.
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