UCL is renowned for its many iconic sights, from the striking neoclassical columns of the Wilkins Building to the soaring white walls of Marshgate. Many students instead associate the University with a very different kind of icon: the auto-icon of philosopher Jeremy Bentham, his mortal remains on open display.
Bentham is widely considered the spiritual founder of UCL, though had no involvement in the creation of the University itself aside from some financial contributions.
Instead, Bentham’s ideas were central to the founding of UCL. Bentham believed education should be secular and open to all, rather than limiting it to elites or those with particular religious affiliations.
As important to UCL’s identity as Bentham’s philosophy was, it can easily be set aside when recalling that his corpse greets each and every student walking through the doors of the Student Centre.
Countless myths exist surrounding Bentham’s remains and they have become a defining part of UCL student identity. Simply put, at UCL, a philosopher’s severed head was stolen and used as a football — or so students are often told. As absurd and tall as the tales of Bentham’s auto-icon may seem, there is fact in truth to them. So how did the auto-icon come to be, and what really happened to his head?
Creating the auto-icon
Jeremy Bentham firmly believed his body could serve a purpose after his death, a belief he had held since youth. When death ultimately befell him in 1832, his body was given to the renowned physician George Fordyce to be dissected in a series of public lectures.
Following the lectures, Bentham’s bones were cleaned and sent to physician Thomas Southwood Smith, a friend of Bentham’s.
As stipulated in his will, the bones were assembled in a seated position as he would have been in life when engaged in thought.
The joints were articulated with wire “like a marionette, if anyone wanted to do that,” Bentham Project curator Peter Lythe told The Cheese Grater. The remains were then dressed in one of Bentham’s outfits and given his hat and cane.
However, the auto-icon was still incomplete. Bentham had wished for his head to be preserved, and this responsibility fell to Southwood Smith. Southwood Smith attempted to use traditional Maori mummification techniques, though the process left the head discoloured and distorted. The auto-icon was instead topped with a much more palatable wax reproduction of Bentham’s head created by sculptor Jacques Talrich.
The completed auto-icon was placed inside a glass box alongside the mummified head and glass jars containing Bentham’s preserved organs, though the latter have been lost over the years.
After remaining in Southwood Smith’s home for nearly 20 years, the auto-icon was offered to UCL in 1850, though kept neglected and in disrepair in a back room.
Both Southwood Smith and later John Bowring, Bentham’s literary executor, expressed their displeasure with the state of the auto-icon.
“For these first few decades, it appears to have been a bit of an embarrassment,” remarks Lythe, “though it appears to have first gone on public display in the mid-20th century in the South Cloisters of UCL’s main building.”
Off with his head!
It was at this point in the auto-icon’s journey that the first rumours of Bentham’s head being plundered from its home at UCL, namely by King’s College London students, first surfaced. So-called “mascot raids”, part of the storied rivalry between the two universities, had occurred for decades.
KCL students had been carrying off Phineas, the Students’ Union building’s (since removed) tartan-clad wooden highlander statue, as early as 1922. UCL students are likewise known to have relieved KCL of their own mascot, Reggie the Lion, going as far as to (allegedly) bury him in Hampstead Heath in 1948.
It wasn’t until 1975, however, that Bentham’s head itself became a target. In October of that year, a group of KCL students managed to sneak the mummified body part out of the auto-icon’s display case in the South Cloisters.
The students were willing to return the head, but with a condition: it was requested that UCL pay a ransom of £100, (about £1070 today) to a housing charity. Following negotiations, the University agreed to pay £10 (about £107 today) and Bentham’s head was returned to the display case. The identities of the culprits remain unknown to this day.
The second attested theft of Bentham’s head was shortly after this, though specifics as to when and how it occurred are unclear.
Similarly to the 1975 incident, the head was removed from its case, though this time was found hundreds of miles North in a locker at an Aberdeen train station.
This claim, according to Bentham Project curator Tim Causer, is complete nonsense despite having once been present on a UCL web page.
Evidently, the South Cloisters display case was not particularly well protected as Bentham’s head was allegedly pilfered again in 1989.
According to a KCLSU website, a group of students brought the head back to the Strand, kicking it like a football along the way. The head supposedly stood proudly in the KCL student bar, until the perpetrators were threatened with expulsion.
Lythe suggested this may have been the origin of the football myth, which he maintains could never have really happened. “Either head would have undoubtedly been destroyed had it been used as a football,” he elaborates, “To kick the real head even just slightly would have destroyed it. And the wax head? You’d know if it had been kicked.”
Despite this, there may be some truth to this story. “It was actually around this time that the real head was taken off public display and moved to secure storage. Was it to protect it? Was it a coincidence? We just don’t know,” Lythe says.
Now safe from prying eyes and fingers, this would be the last time the real head would be stolen. Unfortunately for Bentham, however, the waxwork head was still very vulnerable.
In 2013, an anonymous letter to the KCL alumni magazine, InTouch, claimed involvement in an early 1990s mascot raid in which Bentham’s waxwork head was misappropriated. The author boasted about having partaken in a mascot raid rivalling perhaps the most notorious of heists.
Described as a “precision operation” by the writer, it involved distracting guards, obstructing cameras, holding doors, and even using taxis to ferry the head back to KCL where it was held for ransom.
As had happened at least a decade earlier, threats of expulsion and legal action led to the wax head’s swift return. This event is forever preserved in an image of Jeremy Bentham’s wax head at the Waterfront Bar.
This mascot raid, alongside the one in 1975, were the only ones confirmed to have happened. Though widespread, the football myth dishearteningly appears to have been a complete fabrication. This wouldn’t be the only legend dispelled, as Lythe also explained that rumours that the auto-icon attended UCL council meetings were untrue. This was with two exceptions. First was when the auto-icon attended UCL’s 150th anniversary meeting and then again in 2013 during provost Sir Malcolm Grant’s final meeting. Lythe did, fortunately, reassure me that Bentham did indeed have a cat known as the Reverend Dr Sir John Langbourne.
Safe and sound in the Student Centre
The auto-icon made its way to the Student Centre on Gordon Street in 2020, following a brief stint at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Today it sits in a new glass box, welcoming students with its faraway stare.
Bentham’s mummified head sits securely in the UCL Institute of Archaeology making occasional public appearances, most recently in 2018.
The auto-icon and the stories surrounding it form a key part of UCL’s student identity.
These legends – especially the false ones – are important reminders of the chaos and mischief of student life, and of the storied history of London’s universities.
