Location
Bentham House, University College London
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?’
To register and for more details of the conference, please visit: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/events/2025/jul/person-jeremy-bentham-panopticon-penitentiary-scheme-and-picture-treasury
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.
Draft Programme
(subject to change)
Wednesday 23 July
9:30–9:50 | Registration and coffee: The Hub (First Floor)
10:00–11:00
Anne Brunon-Ernst (Université Paris Panthéon-Assas et Centre Bentham), ‘“Assurance of being able to purchase land”: From A Picture of the Treasury to Colonization Company Proposal.’
11:00–11:30 | Coffee Break
11:30–1:00
Philip Schofield, TBC.
Chris Riley, TBC.
Roger Morriss, ‘Jeremy’s Counselling. The Fraternal Advice of Samuel Bentham and Charles Abbot that failed to avert “A Picture of the Treasury”’.
1:00–2:00 | Lunch
2:00–3:00
Mark Knights (The University of Warwick), ‘Bentham and the Contexts of Administrative Reform in later Georgian Britain’.
3:00–3:30 | Coffee Break
3:30–5:00
Emily Lanman, ‘Panopticons in the Antipodes: Why Bentham’s Reforms found Success in Western Australia’.
Katherine Auty, ‘From Panopticon to Modern Prisons: Bentham’s Struggle and Contemporary Penal Debates’.
Simon Devereaux, ‘Not Forgotten? The Penitentiary Project before the Panopticon, 1779–92’.
Thursday 24 July
9:30–10:00 | Registration and Coffee
10:00–11:00
Carrie Shanafelt (Yeshiva University, New York), ‘Jeremy Bentham Meets the Unaccountability Machine’.
11:00–11:30 | Coffee Break (The Hub, First Floor)
11:30–1:00
Carolyn Shapiro, ‘Bentham’s prospective illustrations for a National Penitentiary: the psychic topography of the “Contractor manqué”’.
Myles Zhang, ‘The Panopticon in Virtual Reality’.
Matt Allen, ‘The “Formidable Inspector”: Visual Metaphors and the Critique of Governmental Corruption in “A Picture of the Treasury”’.
1:00–2:00: Lunch
2:00–3:00
Malcolm Quinn (University of the Arts, London), ‘What is a Utilitarian Portrait?’
3:00–3:30 | Coffee Break (The Hub, First Floor)
3:30–5:00
Joanna Innes, ‘George Rose and Bentham: Context for their Interactions over the Panopticon’.
Tsin Yen Koh, ‘A Sinister Picture’.
Greg Cote, ‘The Panopticon: A Democratic Artifact of Technology’.