[발췌] Bentham's dead body

※ 발췌 (excerpts): 

출처 1: Jeremy Bentham Died in 1832, But He's Still Sitting in this University Hallway (Slate, Oct 2012)

Jeremy Bentham has been sitting in a corridor at University College of London since 1850.

The moral philosopher, whose advocacy of animal welfare, prison reform, universal suffrage, and gay rights was far ahead of his time, left a will with specific instructions on the treatment of his corpse. In it, he decreed that his skeleton and mummified head be assembled, clad in a black suit and seated upright on a chair in a wooden cabinet, under a placard reading "Auto Icon." He also suggested that his corpse could preside over regular meetings of his utlilitarian followers.

Bentham's plans for his remains became something of an obsession. For 10 years prior to his death, he reportedly carried a pair of glass eyes in his pocket so that embalmers could easily implant them into his head. Unfortunately, when the time came, something went wrong in the preservation process. Bentham's head took on a mottled, hollow-cheeked look, its leathery skin sagging under a pair of intensely blue glass eyes. Preservers created a wax head and screwed it onto the skeleton to ensure a more visually pleasing display, placing the real head between Bentham's feet.

The head sat undisturbed until 1975, when a group of mischievous students kidnapped it and demanded a ￡100 ransom be donated to charity. The university made a counter-offer of ￡10, and the students caved, returning Bentham's head to its rightful place. After a few more pranks, including one in which the skull was apparently used as a football, university administrators decidedto remove the head from public display. It now sits in the Conservation Safe in the Institute of Archaeology and is removed only for special occasions.


출처 2: Why is the stuffed corpse of a great philosopher at University Gollege of London?

( ... ... ) Bentham specified that his body be used as much as possible. This included an illegal educational dissection─since it was only officially legal to dissect executed prisoners. He also wanted it displayed as a monument to his beliefs, and since by that time he had become an icon, people agreed. His internal organs were removed, as was his head. His body was stuffed with lavender, straw, wool, and cotton. His head was meant to go back on his body, but attempts at mummification, while effective in mummifying the flesh, made it look too gruesome. He was dressed, his head replaced with a wax replica, and he was ready to go.

He was kept by a fellow utilitarian for 18 years, before University College of London, the college he help found, acquired him. The body was on public display, and the head on a somewhat more private display for over a hundred years. Over time, both body and head were swiped as pranks so frequently that at last the college put the head in a safe and made the body only viewable on specific days or by special appointment. That would undoubtedly have disappointed Bentham, but we have to be practical. And they still get some use out of him. It's said that at special meeting of the college council, the body is wheeled in and recorded as "Jeremy Bentham: present, but not voting." ( ... )


출처 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham#Death_and_the_auto-icon

( ... ... ) As early as 1769, when Bentham was 21 years old, he made a will leaving his body for dissection to a family friend, the physician and chemist George Fordyce, whose daughter, Maria Sophia, married Jeremy's brother Samuel Bentham. A paper written in 1830, instructing Thomas Southwood Smith to create the auto-icon, was attached to his last will, dated 30 May 1832.

( ... ... ) Afterward, the skeleton and head were preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet called the "Auto-icon", with the skeleton padded out with hay and dressed in Bentham's clothes. Originally kept by his disciple Thomas Southwood Smith, it was acquired by University College London in 1850. It is normally kept on public display at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the college; however, for the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, and in 2013, it was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where it was listed as "present but not voting".


출처 4: http://www.christianreview.com.au/sub_read.html?uid=5032&section=sc40&section2=

( ... ... ) 여기까지는 특이한 사항이 별로 없습니다. 큰 뜻을 품고 대학을 세운 사람도 많고, 대학에 재산을 헌납한 사람도 많으니까요. 그런데 벤담의 유언에는 아주 유별난 한 가지 조건이 붙어있었습니다. 곧, 자신이 죽은 후 시신을 해부하여 유골에 밀랍을 씌우고 옷을 입혀서 대학교의 회의실에 안치할 것이며, 대학교는 이사회를 진행할 때에 자신의 시신을 출석시키고, 또한 사회자는 회원 점명 시에, “제레미 벤담, 출석하였으나 투표는 하지 않음!”(“Jeremy Bentham, present but not voting!”)이라고 자신을 호명하도록 하라는 것이 그 조건이었습니다.

벤담이 사망한지 18년 후인 1850년, 런던대학교는 그의 유언에 따라 그의 유골을 대학교 내에 안치하였고, 대학교의 설립 100주년과 150주년, 그리고 2013년에 벤담의 유골을 이사회에 출석시켜 그의 유언대로 이행하였습니다. 그리고 그의 유골은 현재까지도 런던대학교 건물 내에 안치되어 일반에게 공개되고 있습니다. ( ... ... )


출처 5: The Strange After-Life of Jeremy Bentham (Oddly Historical, Feb 2014)

( ... ... ) Bentham’s will contained a stipulation that, upon his death which came in 1832 at the age of 84, his body was to be dissected and his head removed. Then the flesh was to be stripped from his bones. The bones were to be dressed in his usual attire, which would be stuffed with straw to give the appearance of life. His head, meanwhile, was to be mummified and then set atop his preserved remains. The entire mummy was then to be seated in a glass and wood case called an auto-icon (apparently people in olden times had a thing for displaying dead bodies.)


Originally, one of Bentham’s disciples, a man named Thomas Southwood Smith, owned the auto-icon. The University College of London acquired it in 1850. For the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, the auto-icon was brought out for the meeting of the College Council. Jeremy Bentham was listed as “present, but not voting.”

( ... ... ) As for why Bentham had his body preserved in such an odd manner, no one is quite certain. It might have been a sort of prank, a flouting of the traditional beliefs surrounding death. It could have been due to an inflated sense of self importance. Or maybe it was a result of the age old impulse to preserve one’s legacy. No one knows for sure, but Jeremy Bentham and his Auto-Icon remain as a strange and macabre testament to a man and the philosophy he founded.


출처 6: http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2013/07/12/bentham-present-but-not-voting/


출처 7: http://www.critical-theory.com/jeremy-benthams-preserved-corpse-haunt-nightmares/